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Broken ideas and idea repair

Handling negative emotions, States of mind

As a rule, our culture tends to think of emotions as things that well up inside us in a way that’s more or less completely outside our control. We can avoid emotional situations, this point of view goes, or we can suppress them, but they are what we are, and thinking doesn’t enter into it.

mimeI’d like to demonstrate some very useful ways this is completely wrong. I’ll do it using, of course, a mime.

Let’s say our mime–for convenience, we can call him Raoul–is on his way to the park to do a little street performance on a sunny May afternoon. For his performance today, Raoul has purchased three dozen imaginary eggs, which he plans to juggle, balance on his nose, perform magic tricks with, etc. He is carrying the imaginary eggs in mime fashion when he slips on an imaginary banana peel on the sidewalk and crashes to the concrete, right on top of his eggs. Now Raoul is a mess, covered with imaginary egg. All of his eggs are ruined, so there go his performance plans for the day, and to top it off, the people in his otherwise fair city are so rude and thoughtless that they leave imaginary banana peels lying all over the place. Oh, and to make it worse, since it was an imaginary banana peel, clearly it was another mime who did it!

We would expect Raoul to get upset in one way or another. He could sit there, covered with smashed eggs, weeping, or he could fling the gooey, imaginary cartons around in fury, shouting silent curse words. And we probably wouldn’t blame him for this, because through someone else’s carelessness, he’s a mess and his day is ruined.

Now, it’s true that immediately when this happens, Raoul’s brain will start making associations, and brain chemicals will start influencing his behavior–notably adrenaline in response to the unexpected fall and the problems that it has suddenly caused. That helps set the stage, but at the same time Raoul’s brain is likely to be generating what are called “automatic thoughts”: emotionally laden and potentially misleading judgments about what has happened. They might include things like:

“I’m screwed! I needed those eggs for this performance, and if I don’t perform I won’t have enough money to pay the rent tomorrow, and then I’ll probably get kicked out of my apartment!”

“What kind of sick #$!(@ leaves imaginary banana peels lying around all over the sidewalk?”

“This is a disaster!”

These kinds of automatic thoughts are also called “cognitive distortions,” because they are a kind of thinking that encourages belief in things that aren’t true. I’ll use a different term for them, though: “broken ideas.” A broken idea is anything you think up that misleads you. But what’s misleading about the above? Isn’t Raoul just silently telling it like it is?

In all honesty, he isn’t. Raoul’s broken ideas are broken only subtly, but they’ll lead him down a path he doesn’t want to take. For instance, his predictions about being evicted are very likely wrong, even if he isn’t able to come up with every penny of the rent money on time, and the fact that he’s trying to predict the future rather than just evaluate his options is a major red flag. We can’t predict the future in most cases, so basing our actions on assumptions about what will happen tends to lead to badly-chosen actions. Anyway, even in the worst case scenario he can always show how he’s trapped in a box and unable to leave the apartment. This is one of the powers mimes have.

He’s also telling himself he needs the eggs for the performance, when in fact he probably just wants the eggs for the performance, and can either buy more eggs or do a different routine.

And he’s also labeling the banana peel leaver as a (please pardon me for repeating this bad language) “sick #$!(@,” which dehumanizes the person and could lead some real interpersonal problems (like being hit over the head repeatedly with an imaginary stick) if Raoul decides the perpetrator must have been a particular someone he knows and acts toward that person as though they were purposely going around and leaving imaginary banana peels for people to slip on.

peel

So what’s wrong with these ideas is that they’re inaccurate, and more to the point, they tend to lead Raoul in the direction of making bad choices, like going to drown his sorrows in imaginary beer, or marching off to throttle a colleague who is a known banana afficianado. What would make Raoul happiest at the moment would be to somehow find a way to free himself of his anxiety and frustration at the incident, get him to think through what he’ll need to do to go ahead with his performance, and as soon as possible to get him to the park to charm half the passersby and infuriate the other half with his mimetic ways. This way his day could very rapidly get back on track, and no other trouble would need to come of the banana peel fiasco.

How does Raoul do this? We’ll tackle this in much better detail in other posts, but the basic steps are:

1. Relax, step back from the situation, and breathe
2. Use idea repair
3. Get on with your life

Idea repair, which takes some practice to learn but can be wonderfully effective once you have the basics down, is the process of reworking broken ideas to reflect the truth of the situation. For instance, “What kind of sick #$!(@ leaves imaginary banana peels lying around all over the sidewalk?” could be repaired to something like “As much as I wish they didn’t, sometimes people will leave imaginary banana peels on the sidewalk, so I’ll be better off if I’m on the lookout for them.”

Similarly, “This is a disaster!” could be repaired to “This is inconvenient and embarrassing, but if I take the right steps, I can get my day back on track.”

You might be amazed how much stress and distraction idea repair can sometimes clear away. I certainly have been ever since I first learned about the technique a decade or so ago.

Of course there’s much more that could be said on the subject, but that brief summation will have to do for now. I’ll leave you with this final comment from Raoul:

“”

Huh. Well, that’s what I get for trying to quote a mime.

Mime photo by thecnote; banana peel photo by Black Glenn.


Postscript: As you may have noticed, I’m experimenting with a lighter writing style for posts. Up until now I’ve been making efforts to write seriously because I’m dealing with serious subjects, but I’ve come to think that a little humor might do more good than harm. I’d appreciate any comments you might have on this style of post.

LATER NOTE: I followed this article up in October with How to Detect Broken Ideas and How to Repair a Broken Idea, Step by Step.

11 Comments

10 Comments

  1. Oliver Dale  •  Aug 7, 2009 @11:18 pm

    Good post, Luc. And I like the Mime example 🙂

  2. Candy  •  Oct 7, 2009 @3:29 pm

    I think the mime example is brilliant because everything was imaginary. We do have a choice over how we react to life’s challenges, but what’s funny is that most of the time the “challenges” are things we are just making it up anyway. We are making up stories about events based on our perceptions, which are based on the past and future, neither of which exist in this present moment. The banana peel was imaginary. The eggs were imaginary, therefore the experiences surrounding them were imaginary. Everything was just a made up story, and that is what we do. We just go through life making up stories. Great post.

  3. Luc Reid  •  Oct 10, 2009 @10:59 pm

    Thanks Candy, both for the visit and the feedback. You know, the imaginariness appealed to me, but I’m not sure I consciously realized how well it fit until you pointed it out!

  4. Irrevenant  •  Oct 11, 2009 @12:12 am

    Great post, but sadly lacking in any systematic detail on the “idea repair” technique.

    Would greatly appreciate a follow up step-by-step post on how to apply this technique.

    Thanks.

  5. Luc  •  Oct 20, 2009 @1:19 pm

    Thanks, Irrevenant: that’s a great idea. Having read your comment and realized how useful a clear process would be, I’m working on a post for next week on the subject.

  6. El  •  Jul 8, 2010 @3:04 am

    What a great site I also agree with Irrevenant, about the spell step by step how to apply the ‘ idea repair technique’. Also I would like to say that the reading is very easy to understand. English is my second language. Thanks for great posts.

  7. Luc  •  Jul 8, 2010 @9:10 am

    El, thanks a lot for commenting, and for the feedback (and encouragement!).

  8. Jeni  •  Aug 25, 2011 @1:17 pm

    This was brilliantly written and practical! I really enjoyed the humour and wit. And it drives the point home that it’s all imaginary in the first place. I could hear it much more because it was funny. Great job and thank you! Passed it on…

  9. michael groves  •  Mar 13, 2012 @3:14 pm

    Dear Luc, et. al., a friend turned me on to this website and I’m glad she did. Very insightful. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 46, I’m 56 now, and i realized i spent my life up to that point, when i was into therapy about 5 years or so, saturated in cognitive distortions. I couldn’t get through a conversation or walk 5 feet down the sidewalk without slipping on a banana peel and breaking my eggs. The problem was that these actions were invisible to me!
    Last year i was prescribed a new medication which allowed me to be aware of what was going on around me, it made a huge difference, i can remember there is milk in the fridge for the first time. I’m not much of an advice giver, but I’ll tell you what i would tell Rauol if he were here: “Pay attention!” (either that or get a new job) Thanks for your clever insight, i’ll post this site in Favorites mike groves

  10. Luc  •  Apr 6, 2012 @4:38 pm

    Michael, I realized I hadn’t yet thanked you for the encouragement and for writing here about your experiences. It’s great to hear that you’ve been able to combine cognitive work with medication to get a balance that works for you. I know a lot of us struggle for a long time to find that balance! All the best to you (and your eggs) going forward.

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