Creative Thinking: ‘Cherchez la femme’

In French detective stories, the expression “Cherchez la femme” (Look for the woman) is often ironically used to suggest the most probable culprit.
Question: I am a slave to my reactions. A rude word, a gesture of impatience, someone else’s behavior I disapprove of, hurt me no matter what and make me suffer excessively. As a consequence, the way I reply to such solicitations becomes extremely negative. That is why my relatives, friends, colleagues do not have a particularly good opinion of my personality. They, in fact, consider me as touchy, judgmental, sometimes even arrogant. But, in truth, I am not like that at all. I know myself. I would love to be at peace with everybody I wish I could show them my positive qualities. Unfortunately, as soon as I perceive the slightest “provocation,” I fall back into my instinctive reaction, that I am unable to withhold.
Answer: As a start, you must stop seeing yourself as a caged bird. You feel you are imprisoned, unable to fly. But, if you try to open up your wings, you shall realize that there is no cage, no prison. All the behaviors that form the individual personality are simply superstructures, i.e. stuff built on something else. What is this “something else?” It’s your true self, it’s who you really are. It’s like the clothes and the accessories that you chose, and are still choosing to wear moment by moment. Such choice is not definitive at all, it is never “final.” You believe it is, but you are wrong.
You are convinced that you are in a certain way and say, “This is my character. This the way I am.” Thus, you shut yourself out of any other possibility. You accept a sort of fatalism, where it is easier to believe that all events and situations are predetermined and therefore inevitable. As a consequence, you take on a submissive attitude, over which – you say – your own will has no power. On the contrary, as all this is not true, there is a lot that can be done to change the situation. First of all, you must look for the cause, for the reasons. Can you play detective for a while? There are deep motivations to be discovered and brought up to the light of awareness.
When you unearth the reasons behind your inappropriate, excessive or irrational reaction toward certain stimuli, change will happen. The main reason hiding behind any kind of negativity is “always” fear. What fear?
Fear of something, fear that something you don’t like might happen. For instance, the greedy are afraid of losing their money, the stingy are afraid of not having enough, the jealous are afraid of being abandoned by the person they love, the envious are afraid of not being as good as another, the submissive are afraid of remaining alone. And so on and so forth. Your task is to find out what is the fear that makes you react aggressively and the fear that makes you believe you cannot change. You have some homework do, here. Are you willing to do it? You repeatedly stated that you know yourself. Do you really? If you start exploring the depths of your personality, you might find some surprising stuff.
Exercise. Ask yourself and answer honestly.
What about me? May it be that, instead of deciding to change something in myself that I am not proud of, I prefer to believe that it is not possible? Did something in my past make me feel threatened so that now I have the need to “defend” myself? Does this “fatalism” depend on laziness? Do I prefer acceptance and subsequent inactivity simply because I don’t care to do the work required? Do I lack self-confidence?

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