Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: January 09, 2012  

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How to Do Yourself In
(Based on Paul Watzlawick's The Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious)

1. Indignantly reject the world as it is and choose the world the way you know it to be. Decide there's only one correct view: yours! If you have true genius, reject even what you consider to be the best decision. 

2. Maintain your stereotypes by limiting personal contact with people different from you. Assume that only your behavior is obvious and normal under any and all circumstances.

3. Keep doing what you've always done, especially if it leads to more misery. Remember, there's only one possible solution. If it hasn't produced the desired effects, apply it more forcefully.

4. Turn the past into a reliable source of unhappiness. See your childhood as Paradise Lost. If the break-up with a beloved causes great pain, imagine the bliss to find him/her again OR establish an identical relationship with a similar partner. Believe in fatality and indulge in self-laceration. If something good happens, remind yourself, "Not only is it too late, but I don't want it anymore."

5. Confront unsuspecting people with the last link of a long chain of fantasies in which they play a negative role; if they show confusion or anger, take that as conclusive proof you were right.

6. Pay close attention to any aspect of your body until you feel discomfort -- let's say how your shoes don't quite fit. Buy another pair of shoes and notice how they, too, are uncomfortable. Now up the ante. Imagine you have an insidious eye disease. When your doctor tells you it's nothing, assume s/he is too compassionate to say your illness is incurable.

7. Sharpen your eye for ominous portents; for example, notice how you always get stopped by red lights. Discuss these with your friends and when they try to dissuade you, take this as evidence they're in on the conspiracy.

8. Only a few, truly gifted, individuals will manage to anticipate all imaginable dangers. We lesser minds must content ourselves with partial successes. So avoid sharp knives, outdoor concerts, and the handles on grocery carts.

9. Look for evidence that things are going as badly as you predicted or suspected they would. Your self-fulfilling prophesies will be particularly successful if you remain unaware of how you contribute to the pattern.

10. Instead of engaging in small steps toward a reachable achievement, set yourself an admirably lofty goal that requires time-consuming and expensive preparation, so no one will blame you if you're lost or haven't even started. Also beware of arriving. You'll be disappointed.

11. Never acknowledge what you're actually feeling. If you're sad or depressed, remember the childhood admonition: "Go to your room, and don't come out until there's a smile on your face!"

12. Carefully maintain a disbelief in your own lovability. If an uncommitted, available person wants to enter into a relationship with you, realize that person is despicable.

13. Base your relationships on one of you needing help and the other supplying it. Either the help will succeed and the relationship will fall apart, or the help will fail and the helper will have had enough and eventually withdraw.

14. Also, in relationships: (a) rely on mind reading -- don't take as truth what your partner says s/he feels; and (b) try to drive your partner crazy by giving the illusion of alternatives -- if your partner does A, point out that B was the correct response; if your partner chooses B, note that A is what should have been done.

15. Should your despair lead you to see the modern equivalent of a Zen master, be sure to consult with one who takes you to your earliest childhood and even farther back than that.