Be careful what you wish for – it might come true

Hello friends!

I once read in a book that humanity basically creates through two ways: through their genitals (it gives birth and creates children) and through their mind with their thoughts. Perhaps it would be necessary to add that we create through what we feel, say or do, but that is not necessary. Deep down, before or during feeling, speaking or doing, a thought is there.

All languages ​​have their richness. With the German of Jung, Freud, Adler, Reich I learned that we must understand that there are two types of reality:

1) Reälitat: shared reality or physical reality; what we can see, feel, touch, smell, taste and hear and that others can also if they are present;

2) Wirklichkeit: the mental reality or reality that acts. If I imagine a white elephant right now… and remain silent, whoever happens to be next to me will not see a white elephant. But for all intents and purposes, the white elephant will act on my psychic state.

For a person who is afraid of getting sick, imagining microbes on objects (even though they may not actually exist), makes him feel anxiety and fear of getting sick. Thus, she washes her hand a thousand times, although she may be in a clean environment. That is, this mental image, this thought will act on her psychic state, generating the suffering of the obsessive symptom as a compensation.

When I say in the title of the text that we should be careful what we wish for because it might come true, I am not going along the lines of books like The secret because what you desire may not come true in the first sense, of reality shared with others, but it will certainly have effects in mental reality (the second sense, Wirklichkeit).

The example of jealousy

The example of jealousy is quite interesting for us to understand how a misdirected desire can have effects in both realities. In principle, we understand that jealousy comes from the desire to be close, to stay and stay together, to be exclusive. Perhaps there is the element of fear of missing out.

In any case, the jealous person begins to imagine his or her partner with another or another. These imaginations, often extremely vivid, are already suffering. If we analyze it well, we will see that by imagining a betrayal in all its details, the person is making his desire come true. Real in the sense of mental reality, as if the image had become a fact.

Of course, thinking about something will not make it happen in physical or shared reality. Just as thinking about the white elephant does not make it real to other people, thinking about a betrayal does not make the betrayal an external event.

However, because it is from the beginning a misdirected desire, a suffering, jealousy does generate an external reality. The jealous person begins to emit a series of behaviors:

– treats your partner badly;

– invents strategies to control the behavior of others;

– discuss, quarrel, argue, investigate

– and etc;

Ultimately, the goal is to stop something that does not exist in the external world but in the internal. To stop jealous thoughts, objective actions do not help. It’s no use going around the world to prove that the white elephant doesn’t exist, is it?

The jealous person does this. She tries to find evidence that she is right until she finally finds, usually, the end of the relationship as a result of her jealous behavior.

The future created by the past

Going back to the beginning, in the two basic types of creation, we actually manage to create the future through sex and through the mind. By raising children for the world, we are giving possibilities to the future. And by creating thoughts or feeding them we are also creating our future and those around us.

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’re right,” says Henry Ford. If you think you can’t, you’re feeding the idea that you can’t. First you create this mental reality (Wirklichkeit) and then you experience it in “real” reality (Reälitat). If you think you can, the process is identical. First in the mind, then (or at the same time) in the world.

Be careful what you wish for, because it will come true one way or another.

Think of a person who is worried because he has to pay a big bill on the 20th. If today is the 1st, maybe he will spend 19 days worrying. Perhaps on the 20th she will get a job or service and be able to pay. But for 19 days she lived in a (mental) reality that she was not going to be able to pay and, consequently, she experienced pain, suffering, shame, despair.

It’s not that she wanted to suffer for 19 days over a worry. Her wish was to pay. However, when creating the desire, soon after, she began to think through fear. “What if I don’t have any money?” Thus, this single thought, repeated, generated hundreds of worries and a 19-day suffering.

What to do to change?

To change an external reality, we have to act. If the bulb burnt out, we have to change it. If the gas has run out, we have to call the gas company. But how to deal with reality, internal and individual, that – if we want – others cannot see?

The first step is to understand the process. To be worried or to be anxious or to be jealous. The second step is to choose something that works to end the process. But it really works.

In psychology we have hundreds of techniques to deal with this kind of problem – an unpleasant mental creation. A very interesting technique is that of paradoxical intention.

The paradoxical intention for Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, the creator of logotherapy, explains what he means by paradoxical intention:

“Logotherapy bases its technique called “paradoxical intention” on the double fact that fear produces what we are afraid of and that excessive intention makes what we desire impossible. In German, I described the technique of paradoxical intention as early as 1939. In this approach, the patient suffering from a phobia is invited to intend precisely what he fears, even if only for a moment” (Frankl, 1997, p. 108).

Another definition given by him is:

“The paradoxical intention, as a technique, aims to encourage the patient to do or wish for the very things he fears to happen” (Frankl, 2011, p. 128).

Evidently, the concept is quite complex – and should only be used by an experienced professional in certain cases – but there is something very interesting about this idea. If I think about a white elephant and then I start thinking that I can’t think about the white elephant, I’ll have to think about the white elephant to stop thinking about the white elephant, right?

The same thing happens when we ask someone to say a number that is not 1, 2 or 3. And then we advise them not to think for a second about 1, 2 or 3. It turns out that, to say another number, she has to think of 1, 2 or 3 at least once.

With paradoxical intent, we don’t try not to think about what we don’t want not to think about. We try to think more and focus on the unwanted thought. As our concentration is not the best, we soon see that it is just a thought and that one thought is transitory and gives way to another.

As I said, this technique is not a panacea. However, it is an example of a very interesting technique from the psychology of sense, logotherapy, to deal with mental creations.

Conclusion

The ancients said that we had 3 bodies: the body that others see, the soul and the spirit. Although it is a rather complicated theological matter to understand the difference between soul and spirit (it varies from tradition to tradition), we can see in this metaphor that it is as if we really live in at least two worlds:

– the world of physical reality, shared and felt with other beings;

– the world of thoughts, the mental reality, which is an individual and non-transferable experience.

Of course, philosophically, this division is objectionable. But in didactic terms it is quite enlightening. For example, someone wakes up on a blue sunny day, with a mild temperature, with the birds singing. This is the reality that others can also see. Now, whether your inner reality will be like hell or like heaven, it will be particular. The future will be generated by this reality, but not only the future, the present as well.

Bibliographic references

FRANKL, Viktor E. The Search for Meaning: A Psychologist in the Concentration Camp. 2nd ed. São Leopoldo: Editora Sinodal; Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1997.

FRANKL, Viktor. The Will to Sense. Fundamentals and applications of logotherapy. Publisher Paulus, São Paulo, 2011.

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