The Logotherapeutic technique of paradoxical intention is used when you are attempting to avoid doing what you fear you will do, or are trying to force a desired result of your actions.
Using this technique, instead of avoiding what you fear you welcome it. For example, if you fear you will faint in a crowded place and you deliberately tell yourself to faint, you won’t be able to do it.
We don’t have to go as far as Frankl’s cases of people who are incapacitated by their fears and cannot live a normal life. We all get anxious at times. Paradoxical intention breaks the vicious cycle of anxiety by helping you to look at yourself from the outside and laugh at your own anxiety-driven behavior.
What is the relationship between the ability to trust in life and the ability to laugh at yourself?
Instead of being anxious, you are essentially saying, “I don’t care if I faint. I will show everyone how good I am at fainting.”
How can I not care that I’m going to faint? What makes it a carefree laughter of trust and not a cynical laughter of resignation?
When I think of my anxiety, what comes to mind is feelings of being sorry for myself, feeling helpless and feeling desperate. That’s when I make my worst mistakes. At those times I take the attitude that I absolutely must make sure this goes right and it will be absolutely unacceptable and intolerable if it goes wrong.
Whether I’m fighting to accomplish something or fighting to avoid something, I’m basically putting up my dukes prepared to fight with life, as if I’m sparring with God.
When I manage to extricate myself from my fear, I still want to avoid what is undesirable. I do care. But I no longer care that I can’t control or predict the results.
At those times I laugh at how ridiculous I look trying to control what’s not in my control, and then I start to regain my trust that life is carrying and guiding me.
It is as if to say, “God, if this is the way you want it then I want it too.” Life is not against me. God is on my team, guiding me in ways I’m not aware of. That’s when I stop fighting for and against stuff.
I relax into the sense that I am being given whatever I need in life to do what I’m supposed to do. If I don’t have the time or the means or the tools for something, then this was not meant for me to do and it won’t be the end of the world if I am unable to do it.
On the other hand, maybe things have gone wrong because I was desperately trying to make them go right, and now I’m paying the price for my lack of trust. There is something I need to learn from it.
But trust is not just about acceptance of what is not in my control, or realizing the lessons I need to be learning. Mostly, I am being guided to transform my fear into resolve. Something that doesn’t feel right makes me reassess what I’m passionate about. This makes me go back and search for the path I need to take, only this time without trying to do it all by myself, but with God’s help.