When we use universal "all or none" words like "all" or "always" — or "none" or "never" — our generalizations become even more explicitly universal. "I always lose." "I never say the right thing." "None of the things I do will ever succeed." When someone generalizes into the future in this way, I usually ask them to show me their fortune–telling license. Usually they look a bit puzzled, until I point out that they are predicting the future without being adequately trained and qualified.
A single word or phrase like "loser" can carry a very heavy load of meaning, and affect us very strongly — whether someone else says it, or we use it to describe ourselves. What does it mean to say that someone is a "loser"? It may mean that someone has little financial ability or poor social skills, or some other lack.
However, using the word "loser" generalizes that to all that person's life, when that is never the case. Someone who is described as a "loser" may have little money or status, but have many good friends, a wonderful sense of humor, a beautiful voice, etc. Using the word "loser" ignores all that, making it seem as if they have "lost" in all aspects of their life, not only now, but in the past, and in the future.
McWhirter's pattern described above can also be used for any unpleasant over–generalization about the self. "You're no good," "I can't do anything right." And it can also be used for any positive overgeneralizations that could also use some balance. Retrieving the unpleasant aspects of a positive overgeneralization can make them available for learning.
Evaluations
When we generalize about events, the words we use may be simply descriptive generalizations, like "chair" "small" or "new." However, usually a word also expresses some kind of evaluation. A word like "small," may carry a meaning of "insignificant," or "unimportant," and "new" often carries a meaning of "better." Many other words, like "stupid," "lazy," or "worthless" express much more obvious evaluations.
If an internal voice were to say, "I think you're stupid," that might be unpleasant, but it is clearly stated as an evaluation that someone else has made about you; it is not necessarily a fact. Since it is clearly someone else's evaluation, if you have a different view of the behavior or event that they labeled as "stupid" you can offer it.
"I think you're stupid" also ignores the context. Someone could be very stupid in one context, and quite intelligent in another, but when the context is omitted, the statement appears to be universal — that you are stupid everywhere and all the time.
However, it is much more common for an internal voice to say, "You're stupid," which sounds much more like a fact than an opinion about a fact. That makes it much less clear that it is an evaluation that someone else has made about you. One way to clarify this is to reply, "OK, you think I'm stupid; what events or evidence convinced you that is true? That can begin to unravel what otherwise appears to be an undisputable "fact."
If an internal voice says, "I'm stupid," instead of "You're stupid," the evaluation sounds even more like a fact. This tight circularity of the self describing itself is a bit more difficult to disentangle. While occasionally someone may come to a conclusion about themselves on their own, almost always it is an echo of what they heard someone else say. They accepted it as true, agreed with it, and began to describe themselves in that way. Since they agree with it, it is much harder to think of alternative descriptions.
One way to begin to unravel a statement that someone makes about themselves is to change it into a statement that someone else makes about them. "Look, I'm sure that you didn't pop into this world saying this to yourself. When you were an infant, you didn't even understand words, much less talk to yourself — you had to learn that much later from other people around you. You may have learned to say this to yourself, but it is really what someone else said to you, so it is much more accurate to say, 'You're stupid' than 'I'm stupid.' "
After this first step of opening up the circular self–referring statement you can follow up with, "Who said this to you?" making it clear not only that it is someone else's opinion, but whose opinion it is. Then you can go on to ask about the larger context, "Where are you, what just happened, and what kind of person is saying this?" etc. Thinking of all these circumstances that led to the conclusion that you were stupid offers many opportunities to spontaneously reevaluate the conclusion, and think of alternative meanings. I will explore how to use this in much more detail in volume II.
Another way to unravel someone's troublesome statement about themselves is to realize that that the evaluation describes itself, so it applies to itself. If the self is stupid, then the statement itself must also be stupid. "OK, if I'm stupid, then saying, 'I'm stupid' must be a stupid thing to say." If a voice says, "I'm a worthless person," that statement must itself be worthless. "I'm lazy," is a lazy statement, and "I'm insensitive" must be an insensitive thing to say.
This circularity will apply to anything that someone says about themselves. Try this now with any negative statement that you say about yourself. Think of some
general critical statement that you say about yourself, and then turn it back on itself in this way, and you can have an experience of how the statement tends to nullify
itself… .
When any negative self–referring statement is applied to itself, it tends to nullify itself; it becomes much weaker and so will your response to it. Interestingly, this circularity has a very different effect when used with positive descriptions. If I say, "I'm intelligent," then logically that must be an intelligent thing to say. It might not be true, but at least it is consistent; the statement doesn't nullify itself. If you would like to learn much more about this kind of self–referring statement, read chapters 5, 6 &7 in (5, vol. 2).
Presuppositions
In everyday life, we presuppose a great deal. In writing this book I presuppose that you can read English, and that the words I write will be meaningful to you. Whenever we use pronouns like "he" or "she" we presuppose that a listener will be able to "fill in the blank" with the appropriate person. If I say, "I couldn't find the cat," that presupposes an "I," a "cat," and that I have been searching for the cat. These ordinary presuppositions rarely cause trouble.
However, when an internal voice says something like, "I can't believe how stupid I am," my stupidity is no longer an opinion, it becomes a presupposed fact That makes it much harder to recognize that it is actually still an opinion. Even when you change that to a statement that someone else makes, "I can't believe how stupid you are," it is still a presupposed fact. There are many other ways to disguise an opinion as a fact by presupposing it. Here are just a few.
"If you were to become smart, I would be very surprised."
"It was your stupidity that caused the problem."
"If you were smart, that wouldn't have happened."
"It's amazing how stupid you are."
"If you were to say something smart, that would really surprise me."
One way to recognize presuppositions would be to learn how to recognize the 31 linguistic forms that can be used to create a presupposition. (10 , pp. 257–261). That can be very useful for anyone who works therapeutically with other people. Fortunately there is a much easier way to detect presuppositions: Take any sentence and negate it, and notice what is still true