The woman who lost 100 pounds on burgers is an example of someone who could listen to her THINKING self amidst the crowds telling her what she should do. 

Well, doc, you say, when do we get to HOW to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM?

Now.  A start.  Your THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM is in gear when YOUR BEST THINKING is your point of reference for decisions.  Remember, only your TGS considers options in a thoughtful way, your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM , has only one goal (no matter what rubberly rationalization you’re using) and that one thing is —-

    do whatever you have to do to rid yourself of anxiety.   

An easy place to start the task of recognizing when we are slipping from our thinking point of reference to an emotionally driven position, is to talk about FUSION.  FUSION …is when your actions and “feelings” are determined, not by your own thinking point of reference, but determined by “catching” the anxiety of another. 

Examples:

A woman on a plane is reading a novel.  The man next to her asks what she’s reading. She shows him the title and says she really likes the author.  The man sneers and replies staring out the window, “Yeah, I guess if you can’t read more complex works-you have to stay with books like that.”  (Do you feel it?)

 While in graduate school I went on a cruise with a friend who was doing a seminar for “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (a fad diagnosis that has, gladly, passed). I was able to pay minimal cost as an additional person in the seminar leader’s cabin. The first day I attended an introductory group session in which emotional overdrive and ”group-think” were in high gear.   Group-think happens in low functioning gatherings in which each participant is encouraged to become “one” with the group by confessing similar experiences. Refusal to become “one” with the group is labelled as insanity or denial. When it was my time to “join” I thought back really hard to uncover how my life had been affected by addiction.  Then I had it.   I actually said that I was affected by addiction when my mother was ill and taking cortisone to stay alive. (Which didn’t work all that long. She died at barely 42.) 

The point?  Before I felt the suck of the group anxiety, I’d NEVER thought of my mother’s desperate efforts to deal with her fatal illness as CAUSING ME to GO THROUGH the wretched helplessness and personal trauma–of an adult survivor from a drug-distorted home.  Never.  But for those shining few minutes… I’d given up mom… and REALITY… to be part of the group.

The really scary part was that I didn’t realize until after the meeting what had transpired.  How I’d lost (given up) my point of reference.  What if I hadn’t realized what happened?  What if the warm affirmation of the group had propelled me into a life living out a new label?

Just saying.  Later.  More fusion.