the introvert is like the sea anemone, sucking itself back into its inner world at the first sign of pain. This withdrawal instinct is designed to form an impenetrable wall around the introvert’s suffering, making him or her feel momentarily safer—but at the same time, it shuts out potential comfort.

brain malware is characterized by contradictory messages, mutually exclusive values, and absolute commandments that are full of exceptions. You can’t succeed if you use mental malware to think with.

But on the inside, you are wrestling emotions, controlling reactions, considering future outcomes, and trying to find not just any solution but the best solution. This actually uses more energy than being reactive and impulsive.

The horse, on the other hand—noble animal that it is—takes its cue from what its owner wants. If the job is to keep working no matter what, it will. Horses will work or race until they drop just because they can. The horse will ignore its exhaustion in order to keep up with the herd (or owner). By the time a horse realizes it has done too much, it

Emotionally sensitive people, like internalizer children of EI parents, are especially likely to get tired out by others’ needs. If you are this way, you respond to bids for sympathy and attention because you are so empathic.

If you are like most people, you come to believe that you are your limits. It is very scary to leave the familiar because change feels like you would no longer know who you are. The cardboard box that you settled into now becomes your identity, to be held onto at all costs. Self-limitation feels safe.

There is a creation story from the mystical legends of Judaism that says that when the universe was brought into being, it split into two parts: the 1 percent world and the 99 percent world. The 1 percent world is the material, physical world that we know so well. When someone sighs and says, “That’s life,” they are talking about the 1 percent

If you see something potentially dangerous, 100 percent of your focus will rivet to that thing. Time will stand still as tunnel vision takes over.

Nobody is reading it but you. Be illogical, desperate, but truthful. What is your worst fear about the situation? What do you secretly wish you could do? What does this horrible, terrible situation remind you of? How are you feeling about yourself? Why? What are you seeing that you have not let yourself admit? Once you know the deeper essentials,