EXERCISE At the top of a piece of notebook paper, write the words “This Is What Happened.” Then put down a description of something that hurt you emotionally. Next, write “This Is How I Feel About It,” and describe your emotional response to the event.

We are often caught between the social and essential selves when it comes to recounting our stories: The essential self will want to talk compulsively as soon as it feels safe, while the social self may be paralyzed by shame, grief, anger, embarrassment, or fear of rejection.

But there have been several other times in my life when unhappiness wasn’t so easy to escape. My essential self was imprisoned in a life that was simply wrong for it. I couldn’t just redecorate my life to get out of those situations. I had to raze it to the ground, dig up the foundations, and start the whole thing over from scratch.

Most importantly, Pam picked out information about people that reinforced her view of Everybody, while going blind to people and situations that operated on kindness, tolerance, and understanding

Second, don’t confide everything all at once.

I call this feeling the Urge to Merge. It’s an intense, almost chemical reaction that comes out of nowhere and makes some person, place, or thing so attractive to you that for a while, you can’t think about much else.

Think of three works of art (songs, movies, images, poems, plays, books, etc.) that resonate with your current emotional state.

This is Square Two laughter, a spontaneous outburst of effervescent happiness. Some of my clients, like Diane, have little or no prior experience with this feeling.

As they set out on paths chosen by their social selves, these clients’ essential selves set up barriers, closed down operations, blew up bridges, and generally made it as difficult as possible to proceed down those errant roads.