It doesn’t matter how often you need to do it. You’re either attaching to the nightmare or investigating it. There’s no other choice.

ask two subsidiary questions: “Can you see a reason to drop that thought?” and “Can you find one stress-free reason to keep the thought?” These are follow-ups to the third question, “How do you react when you think that thought?” They can be very useful. When I feel it’s appropriate, I’ll help someone find the story that is the real cause of their

[The third question: How do you react when you think that thought?

There’s no one out there but your story.

Now it’s time for you to apply the four questions and the turnarounds to the rest of your judgments, one at a time. Read all the sentences you have written on your Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. Then, one by one, investigate each statement by asking yourself: 1. Is it true? 2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true? 3. How do I react, what happens, w

I often use the word story to talk about thoughts, or sequences of thoughts, that we convince ourselves are real. A story may be about the past, the present, or the future; it may be about what things should be, what they could be, or why they are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day—when someone gets up without a word and walks out

Suppose you wrote, “Paul should tell me that he loves me.” Your answer to “What do you think you would have?” might be that if Paul told you that he loves you, you would feel more secure.

I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled.

Turn it around. To do the turnarounds, find opposites of the original statement on your Worksheet. Often a statement can be turned around to the self, to the other, and to the opposite. First, write it as if it were written about you. Where you have written someone’s name, put yourself. Instead of “he” or “she,” put “I.” For example, “Paul doesn’t