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Showing posts from March, 2018

Buy One Get One

My local grocery store has lots of "BOGOS" in their aisles- buy one, get one free deals. Instead of  getting just one bag of Tostitos with your purchase, you get two. Awesome, right?  It struck me that emotional states often come as BOGOS too. Buy into one, and you get another right along with it- often the same one. But in our emotional life, the effects are not always so awesome, and sometimes, the price is high.  For example, if I notice anxiety arising, I might feel anxious about my anxiety. If anger is present, I might get angry at myself for being angry.  As the psychologist Albert Ellis put it, "If you look at what you are doing, you can often discover that you are making yourself anxious about your anxiety, depressed about your depression, and guilty about your rage. You  really are talented at upsetting yourself!" (from the book, How to stubbornly refuse to make yourself miserable about anything, yes anything ).  The problem is that the secondary emo