Avoiding Mythology

When you take the RTR approach, you simply state the facts of your experience.

You do not make up reasons as to why you feel what you feel. You simply say: “I feel X.”

You can honestly say: “I felt X after you did Y. I am not saying that Y caused my feeling, I am simply saying that my feeling followed Y.”

This is the truth. It could be that your feeling was triggered by a situation that just happened to be similar to a traumatic or difficult situation in your childhood. This does not make you paranoid, just a sensitive person with a memory. A soldier who has returned from violent combat, and who ducks when a car backfires, is not paranoid, just painfully conditioned. He felt fear after the car backfired, but not because the car backfired – and we know this because other people did not feel fear when the car backfired.

The backfire was thus merely a catalyst, not a cause.

If it were an objective cause, then everyone would feel fear, not just him.

An objective cause of pain is “being stabbed” – a subjective cause of pain is “being embarrassed.” The first is based upon our objective physiology; the second upon our subjective interpretation. The first is a fact; the second is a story.

In the same way, you can legitimately say: “When you did X, I felt Y” – it is important, however, to continually remind the person that you are talking to that you are not saying that she caused your feeling.

Not only has that not been established logically or empirically, but even if it were established, it would still not be true, because unless someone is sticking a pin in your arm, they do not have the power to make you feel anything.