The Importance Of A Willingness To Perceive Reality

There is always one key factor that pops up again and again, throughout my experiences as a therapist, during conversations with people about psychology, and in my head when quietly observing a person’s “patterns”.

But first, just to introduce a few concepts.

Everyone looks at the world differently, and appreciating that is a massive step towards being a balanced, rational person. It allows you to accept peoples individual differences, rather than think “you don’t agree with me, therefore you’re wrong”, which describes a disturbingly high amount of peoples attitudes.

It leads to the attitude of having to control nature rather than flow with it, to bend the world to fit with an imagined set of expectations. People want to see the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Anything to the contrary is distorted, deleted or denied, anything that reinforces it is welcomed with open arms. Of course, nature doesn’t give a shit, and will gladly break down those walls when they became brittle enough, and this is usually the point of a “breakdown”.

This is the whole “the map is not the territory” thing, the failure to grasp of which lies at the heart of most mental illness.

But anyway, the main thing I was alluding to at the start is not the perception of reality, but just the willingness to perceive it. Are you going to irrationally defend what you want to believe, ignoring evidence to the contrary, or are you going to pay more attention to that evidence to learn something new? Are you going to stick to your negative belief systems that keep you hemmed inside of your life, or are you going to test them by wondering what it would be like if those beliefs weren’t true?

Basically, are you going to be willing to give up your bullshit to take further steps closer to reality, or choose to live with your bullshit forever more?

Because really, most of what people believe to be true (whether it be about their potential, how lovable they are, whether other people are threatening, whats scary etc) is bullshit. If it wasn’t, it would be a fact, and not a belief.

When talking to people about things, I can sometimes sense a “zone” where their irrational defensiveness kicks in. It wouldn’t be a problem for me to just avoid it. The problem arises where I’m invited to help them reinforce the belief. So if a typical conversation goes along the lines of people being horrible, or society being rubbish, or there being no options left anymore, I’m caught in a pressure point where if I don’t agree, they may become anxious and I know they’ll start putting me in that same bracket of hostility (“oh, you’re just like everyone else!” etc). Instead I’ll start challenging and eroding the edges, by asking incisive questions so that they are forced to corner themselves into facing their own irrationality head on (e.g. reminding them of a time that directly goes against what they are asking me to agree with). Whilst the effects of this can be powerful in the short term (“yeah, I suppose you’re right”), the overwhelming power of the mind to do what it can to protect what it wants to believe will ensure that its quickly forgotten about. A few days later, it will be the case of same bullshit, different day.

The Psychology of Scent

Scent is relatively neglected in terms of how much research and attention the other senses receive. More recently, research has been showing up all sorts of interesting things about smell, such as how our noses adapt to chemicals in the air within twenty minutes (i.e., we can’t smell them anymore).

You have likely experienced the strange phenomenon of having a whole era of your life come flooding into memory when you pass someone with a particular perfume or whiff of hair shampoo. Scent is more entwined with our emotions and memories than we give it credit for, and it operates largely on a purely subconscious level. This is why scent is now becoming a hot area in marketing research.

The picture is for Tom Tykwers movie adaption of Patrick Suskind’s novel, Perfume: Story of a Murderer. More information about the research of scent can be found here.

Strangers To Ourselves – The Adaptive Unconscious

I am reading a good book at the moment called “Strangers to Ourselves” by Tim Wilson. Personality theory has normally focused on how to measure ‘personality’, with predictability of behaviour being the only really output of any research results (and the results were never particularly strong in that respect because personalities are more dynamic than lab tests can seemingly account for). Tim theorises on the idea of a conscious personality, and an adaptive unconscious personality, which can be quite different. The research is staggering. For example, a persons conscious ideas about his or her beliefs and prejudices can often be completely contradicted by their automatic actions or responses in a situation. It comes down to that difference between who we think we are, and who we really are. Our automatic responses account for a majority of our behaviours, yet they are the bits we filter out as part of our big defensive campaign to reinforce our ‘self beliefs’. Its all very interesting. The more I learn about the automaticity of the mind and the unconscious, the more it dovetails with my experiences of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Will Williams, Exeter.

The Best Form of Mind Control

Mind control is always an interesting area – The Manchurian Candidate, hypnosis, Derren Brown, the CIA’s secret MKUltra brainwashing program in the cold water and all that kinda stuff.

But the most powerful form of mind control must be to control your own mind, not others. Having self awareness, the ability to recognise when you’re thinking doesn’t make sense. Having the discpline of directing your own mental energy, and actions, to get things done more effectively. Being able to let go of things, whether people, places, objects or old beliefs about things. And also, having the control to reliquish control when need be, and to not live your life in fear of it.

Whilst experience is valuable, having the initial awareness of knowing how to make the most of experience is also vital. This prevents your experiences from just solidifying and reinforcing your mind rather than freeing it up. This is what self help hypnosis is all about.