Years ago, after months of dealing with post-partum depression after giving birth to my first child, my GP suggested I talk to a therapist to help me through the depression. I ended up seeing a cognitive therapist for a few months, which blew my mind. I actually got the tools necessary to help me deal with my emotional reactions to situations going on around me. Byron Katie, whose book is at heart cognitive therapy, was introduced into my life a few months ago when Sagar Simon, who counsels with The Work here in Amsterdam, gave a sample workshop at my women's networking group, Connecting Women.
I won the free coaching session with him in the group's raffle, at the end of which, my mind was blown again. He suggested I read this book in order to continue my healing at my own pace. The book's basic tenet is that all our suffering is caused by our attachment to the stories we create about our thoughts. Here's a good example because it's raining in Holland. It's raining. That's the reality.
It's not causing me any stress or irritation. However, the moment I start thinking that it shouldn't be raining, I get irritated and sad. Now, the thought that it shouldn't be raining comes to me in thoughts like "I'm so tired of this weather; if it's not warm and sunny I get depressed; rain is such a pain because i get wet, etc" This book has taught me that the rain isn't causing my irritation; my irritation is caused when I attach my belief that it shouldn't be raining.
Who am I to determine whether or not it rains? It's not my business whether or not it's raining - that's Nature's business, not mine. How about I stay in my own business? How about I figure out what's really causing my irritation? Here are the bits of brilliance that I refer to all the time: 1.
There are only three types of business: mine, yours and the Universe's. Whose am I in? Universe, spare me from seeking love, approval and appreciation.
Reality never lies. Katie's "Work" isn't without controversy. It can be hard to swallow because, once you start doing The Work, you'll be confronted with the idea that you cause your own suffering. The beautiful part is that you can also deliver yourself from your suffering. Bob Klein. This is a hard review. Her book and her questions, but mostly her interviews-as-examples have the potential to help a lot of people deal with interpersonal issues that she boils down to inner-personal.
The problem I have is the potentially dangerous way that she applies a universal logic to dealing with complex problems.
The questions are general enough, and the answers are supposed to be generated by the people answering them. Still, she makes it quite clear from the numerous case studies in the book examples from her workshops that it's all about owning the bad things that happen to you. My concern is for the danger of applying this technique to an admittedly small number of extreme cases, such as those who are victims of crime. The dialogues follow a predictable pattern and if mapped onto, say, a rape victim, would end with the rape victim "turning it around" and concluding things such as "I hate myself for being raped" or if you really bungle the "turn-around": "I raped myself.
That said, I can't help but admit that the book provides a structure to dealing with conflicts and issues. This structure, whether or not I like it, changed me as books should in a small way. Probably more the case-studies than the narrative The case-studies revealed the complexities of the technique in ways that the oversimplified narrative could not.
Is that really true? I've got nothing against the message of this book or the questions it's build up around. It's just that it's all a little There's so much more to life, and people and their problems, and their stories, and their thinking and their feelings than Byron Katie acknowledges. Life is complex. And sometimes the way to clear your mind or look at life and things from a different perspective doesn't come in a 4-question package, no matter how well and often it has worked for others.
I get the questions. I get it. And at times I think it can be a great tool. Questioning your own judgements and investigating your own feelings and looking at them from other perspectives can lead to many new insights and open your eyes to liberating perepctives and thoughts you've never even considered.
But and there is a 'but' at other times, I would have chosen a different path, a different wording, a different sensitivity, a different way to bring issues into perspectives. Blame that on my psychology training or my personal taste, if you like, but the bottom line is this: I understand the questions might work for some people in some situations but when it comes to whether or not these 4 questions are the answers to every problem for every person, every where, me and Byron Katie certainly differ.
I guess I just dont belive in a one-for-all solution. In my experience there are many paths to go, and I dont believe there is a 'cure them all' or a saviour, or one and one only remedy for life's hardships or personal challenges.
I found it disenchanting and troublesome how fundamentalisticly Byron believes in the power of these 4 questions as the sure and only way to salvation, if not now, then later on. Over and over again she claims that 'the work' will surely lead to the solution to everyones problems, and if not, it surely wasn't the questions that could be at fault, noooo, of course it's the people that just hasn't done their 'work' well enough, or was ready for its brilliance.
Dear Katie, I know they worked for you, and I'm really happy for you, and it's very kind of you to share what has clearly brought you and others so much joy and peace, but claiming it is the right way and the only way? There's a saying I forget who that I try to live by, that goes something a long the lines of: "Just because they aren't on your path, doesn't mean they've gotten lost.
This might be one way, but I surely it is not the only way. And if you want to go beyond and beneath the surface level, I recommend you instead try to read Eckhart Tolle, The power of Now or Deepak Chopra's "The book of secrets: Unlocking the hidden dimensions of your life".
Steffan Bard. As I made my way through it, I kept having this unsettling feeling - esp. Eventually I figured out what was confusing and challenging about it. I deeply resonate with a lot of her core principles and premises as they are ones I've come to on my own , yet I have some very sharp disagreements with how they are applied. This made it an odd book to read for me because usually when I resonate with the basic principles and premises an author is describing I usually also resonate with the way they suggest to live them out etc.
I'll be specific. I totally agree with the idea of there being three "types of business" in the world, mine, yours and God's reality's. However, the lines between these aren't always as clear as she tries to make them out to be for the sake of "the work" being able to be applied so simplistically and clearly I think. For instance, if I want to have someone else be a part of my life in a significant way, and they are important to me, then how they choose to live and operate is going to have significant effects on me.
And I don't believe a healthy, integrated and sane adult just resigns to accept whatever the other person is doing just because it's "not their business.
What I'm trying to say here is that I believe there is a healthy human place which acknowledges how we are affected by other people while not being codependent and can assertively navigate ask for what we need or want things without being attached by way of a neurotic ego. Being assertive means we ask for what we want while letting go of the outcome and the answer if the answer is no.
So in some cases, "loving what is," means accepting the fact that someone else's behavior affects us a certain way and then asking for help from them and compassionately communicating our needs while not demanding or expecting the other person to meet them - as we understand our needs are ultimately our own responsibility and the other person may only be one strategy or source of meeting our needs.
And, worst comes to worst, we may have to apply some boundaries with a person who we are wanting something from, but who doesn't genuinely have the willingness to give it to us.
A boundary says, "I'm not doing this to appease or upset you, I'm doing it to take care of myself. So we can move on to other people and strategies without blaming them, though we allow ourselves, compassionately, to feel disappointed, and take that disappointment as our soul's wisdom that we do need to move on and set that boundary perhaps. Further on the topic of assertiveness though. The poet David Whyte has this idea he talks about of "the conversational nature of reality.
We don't get all of what we want from the world and the world doesn't get all that it wants from us. What Katie's ideology here seems to reflect is a cutting off of the conversation because it's vulnerable and leaves us open to suffering.
So she advises just accepting whatever the world is like. However, we need to realize we are also a part of the world and do have some control over what happens; and that a healthy adult realizes that and is able to be assertive without being attached.
Suffering is a part of life, and truly "loving what is. True nonattachment and acceptance fearlessly admits our humanity and vulnerability, which includes us having wishes that are not fulfilled or are frustrated. So being an integrated, healthy or sane adult does not mean we just give up what we want because it would be "arguing with reality," as Katie reiterates many times. This took me awhile to figure out, as to why I wasn't jiving with her application of the basic premise of the book, which I agreed and agree with - that it's generally much more healthy to accept what is rather than resist or argue with it.
The serenity prayer guides a lot of my internal decision making. But it seems that Katie only affirms half of it - the acceptance of what we cannot change. But there are indeed things we can change, and can exert effort towards without being attached neurotically though, granted, I do believe this takes a good amount of inner work and transformation before one can come to this point. So I didn't see this point being affirmed - that there is a necessity to seeking the wisdom to know the difference between what we truly can and cannot change.
Katie seems to opt for a rather black and white binary as to what we can and cannot change as, I imagine, this makes "the work" a lot simpler to apply. Okay, my other main disagreement is that the application of the work felt too rationalistic and, again, simplistic to me.
The reason being, a person who is applying the work is left with these binaries - "is it true? It was especially the third question of the work that bothered me the most - "Who would you be without this thought? And I believe that the most powerful place of transformation is in understanding the motivation for why we are operating in a certain manner and then figuring out if there might be a better way to meet the needs motivating our behaviors.
But the way the work sets it up is that one is only meant to inquire as to whether the thought creates stress or peace, and then we are asked to let the thought let go of us I did appreciate her clarification that she isn't asking people to "drop the thought" or to try to drop it on the basis of realizing it's not helping us feel peaceful or happy.
However, all emotions are meaningful and necessary to becoming a more integrated human being. Stress, depression or unhappiness are the not our enemies, merely the signals that perhaps we are seeking to meet a need of ours through an inefficient or unrealistic strategy.
And determining whether a strategy is inefficient or unrealistic is a very personal and intuitive process that requires a good amount of self-awareness and wisdom.
In Non-Violent Communication they say that all judgments are tragic expressions of unmet needs. And this is why we can have compassion on judgments - the judgments of others and our own judgments. So that is the kind of understanding I have found to be most helpful. Whereas, what Katie seems to be suggesting is a judgment of the judgment and trying to resolve it by the mere realization that it seems to be causing us stress or may not be true from another perspective.
However, something may be true for us - and there are good reasons why we have any judgment we have. There are certain needs within us that are trying to be expressed, though we may not know how else to express them but to have a judgment or resistance to something or someone.
So I find that the place of transformation is not in merely rationalistically observing whether we feel stressed or at peace with a thought, but seeking to compassionately understand every part of ourselves, even the parts of ourselves that have judgments and resistances and then letting those parts of ourselves speak so that we might understand what they are wanting and why - rather than hoping they dissipate with the simple realizing that they are causing us stress or that we would feel more happy without them.
I'll give an example. In the chapter of dialogues on relationships and family she talks with Justin who is struggling because he feels that his family doesn't accept him or his way of life and they just want him to conform to theirs. But the way Katie speaks with him, she leads him to the conclusion that it is him that's being unreasonable or unaccepting because he's equally not accepting their nonacceptance of him essentially. This, to me, reads essentially as trying to judge our judgments out of ourselves rather than compassionately understand them and resolve them - which is what I find to work a lot better personally, and from my understanding of human nature as a psychologist.
With Justin, what I would have tried to lead him to would be a compassionate understanding of his legitimate need and desire for acceptance. It's not his need for acceptance which is causing stress, it's the unrealistic strategy of trying to have it met through his family, which, in reality, doesn't, in his experience, have the willingness or ability to meet that need. You see what I'm saying? There is a much more helpful understanding in realizing the needs which motivate our resistances and judgments are legitimate, human and reasonable.
What may not be reasonable or sane is the various strategies we may be entrenched in trying to meet those needs. Maybe Justin, after truly accepting that his family may not be able to meet that need of his right now , seeks to find other friends or groups of people who are willing and able to meet that need of his - whereas, the work seemed to just have him bucket the need and strategy together, when it was only the strategy that needed adjustment perhaps. That's what I think is a more healthy way of "loving what is.
What may not always be wise, reasonable or sane is the various ways we seek to have our needs met that simply probably won't, or won't right now.
I have to admit that I didn't manage to finish the book after I had these epiphanies as to why I cringed so much during the dialogues in the book. So to be fair, maybe Katie addresses some of these things that I've hit on here, I'm not sure. Also, to be fair, and to live out the ideology I'm expressing here, I am imagining that it's possible Katie is just making "the work" overtly simple in order to bridge people over into a more integrated and mature perspective and so maybe my disagreements stem from that - just seeing where there are some very important nuances and elements to understand in order to truly and most healthily love what is, in my experience at least.
I will also say that I did find the simplicity and clarity of the work to be helpful in many regards too, as reminders to me of how I can live out the principles of acceptance for what is and what I cannot control better e.
This was a helpful reminder for me to think about what areas I still have "should" statements in and to explore why. Some closing notes: I believe the model of cognitive behavioral therapy and its recognition of cognitive distortions to be a more helpful way of working through resistances to reality.
Katie only asks in the work whether something is true or not - but I find that you come to a place of transformation and resolution much quicker if you can understand how or why something is true or not - and that's the useful part of the understanding of cognitive distortions as they are common biases or ways of thinking and perceiving that are ungrounded and unhelpful and that are often the source of a lot of our suffering and inability to face and accept what is.
There are indeed some great principles in this book, ones that I deeply resonate with and that have been a part of philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism for centuries. However, there are some key nuances that I believe Katie seems to miss, which made the application of the work too simplistic and rationalistic, and ultimately not as effective as it could be if it incorporated a more humanistic and compassionate understanding of the psyche and our needs as human beings.
That being said, I could concede that perhaps this could be an excellent and life-changing book for a person beginning to be exposed to such principles or philosophies. But those who are already familiar with them will probably be wasting their time trying to find something significantly insightful or transformative here other that perhaps just a reminder of and another way to word principles they are already aware of.
To start, let me say I generally loathe self-help books. I don't like reading them, and most generally end up throwing the book out, or keeping it as a source of laughter material. I would not have read this book if I didn't have to for a book club, and when I first picked it up and started reading I was like "Oh come on..
The simplicity of her steps, which breed deep insight in our own perceptions, and preconcieved notions.. I found this book immensely helpful. This book is NOT for those who cannot self-analyze at all, or do not have the ability to challenge their way of thinking in insightful ways. For those, that do have the above abilities, and consider themselves extremely in touch with themselves.. The beauty of her method is that it can be as deep and insightful as you make it, or as simplistically stupid as you see it.
The choice really is yours. Sometimes the hardest thing, is challenging and questioning ourselves because we already know our secrets and what buttons to push. Lies are easy. Truth is hard. Lezlee Hays. I have no idea how to star this. One star because I think it's potentially dangerous? Four stars because I think some of it could be helpful for some people?
Two stars because on balance I can't make up my mind? I don't know. Ultimately, I think Katie's concepts are too much for most people to digest without potentially having bad side effects. The idea of letting go of the things we can't control - other people, many of our thoughts, realizations that we're often our own problem and not the other person - these are good realizations.
Most things in life that regard our interaction with others can be enhanced if we learn good boundaries and learn to understand it is only our thoughts about things that really affect us. However, Katie's core philosophy borders on nihilism. If taken to it's logical conclusion her methods could lead devotees towards a existential crisis from which one might never recover. I can't in good conscience recommend the book for most people.
I was recommended this by my counsellor. I was very unsure about it because a lot of reviews suggested it includes a lot of victim blaming -- and this is, in a sense, true: Byron Katie's theory is essentially that we are always the ones causing ourselves pain.
She does tell a woman to figure out what part her nine year old self had in her own rape, what she did 'wrong'. That sounds very discomforting, but I think I see why she does it. When you've had some kind of trauma, there's often a question of what you could've done to prevent it.
Maybe you let someone do something bad to you because you were frightened. You can believe almost totally that you couldn't have escaped the situation, but you still have that lingering shard of doubt -- and that could be a way in to learn to recover from it, starting with forgiving your own perceived complicity.
I found her attitude a little arrogant at times, and condescending. But the basic ideas can be useful and provide a way to logically see how you can better a problem by controlling your part in it. Likewise, it asks you to accept the past as it was, because that's the only way it can be -- you can't change it, only the way you relive it in your mind. I would say, read this with caution, if you do read it.
Aspects of it were useful for me, but I'm still uncomfortable about other aspects. I own both the audio and paper versions of this book. Considering the fact that most of my reading and listening comes from local libraries, that is saying something. The concepts in this book are fairly easy to grasp, and the impacts can be life-changing.
Rather than studying enlightenment for years and hoping for a glimpse, Katie's ideas are the fast-track. To summarize, the book explains that we are the projector of the world and everyone in it. If the world seems chaotic, there is chaos inside us, and our job is to shine the light there. The understanding is like a lightbulb being switched on; it is instant and life-changing. How can he do this to me?
Write this thought down and then go through the questions. Is Peter really unreliable? Can you tell from experience? Has this happened before? Do you get defensive? What would the world look like? Once you start digging, most negative thoughts quickly fall apart. And then, you can turn them around. Just carefully consider all of them and follow what your gut tells you is right. A turnaround will never give you one right answer — just a lot more options for your thoughts.
Complaining has a value of zero. Everybody has problems. Unless you use that energy to do something about it, your frustration is useless. Find your place within those and do what you can. Four questions. And a lot of thinking. So if you feel frustrated, anxious or outright depressed, give Loving What Is a try.
The Turnaround is the last step of The Work. It's where you focus on turning your thoughts around to discover deeper truths about yourself, your feelings and your situation.
So if your thoughts lead you to feel that your partner doesn't love you and that you're losing your relationship, turn those thoughts around and see what happens. Try approaching your problem from a different angle.
Maybe your partner really does love you and you've been walking down the wrong path. Next, approach this new thought with the same four questions from The Work. You'll gain new insight into your dilemma when you closely examine the inverse of your original thoughts. And don't stop there! Consider all possibilities and turn them all around, then see how these different scenarios make you feel. For example, is it possible that it's actually you who doesn't love your partner anymore, and this is the source of coldness between the two of you?
Or are you actually just having a hard time loving yourself? Are you sad about another problem in your life and projecting that on to your partner? You'll have different feelings and reactions to all of these possibilities — carefully consider all of them. So which thought or feeling should you follow in the end? There isn't a strict rule: follow the thoughts that are right for you. Follow what feels true.
Have you ever gotten angry because bad weather forced you to cancel special plans, such as a birthday barbeque? Yet when you get angry with something like the weather, you're trying to fight powers far beyond your control. You can't change reality just by being frustrated about it.
Stress won't help you — it'll just make you feel angry, disappointed and powerless. There's absolutely nothing you can do about the weather!
The key to achieving happiness isn't changing reality, but finding your true place in the realities you can't change. We often feel overwhelmed in the face of big problems, such as war, hunger or pollution. These are powerful forces, and a single individual is virtually powerless against them.
You will fail if you try to solve the world's problems on your own. You'll just get angry at the people you hold responsible.
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