Cocktails?!

Must. Think. Before. Speak.

‘Cocktails? Seriously, Charles?’ Avigail snorts. ‘In Llandudno? On a Wednesday afternoon?’

Charles just laughs, nervously.

‘No. No! Cocktails?! Why would you even say that?’ she persists.

Avigail regrets having used Charles’s name a few moments before. There was a slight atmosphere of condescension – of judgement – in it, she knows. And then ‘Why would you even say that?’ suddenly sounds – just the tone, the delivery – very Jewish, very Jewish mother-y. Good gracious!

But why would he say that?! Intonation aside?

Cocktails?!

And why now? In the middle of this whole combustible seagull situation which may well prove catastrophic to the potential sale?

Charles bites his lip and his Toxic Super-Ego hisses, ‘You fucking idiot. Now she’ll despise you. And who can really blame her if she does?’

In truth, Charles doesn’t especially care what Avigail thinks of him, but he does care how her potentially despising him might (indeed, does) make him feel about himself. If that makes any kind of sense. Hmm. He scowls. Does that actually make any kind of sense?

It’s not that he’s incredibly self-involved …

(Am I just incredibly self-involved?)

… it’s simply that he has no remaining illusions about how the world sees him. How it feels about him. How it despises him. The whole world. How it judges him. Finds him ridiculous. Finds him inadequate. Finds him wanting. Always.

That’s all.

But hey …

FUCK YOU, YEAH?

AND FUCK YOUR STUPID WORLD!

This is a perfect example of Trauma Tunnel Embitterment. Charles knows, in his heart, that there’s nothing really wrong with the world. There’s only a problem with how he – post trauma – views the world. This is why he needs to get started on the course.

But he can’t get started.

Richard Grannon has clearly outlined in the module on Mental Toughness (‘Let’s get shit done!’) that people with Charles’s instinctive psychological ‘response’ (e.g. Emotional Flashbacks/Bloated Super-Ego/Trauma Tunnel Embitterment) often find it difficult to embrace change, to initiate new modes of behaviour, to – deep inhale – just get started. For this very reason Richard Grannon has included a handy sixteen-minute hypnosis session in one of the appendices that gently talks the Silencing the Inner Critic member through the special blocks and negative thought patterns that may stop them from getting properly under way with the course.

But a person – a member – would naturally need to get under way with the course before they might hope to locate and subsequently employ this helpful strategy.

Grannon discusses this paradox – with great passion and alacrity – in the live webcasts that accompany the course, two of which Charles has watched – with close attention – while hoovering.

Charles knows that he exaggerates how bad his dad was. His dad never called him a ‘pathetic piece of crap’ but the message was there, in looks and gestures and a chronic want of eye contact – or a chronic excess of eye contact. Which was it?