Page 34 - Taming Your Gremlin A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way (Rick Carson)_Neat

Some of the emotional sufferers I have met even use suffering as a basis
for relationships (not to be confused with friendships). I have known people
whose relationships with others revolved entirely around their helping one

another with whatever hassles are current for them. Dorothy’s Grim Reaper
gremlin perpetuated the notion that suffering was not only natural but noble.
He sometimes taunted her with the promise that suffering in the present
would lead her to contentment at a later date. For Dorothy to choose to do
something other than suffer emotionally was very difficult.

Like most people who are enmeshed with a Grim Reaper or the like,
Dorothy was unaware of her habit of suffering. She was, one might say, “in
it.” She did not realize her control over how she felt or her ability to choose

to enjoy herself and her life. Gremlins who take the form of the Grim
Reaper are vicious and tenacious. They can, however, be tamed.

Little Miss What-the-Hell

Katrina is a high-powered, high-profile attorney in her early 50s. She
came to me saying she wanted to “get control of her life.” The symptom
that concerned her most was her overeating—mostly sweets. She explained
that for weeks she might be admirably self-disciplined, but (I think
probably because she was human) on occasion she would be less than

perfect and treat her taste buds to a small sample of something “sugary and
gooey.” When she did so, however, her gremlin, a rather playful hussy
wearing black fishnets and a red dress cut up high as the national debt,
would step out of the shadows saying, “Oh, what the hell,” at which point
the floodgates of self-discipline would come tumbling down, and Katrina
would dive headlong into a no-limit dessert orgy.

No sooner had she done so than the very same Little Miss What-the-
Hell who had initiated the food frenzy would charge in with this line: “Now
you’ve done it. You’ll never change.”

This cycle had repeated itself for almost all of Katrina’s fifty years—
until she began to witness her gremlin. She now has a sense of humor about
Little Miss What-the-Hell and claims she has even learned a thing or two
from her about lightening up and having a bit of raucous fun once in a