In our
last blog post, we talked about the essential characteristics of parataxic
distortion. We learned that sometimes, our minds get confused and make a
direct association between the present situation and a past experience or
memory in the effort to provide us with useful insight.
However,
what happens is we end up being frustrated, anxious or angry because we
directly project our past experiences on other people (e.g. your husband or
wife).
Parataxic
distortion has nothing to do with the idea of learning from our past
experiences. You don’t learn when your vision of reality is distorted – you
just end up harming yourself and the people around you.
How will you know if a parataxic
distortion is about to take place?
Each
person is unique when it comes to parataxic distortions. Some people experience
it once or twice a year when they feel extremely stressed and they are unable
to channel their stress properly. For others, the parataxic distortions occur
on a daily basis.
The
following guidelines should be able to help you determine if you are suffering
from this type of vision distortion:
1. Overwhelming Negative Emotions – It is
perfectly normal for a person to feel sad or angry. What’s not normal is
to feel an overwhelming number of negative emotions when you’re just talking to
your spouse.
It’s
virtually impossible for one person to say or do something that will trigger a wide
variety of negative emotions all at once. So when your mind feels flooded with
emotions, consider that a warning sign that something else is taking place at
the center of your subconscious mind.
2. “I Know This Feeling Very Well” – Another
important clue that parataxic distortion may be occurring somewhere in your
mind is when you actually recognize the sudden flood of emotions and your mind
feels like they fit well with the situation in front of you, like an old pair
of boots.
If you’re
having an argument with your spouse over something that just popped up, it’s
impossible for you to feel emotions that are almost second nature to you.
Familiarity
with strong, negative emotions is a very clear sign that your emotions are
drawing their energy from someplace else – not the present time.
Be wary
of these “old” emotions! Feeling these emotions doesn’t mean you’re right or
your spouse is wrong. It just means that you are actively projecting your past experiences
on a completely innocent person.
3. Repetitive Emotional Patterns – This is
an advanced sign of parataxic distortion. The sudden flood of negative emotions
is not just familiar to you, they occur repeatedly when your spouse says or
does something that triggers the emotions.
The
“rightness or wrongness” of what your spouse has said or done is not the issue
here. The real issue is that you’re experiencing a very specific set of
emotions that you feel are already second nature and the same set of emotions manifest
regularly.
Be
suspicious of your own emotions if you find yourself saying things like “not
again!” This applies most especially to novel situations that you have never
dealt with before.
5. “Psychic” Activity – Remember the
psychics and magicians on TV who use their “mind reading” powers on members of
the audience? If you begin doing the exact same thing on your spouse, you may
be experiencing parataxic distortions.
Why? Because
you’re making assumptions about your spouse without making use of any concrete
details. It is possible that you’re making assumptions because your mind is telling
you that a past experience is occurring once again in the present time.
So
before assuming that you know what your spouse is actually thinking or saying,
ask yourself these logic-bound questions:
a.) What concrete evidence do I
have that I am correct?
b.) Am I making assumptions as I
go or am I concluding based on actual observation?
c.) What has my spouse said or
done so far to support my current conclusion?
d.) What did my spouse do/say
versus what I think he said/did in my mind? How similar are the two or how
different are they?
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