“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The symptoms were obviously a result of inner attitudes, and also besides that a physical way of asking for physical action, attention, and emotional action and attention. Whenever he improved it was when the two of you embarked upon a program together.

Both of you at times do. In your particular personal relationship Ruburt began to feel that when you looked at him you were comparing him precisely with “that perfect physical self” that seemingly so eluded him, and in the face of that image, any improvement at all began to seem so insignificant as to be meaningless.

Your own reactions since our last session are excellent. Ruburt felt, finally, that you saw him at his worst in the morning, and did not turn away from his as some crooked, broken, grotesque physical person. That was what he was afraid of in the light of your perfectionist tendencies. In a strange way he was relieved; seeing what he has been trying to hide, he feels, will give the both of you a basis from which you can operate, in which any improvements are appreciated.

Since he felt that you judged his physical behavior from that “superior” position, then he felt that no improvement except complete recovery would get your approval. Anything else would always fall short.

In any suggestions used then, use the terms improvement, or better and better, for example. That gives him leeway. “I can walk with greater ease. I can get up easier and easier. I can be more physically vigorous.” That sort of thing when you use physical suggestions, rather than the use of words that seem like absolutes, where comparisons are involved almost automatically between a given situation and a desired one.

All of the decisions he made, finally, were good ones from all viewpoints. In the meantime however, because of these issues all meeting, and his reactions as given, his condition worsened. The momentary feeling of powerlessness in the business area added to the physical sense of powerlessness. He was simply afraid that he could not improve.