Psychology of Being, which looked at these issues. In that book was a beautiful description, written by G. Allport, of how it is possible to lose yourself and isolate yourself from your deepest sources of power...and not even know that you’re doing it. Listen to Allport’s description of a child who’s forced to make that choice: He has not been accepted for himself, as he is. “Oh, they ‘love’ him, but they want him or force him or expect him to be different! Therefore he must be unacceptable. He himself learns to believe it and at last, even takes it for granted. He has truly given himself up. No matter now whether he obeys them, whether he clings, rebels or withdraws — his behavior, his performance is all that matters. His center of gravity is in ‘them,’ not in himself. Yet, if he so much as noticed it, he’d think it natural enough. And the whole thing is entirely plausible; all invisible, automatic, and anonymous! This is the perfect paradox. Everything looks normal; no crime was intended; there is no corpse, no guilt. All we can see is the sun rising and setting as usual. But what has happened? He has been rejected, not only by them, but by himself. (He is actually without a self.) What has he lost? Just the one true and vital part of himself: his own yes-feeling, which is his very capacity for growth, his root system.
starting to define the questions. THE POWER OF OBSERVATION The ability to observe is absolutely critical if you want to change yourself in any way. Observing, in its highest form, is called mindfulness. It’s a meditation term. What it calls for is to clear your mind and simply notice what’s going on. Don’t just notice the familiar things. See if you can observe everything, dispassionately, without an agenda. When you can do that...when you can observe without trying to fit what you see into any preexisting paradigm...it’s often surprising the kinds of things you discover. For example, back in the 60’s when you couldn’t pump your own petrol, I’d drive into the service station near our apartment and have to ask the attendant to “Fill it up.” Some days I could say it perfectly without a hitch. Other days, when the attendant came over, I knew I was going to block, and I’d have to resort to starter phrases like, “Mmmm, ahhhh ‘ow are ya an’ can ya fill it up please.” Why were those days different? If I were focusing only on my speech, I’d never been able to explain it. But by then I was routinely looking at all aspects of the speaking situation. You know what I finally realized? On the days when I was getting on with my wife, I had no trouble. But on days when I was feeling angry or resentful or hurt and was holding all my feelings in, those
I’m a success. I’m a failure. I’m a stutterer. I’m not a stutterer. I'm good. I'm bad. It gradually dawned on me that I was creating my own stressful world by my habits of thought. General semantics gave me tools to circumvent these problems. I was encouraged to constantly challenge my own perceptions. If I blocked, and somebody smiled, I automatically assumed they were laughing at me. General semantics taught me to question things like that. It taught me that my perception of reality was not reality at all. It was only my perception. The person could be smiling for any number of reasons. Maybe I just said something that reminded them of a funny experience. Maybe their drawers were too tight, and that smile was a grimace of pain. Similarly, my beliefs were not reality. They were just a map of reality. I learned to question whether or not my maps were accurate and to not take anything I perceived on face value. Something I came to realize was that whenever someone was upset, I automatically thought it was because of something I’d done. That created additional stress. It also put me in a one-down position, and it created fertile ground for speech blocks. Once I got in the habit of challenging my perceptions, I started to see that most events had many possible explanations. Changing how I thought played a vital role in my recovery.