Feeling offended takes up all our attention. It muddies the waters. We no longer have to pay attention to information that is correct but challenging.

Philosophical Meditation, a practice with the premise that a decisive share of the trouble in our minds comes from thoughts and feelings that have not been untangled, examined and confronted with sufficient attention.

They are the one who suffer our irritability, gloom, manufactured cheerfulness or our defensive rationalisations. We act unfairly, so they back off and keep a distance. We grow isolated and friendless.

Denigration We tell ourselves that we simply don’t care about something – love or politics, career success or intellectual life, that beautiful student or the house we can’t afford. And we are very emphatic about our lack of interest and disdain. We go to great lengths to make it clear to others and ourselves how absolutely unconcerned we are.

Or we may feel lost in our career, but be unable to say more than that we wish to ‘do something creative’ or ‘help to make the world a better place’ – plans so vague that they leave us vulnerable to the more robust plans of others.

Entertaining the most extreme consequences can be the best way to finally neuter an otherwise nagging concern. One by one, we should confront the worst, and see that it is, for the most part, very survivable.

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I am wise not because I know, but because I know I don’t know.

We are sad about particular things, but confronting them would be so arduous that we generalise and universalise the sadness. We don’t say that X or Y has made us sad; we say that everything is terrible and everyone is awful.