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19b. Engage in scenarios, not ideas.
Sometimes the process can get confusing when a person becomes over involved in thinking about the situation rather than entering into the scenario. While a certain amount of insightful thinking may be useful, a person should imagine him or herself experiencing the stressful events and observe his or her behavior as the scenes unfold.
Let's take the problem scenario of a spouse who has a blaming style. I have noticed that some people can go into abstract ideas and judgments, such as "She has no right to talk to me like that", or, "His upbringing made him that way", or, "My inner child is feeling hurt by him/her invalidating me".
A scenario-focused observation would be something like, "When she blames me, I see myself getting angry and saying things I regret later", or, "When he is blaming, I shut down and don't say anything because saying something only makes things worse", or, "After shutting down, I could discuss the issue with him later from a positive perspective”.
Notice that the abstract statements are all judgments about the situation, whereas the scenario-focused statements describe what is actually happening in the situation. The latter is much more likely to result in progress because it will lead somewhere, whereas abstract thinking and judgments can go on forever without any real change. It's like talking about practicing your golf swing versus actually practicing your golf swing. Only entering into the reality of practicing will bring results.
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