Introduction

[Accuray]

Again I just feel like I've never heard of someone being so self-convinced of an alternate reality than this man seems to be, especially given the good times the relationship had. To be able to push those parts out and be so absorbed in himself and this sudden danger he's protecting himself from seems to be legitimately crazy the more I think about it. I can't help but wonder if there's truly something that can't be done in these cases to get people to see the flaws in their minds, or if it's more like a disease with no cure that some people will just succumb to without any chance of changing that.

Although it feels like your H is "the worst" example of this, everyone feels that way really. Everyone believes their sitch is exceptional and worse than others they read.

During my time on the board people were talking about this as alien possession, as if a space alien came down and is now possessing the body of your H. Often the change in personality is that extreme.

Its like a form of self-hypnosis that is done in the interest of self-preservation. The root of it, really, is guilt, and knowing that he's done bad things.

That is 100% the basis of "act as if"

If you've got a wayward who is acting this extreme due to his sense of guilt, then what happens if he sees you acting sad, or making statements about how upset you are? That makes his guilt worse! Then he has to hypnotize himself even MORE to protect himself.

Then, if you pursue him and he has to continue to reject you, he feels even MORE guilty, and then he has to hypnotize himself even MORE to protect himself.

It creates this giant wall around him and each time a DB'er backslides and pursues, another brick gets stacked up on the wall.

So if you "act as if", and appear happy, upbeat, and like you're unaffected by his actions, then you are NOT exacerbating his guilt.

You're removing the consequences associated with being around you.

Over time, it makes it safe for him to begin dismantling the wall, because its no longer really protecting him from anything.

At that point, the wayward has the space and freedom to FINALLY do some introspection, and then they begin to realize that maybe it was not "always bad" and maybe, just maybe, they ALSO contributed to how things ended up, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, in many cases, that space isn't really granted until the LBS has fully moved on. So giving the appearance of having moved on emotionally is what "act as if" is all about, its about accelerating that wall-desconstructing phase. It takes a ton of discipline to pull if off in a compelling way, but that's why we do it.

Acc