PARANOID HABITS

Dreamed 1994/10/4 by Chris Wayan

I dream I'm in hypnotherapy.

The hypnotist asks "May we contact the part of Chris that causes chronic illness?"

And a nameless voice answers! It says "I just follow orders, and Chris asks for experiences proving the world's out to get him.

"To make him reject threatening things.
"To feel comfortable--danger is a familiar state, from his childhood.
"To justify feeling anger.
"To have problems for that fierce intelligence to gnaw on!"

"So... I supply persecution. Allergens, hostile or dishonest people, indifferent and incompetent institutions, malevolent machines. He's not just walking around with a negative attitude--I'm allowed to use his formidable psychic powers.

"I crash computers,
"I alter luck,
"I make others screw up,
"I lead him to witness disasters,
"I send him precognitive nightmares."

"So he gets his emotional exercise--at least fear, and anger, and suspicion.

"I'd just as soon send him happiness, but, you know, garbage in, garbage out. He indulges in paranoid trains of thought, because his abusers forced him to look for the worst in people and institutions, and run if he found it. It kept him alive as a kid.

"But as his psychic abilities have grown, his suspicions attract persecution more actively, like that crazy bunch running the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group.

"Psychics and paranoia are like drivers and alcohol--a fatal mix. If he wants to quit having bad luck he has to quit indulging in negativity all the time.

"Because he's literally asking for it."

And I slide out of trance, then out of my dream... and into shock. At what I just heard.

At what I just said.

A NOTE FOR SLOPPY WEB SURFERS

Just to be clear... the whole thing was a dream, not a waking therapy session. That voice was an inner personality emerging in a hypnotic trance inside a dream! Not ambiguity due to careless writing, but inherent complexity.

Sorry if that doesn't fit your soundbite world.

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