Dr. Paul Conti

It's not because I'm having sad feelings because I might say, well, sad things are happening in my life.

I'm having sad feelings.

It's not that that's driving me down.

It's that I'm hiding it.

So now I can link that I'm worried I'm getting depressed or now I'm getting down on myself because I'm drinking too much.

These are examples where we can say, gosh, that could really spiral in a negative direction.

Or you could say that unhealthy behavior that I'm looking at, it's coming because I'm shoving down these negative feelings because I'm ashamed of them.

I don't really feel ashamed of them, so I'm going to let myself feel them.

And maybe I'm going to call a good friend I can talk to.

I'm going to let myself sit here and cry.

And now that tension inside that drives the unhealthy behavior isn't there.

Now, instead of a downward spiral, what we're starting is an upward spiral.

And that's a combination of compassionate curiosity and self-determination.

We start leading much more examined and intentional lives.

You know, very often what we do is we have a couple of isolated facts and then we create a story that doesn't have any grounding in reality, but we accept it as true.

So just like the old games where, you know, you'd put out a couple of words or phrases and then a person will put a story together.

So we could say, girl, new school, no friends.

We could say, no, let's make a story out of that.

But very often that's what's going on, say, in the person's mind.

And then the story that they create is a story that's negative towards the self.