Paperback "I Forgive" and Other Delusions

My book is now in paperback form. (The Kindle ebook has been out in the world for a couple months.) I had tremendous difficulty with the professional formatter. The simplified reason is that I paid $149 to Word-2-Kindle instead of the $1,200 that Wordzworth Books asked. I’m a retired typographer and know that a book that’s already ninety-eight percent meticulously formatted at Microsoft Word (for MacBook Air) should not need a thousand dollars-worth of finishing touches.

 

A consequence, though, is that I uploaded the paperback to Amazon from a state of exhaustion not confidence, and I can’t help but fear that I missed some substantive errors in line spacing, indenting, indexing, page numbers, etc. I’m half-afraid to look at the final product.* So I am encouraging readers to purchase the paperback “I Forgive” and Other Delusions in order to look for embarrassing goofs to throw in my face (by email and blog comments).

 

Of course, there are other reasons to own. How can people – including potential clients and therapy students and their teachers – not be sick of the cognitive-therapy fluff that has covered the earth worse than covid? Thinking does not heal wounds; it only burdens them with falseness. Therapy must go to the source of pain and let that pain out by the tools of justice: remembering, weeping, raging in a room where someone finally hears and cares.

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* Follow-up: I purchased two copies of the book and have found two blatant flaws. The text blocks are not centered on the pages but are shifted toward the inside of the book (the spine: too little white space) and away from the open end of the book. To me it's an eyesore and necessitates almost cracking the spine to read easily. Also, the type, which should be black, is a washed-out-looking gray. Despite my haranguing everyone, neither the book formatter, nor Amazon Customer Support, nor Lulu (the publisher that apparently sometimes prints Amazon's books) has accepted responsibility for the flaws. I continue to email these sources in search of an adult.

Know thyself before it's too late

I’ve encountered many, many people who do not know what it means to understand themselves. They believe that if they have a feeling as a reaction to something that happens, or as companion to a thought or a belief, that feeling is “who they are” and has no deeper cause or reason. The feeling says what it is and all that it is.

 

This error is understandable by the nature of feeling. It seems like identity. But if we cry at a happy moment, or rage at a tangled computer cord or a slow driver, or get anxious if our fourth-grader brings home a “C,” we should wonder who we really are.

 

Of course, people also believe that their assumptions and convictions, as well as their feelings, are who they are. They are often disabused of that notion in therapy where mantras like “I love my mother to death” and “my parents did their best” and “I’m never good enough” evaporate in a bleak epiphany.

 

It is rare for a parent to say to herself: Why do I want to punish my child? What is this feeling inside me that wants to deprive or hurt him? It is rare for an adult to ask himself: Why do I enjoy being sarcastic, even when I can see that it hurts someone’s feelings? It is rare for a person who says “I don’t trust people” to ask himself: What is going on inside me that makes me think that most people are untrustworthy? It is not quite so rare, but still rare for “people-pleasers” to wonder if they really care about the people they serve, if there may be something self-serving and self-preserving behind their altruism.

 

These and countless other feelings should be explored. They may not be what they seem.

 

Right now I am most concerned about all the people, millions of them, who feel good when they think about the psychologically disturbed and morally malevolent Trump. It is rare to nonexistent that any of them wonder what makes them glad about violence; why their intelligent discernment is not embarrassed by Trump’s fatuous ignorance; why a hating person makes them feel redeemed. If they could look inward, they would find the life they had to bury in their adolescent years if not earlier: injustice and unhelped loneliness and a need for some kind of revenge. This would still be boiling and churning deep below, a turbulence that they cannot see through. Were it to subside, by the gifts of care and self-compassion, their vision would be cleared and they would see a sick man whose medicine is hate and delusion.

Comments to bad news

In response to a recent George Will article in The Washington Post.

 

What a silly George he is. I recently told a Trump-defending client the following: If Biden manipulated the economy in such a way that I got an extra dollar, and Adolf Hitler manipulated the economy in such a way that I got two, I’d still opt for Biden. Psychopaths aren’t a good bet, regardless of the ephemeral prize. Everyone who claims to prefer Donald Trump over Joe Biden because of a given policy or ideological principle is showing the world that he prefers a narcissistic psychopath over an imperfect though normal person. He is revealing a special wound: that the bottommost part of his soul is retaliation pain.

🌀

In response to a New York Times article.

 

In this poisonous Trump climate, a paradox has emerged: The mentally healthiest among us have anxiety, verge on “learned helplessness,” and suffer the insidious trauma of crazymaking (as sociopathy and delusion gain great status), while those  – the Trump Republicans of today – whose fragile balance requires projection, delusion, hate and infantile dependency feel powerful and “happy.” How, The Times asks, do we support our mental health? Go to therapy. Preach to the choir. Know sanity and know that any individual MAGA child-in-adult's-clothing could be undone by a simple Socratic dialogue, that it’s only the epoxy of the masses that makes them strong.

📝

In response to Maureen Dowd's New York Times article, "Here Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowman."

Maureen writes: "I'm puzzled about why his devoted fans don't mind his mean streak." They don't know it now, but on their death beds, today's Democrats will say: "I'm at peace. I loved life as best I could." Today's Republicans will say: "I'm angry." At the seat of people's souls is – reaching into the quiddities here – what good was given in their childhoods and what pain was never healed. It becomes a turn of mood. "I made it work" versus "I remained a victim seeking revenge."