Twenty minutes, out loud, alone.
Somewhere out of sight you are getting something out of it. Name the payoff.
One recurring situation, one plain sentence. You have described it to a friend more than twice.
Example money that leaves as fast as it arrives.
Present tense, first person, out loud. “I love that this keeps happening to me.”
Example said with a crooked smile, not as a duty.
Follow the sensation, not the thought. Throat, sternum, stomach, jaw.
Example a tightening that arrives before the thought.
Two to five minutes. Consent to the sensation instead of managing it.
Example the tightening becomes heat, then something close to laughing.
Now the question is answerable. Being taken care of. Being the one who was wronged.
Example never having to be the one who decides.
Take it directly instead of sideways. Expect resistance. Then go and do something ordinary.
Example being taken care of by someone who is there.
What is hard becomes soft once the thing beneath it is finally tended. The pattern was never the enemy.
A pattern usually guards a part of you that you exiled.
Open the exerciseUse it when the same situation has arrived at least three times in different clothes.
The mistake that kills it. Saying the sentence flatly, or performing it as a duty. Without actual enjoyment nothing moves, and the pattern survives the practice untouched.
It worked when the sentence makes you laugh instead of wince.
From Carolyn Elliott, who named it and wrote the book in 2020.
The idea is hers; these words are my retelling.
If it opens something real, continue with a therapist.