It is a gorgeous fall day with squirrels. Mantra: “It is worse than useless to treat an external problem as an internal one.”
I do not know why the current culture asks us to engage in so much self criticism (actually I do know why, or what the instrumental reason for it is; I say I do not so as to signal the irrationality of it). I do not know why everyone is so quick to say that pointing out any kind of structural problem is “blaming” (which is a sin) or “not looking at your own role in the issue” (why should noticing a structural problem interdict this?).
These are the terrible habits of thought I learned most acutely from psychotherapy. I really try to root them out but sometimes I fear they will follow me even beyond the grave. I cannot believe I allowed myself to be told the things I allowed, or treated these with any kind of tolerance.
I have had an idea. In addition to the other problems with our language program, am I using it as self torture? I see it as a torture chamber but to what extent is it I who allow it to be that for me?
I am so used to self-flagellation that I have trouble seeing that I do it. But I am afraid to stop it, and even feel I should step it up, because I fear that if I stop that guillotine blade installed in the roof of my cell will fall, and I will be dead. I want to die by my own hand to stop the torture and so as to have the satisfaction of at least not being killed by someone else.
Can I perhaps convince myself that there is no guillotine blade? I think this would be important.
(Do you see? I am a better psychoanalyst than the psychoanalysts and this is another reason I am irritated.)
Mantra: “It is worse than useless to treat an external problem as an internal one.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Psychotherapy, as I have experienced it, encourages you to adapt to your context whenever you start to deviate from the norm. The problem is that when the norm is pathological, psychotherapy ends up pulling you away from sanity. If you view things in this framework, then self-blame is what you use to shut out the internal voices that are telling you what is wrong with your environment. I don’t know the way out. I practice mindfulness and try to see things clearly.
Yes!