You can’t just let things go just by wanting to. And, that is why, for Diane, she went to the extreme lengths to go back into her trauma in gruesome detail — not to rehearse and reinforce the traumas, but to disentangle them through a process of inquiry.
Processes which you can use for inquiry include The Work of Byron Katie, mentioned in the previous chapter, Logotherapy, and many others. I offer a synopsis of each practice with which I am familiar and can speak to the efficacy of the first appendix Resources & Recommendations. What all of these practices have in common is inquiry that hurts and takes time. Your therapist may tell you that treatment doesn’t need to be uncomfortable to be effective, but if you ask your therapist if you can pay them for results instead of by the hour they’re likely to change their mind.
What follows is a detailed breakdown of the differences between processes of growth and recovery and quick-fix techniques which are simply coping mechanisms. Certainly, coping can be a necessary step following acute disruption. But leaning on coping mechanisms will keep you stuck in cycles of relative powerlessness and victimhood. We’ll also take a brief look at how this same principle applies to one of society’s most destructive addictions — dogma. And by zooming out and seeing this self-limiting pattern in a larger, principled way we’ll reveal the moral dimension of coping, accepting easy dogmatic answers, and settling for than less than we have to.
The rest of this chapter will become available following the success of this Kickstarter campaign.
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