every statement a person makes about themselves, their lives, the nature of reality etc. has a shadow statement. in order to find it worthwhile to say a thing you must simultaneously be aware of the possibility of it being false, or else it wouldn't even occur to you to say
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in some cases the shadow statement is where almost all of the content is. when people say things like "oh i can just be nice to myself" that's fighting against a much larger shadow statement, all the ways it's felt true that they can't be nice to themselves
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i like therapeutic techniques centered around saying stuff, admitting things to yourself that feel uncomfortable but seem true, things like that
i think a common fear people have about this is that "saying it will make it true," and ime the exact opposite happens if anything
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in my experience, both with myself and with clients and friends, admitting the thing out loud expands awareness of the possibility that it might be false. it's very freeing!
otoh it's when you never admit the thing that it has the power to control you and become your reality 😬
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you can kinda tell when almost everything a person says is an attempt to fight against much larger shadow statements that are what they (or at least a part of them) actually believe. this is probably why byron katie's "turnaround" thing works
thework.com/instruction-th
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Gricean maxims, as applied to the things we tell ourselves?
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The shadow of a bullshit statement is usually not its opposite. With skillful bullshit, the shadow is the partly-known but ignored and unacknowledged truth that's being effortfully pushed out of the frame.
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Methinks thou dost protest too much even in thine own mental dialogue.
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My shirt that states the opposite of a horrifyingly niche idea that would seldom occur to anyone is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
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Borges: The Garden of Forking Paths: He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.