The Invitation Technique: Discover How We Allow Ourselves To Be Offended
From psychology, it is always intended to empower the patient to take control of his life and not allow himself to be handled so much by emotions or by external situations with which he will often have to face. The idea is to promote unconditional acceptance, both of oneself, of others and of life in general, so that everything that happens to us affects us in its proper measure: no more, no less.
We don’t want conformist people. We like passionate people, wanting to bite down on life and squeeze it out, with goals, desires and illusions to fulfill. This is not exclusive of being an emotionally mature person, who knows how to regulate his emotions, who controls his way of interpreting and perceiving the world and who is capable of accepting defeat, failure or criticism and seeing it as a normal part of life. life.
How many times have we been enraged because someone has said or done something “unfair” to us? How many of us have blamed others for our feelings? We have all done it and we have all been wrong. Emotions are only ours and when we are emotionally bad it is because we decide that way.
You are not offended by others, you are offended
It is true that nobody likes to be highlighted a defect, reminded of a fault or criticized in general. People prefer flattery and praise because that way we feel accepted and that approval gives us great pleasure (it stimulates our brain reward circuit, so much so that the search for recognition can become addictive). On the contrary, criticism or rejection can generate us from anxious feelings, to depression or anger.
When we receive a negative comment about us, the first thing we usually do is get defensive, try to justify ourselves, give explanations or respond with another criticism by way of resentment. Why do we do it? Because we are offended, but not because of what the other person has just said, but because we, with our inner dialogue, tell ourselves that what this person thinks of us is the only possible truth. We can deny the other, but we affirm it to ourselves.
Let’s say that we “buy” the criticisms of the other, we believe them, we make them our own and we integrate them as true, allowing them to modify our schemes. We are the ones who decide to do it this way and that decision implies that we allow ourselves to be handled like puppets by the opinion of someone outside of us.
Isn’t it curious that compliments don’t happen so much? We do not usually buy a compliment, a congratulation or a praise in the same way. But if they tell us something negative, we immediately make it ours.
The invitation technique, do you accept?
The invitation technique is used in consultation to make the patient see what we have just discussed above. Buddha said: ” If someone tries to give me a horse and I do not accept it, whose horse does it end up being?” Of course! It remains from the person who wants to give us that horse, because the same thing happens with criticism.
If there are people who want to waste their energy on us in a negative way, it is their problem. Ours is to accept or not their insults or rudeness. Thus, if we do it, it is our responsibility and it is useless to try to make the other person change their opinion, since it is most likely that they will not do it and then we will be the ones who will spend energy.
With the invitation technique, the therapist invites the patient to sit in a specific way. For example, a failure, a bad person, someone physically horrible, etc. It does so when the patient comes to the consultation with the complaint that he usually receives these comments or that there are people who make him feel this way.
The therapist offers him a card, as an invitation, in which the following sentence is written: “I, you (mother, sister, coworker, partner…) invite you to feel (useless, guilty, unhappy, ugly, Fat…). Do you accept the invitation? Here, the patient has to write that he does not accept to feel this way since he does not think that this defines him, but that he understands the other’s point of view.
This acceptance frees us from the heavy burden of trying to please everyone, something that we will never fully achieve. The invitation technique should be practiced mentally as many times as necessary, every time we come across someone who judges us negatively. Thus, with practice, we will be able to take less and less offense and even use any criticism to our advantage.
