What is Discounting?
We are constantly bombarded with problems. Think of what you have done today at this point: there will have been many decisions that you have already taken. Iâll use my morning as an example. Here are some of the decisions I had to take:
- Get up on time, or sleep a little longer?
- Whether to get dressed straight away or stay in pjs
- Whether to help my son get his packed lunch ready or to insist he did it himself
- Whether to feed the rabbits now or later, and whether to give them the remaining cabbage which was a little past its best
- Whether to answer emails before or after a bath
- Whether to respond politely, pointedly or not at all to a rude email
I could go on, but you are probably bored with my morning by now!
When making any decision we have two choices; we can use the full power of our adult thinking and feeling, or go into script. If we go into script we are perceiving the world so that it fits the decisions we made as children. We will blank out some aspects of the real situation and blow others out of proportion.
Looking at the list above, the last decision could easily have sent me script-ward, back to the time when I couldnât handle people being nasty to me, but instead I used my adult thinking and feeling and decided that the rudeness was due to the writerâs process and so not mine to deal with. I âhanded it backâ.
