The two-worded therapy

By Adarsh Madhavan

I was on a chit-chat-whining to a friend (she writes for us now)of mine who lives somewhere abroad and suddenly she scythed through the ‘crap’ and said hey I want you to check out an You Tube post, which I think is going to make a lot of difference in your way of thinking.

I am not thinking; I am whining, I confessed.

She was always brutal and she was in no way different now: Precisely, she said.
So I got off the messenger chat and I checked out the You Tube and there was Bob Newhart as a shrink offering a brand new two-worded therapy: Stop It!

Yes, it’s a comedy skit and it is funny to boot, but sometimes fun runs deep. You buy laughter and you get philosophy free. Wow!

In brief, Newhart sees a lady client who has a deep fear of being buried alive and he is seen asking her whether someone had actually attempted to commit that dastardly deed on her to which she replies in the negative. So he points out to her that she is actually feeling claustrophobic and there was actually two words to cure that.

The client does not get it and asks if she needs to jot it down, so he tells her that well, it was just two words and most often, people, even the most forgetful, can remember two words! She does not disagree and so he asks her to brace herself while he declares it. And the two words are:

Stop It!
Sorry? What? You would ask like Katherine, in that comedy You Tube clip asked Dr Switzer, the character Newhart played. Yes, you heard it right: Stop It! S-T-O-P I T!

This is not Greek! This is English and it’s just two simple words: Stop It.
Whenever you are in that whining, complaining mood…stop it!
Whenever you feel down and want to whine, stop it!
Whenever you feel forlorn and say that the world is not treating you right – stop it!
Whenever you think that fate has let you down once again – stop it!
So if you are faced with a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach and feel that you’re going to lose – stop it!
When you feel that people are avoiding you and that you are all alone in this big, bad world — stop it!
When you feel that you are failing and you’re going to lose – stop it!
Well, I don’t know, you must have got the drift by now. Whatever negative feelings you are harbouring; whenever you are trudging down the sad, down and out lane and are about to sing the funeral dirge for yourself, please make a concerted effort to stop it. Stop it!

Like Katherine who fears getting buried in a box, life will present some claustrophobic moments for you and you are bound to be suffocated by it, but most of the fears are imaginary, most of the times, you turn tail and make a run for it even before the battle has begun. You sweat the night out worrying about what is going to happen the next day and unfortunately by the time you are on the verge of confronting your problems you are already down and defeated.

Not just this, we are confronted by various instances where fate box us down. It is time we understand that life is not an ad inviting you to spend a dream holiday in the Bahamas. If we are undergoing tough times, it is just life happening to us!

So, I don’t know, but can we brush off the onslaught of troubles and tribulations and problems and difficulties that keep harassing us on a daily basis and ask them to go well, take a hike?

More so, we should learn to tell our sorry selves to stop slavering up our unfounded fears and panicking or falling prey to the monster that keeps us at bay telling us that we are no good; that we are born losers, lifetime failures and that we are mere cowering wretched cowards, and all we are capable of doing is to bolt shivering and hide under our beds when problems thunder outside our windows – stop it!

Yes, stop it! We got to imbibe these words into our psyche!
We desperately need these two words to be incorporated into our lives! Into our beings.
Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it or go bury yourself in a box!