How to make yourself sick
One way to understand how to help ourselves become well is to comprehend what we do to make ourselves ill. If you wish to be really sick, follow this prescription:
1. Breathing: Take short shallow breaths, little sips of air. Hold your breath whenever possible. This will rob you of the breath of life, and add to muscular tension.
2. Muscles: Tighten your muscles, especially your jaws, throat shoulders, and the little muscles around the eyes. Let the tightness become a habit. Never stretch and flex.
3. Mind: Visualize disaster at every opportunity. Think negative thoughts, especially about yourself. Resent whenever possible, and never forgive yourself or others.
4. Laughter: Fight against laughter. A good laugh releases tension. If you laugh, you will be more relaxed and in tune with your surrounds. Do not allow this to happen. Stay grim.
5. Movement: Sit. Be sure you do not walk. Sit in your vehicle. Sit at work all day. Sit in front of the TV. Walking, moving, stretching, and flexing will drain away tension and anxiety. If you ever feel like moving around, sit down until the urge goes away.
6. Time: Never have time for what you are doing at the moment. Always have your thoughts elsewhere. If possible, feel rushed and harried.
7. Relationships: Withdraw from contact with everyone. If someone approaches you, cut them off with a word, a look, a gesture, or total silence. Give others nothing. If possible, maintain either an egotistically arrogant or paranoid attitude.
8. Purpose: Give in to a feeling of total uselessness. Assure yourself every day that life has no purpose or meaning. Tell yourself that you are merely a protoplasmic blob in an alien universe.
9. Attitude: Slump and slouch in a weak posture. Work to keep a low opinion of yourself. Whine a lot.
If you are practicing any one of the above, you do not have to practice any of the others (unless you are looking for quick sickness), they will soon follow.
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