[Ammi]

...Hypnotherapy combined wit CBT are about empowering yourself and nothing at all to do with being empowered by anyone else...

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I'm talking about the OP in regards to wishes/hopes/prayers coming to pass (being successful) as a result of wishing/hoping/praying without fear that they will. That's what's a placebo. Doing so doesn't actually have any impact at all, in abstract terms, on the likelihood of what you want to happen actually happening: what it MIGHT do is increase the likelihood of you taking positive action to achieve those goals by increasing confidence.

What you're talking about is purely the internal part, actively using logic to remove fear, with the removal of fear being the goal in itself, which is something slightly different.

However, I still am not seeing where paradox comes into it. I don't see a paradox and, moreover, if there WAS a logical paradox then by definition the problem would be unsolvable? I don't know if there's something I'm not getting or if maybe OP just used the wrong word? You can't combat or solve anything with a paradox. Surely. If you hit a paradox then you start over because your logic is flawed... You can't "close the loop", so to speak, or in programming terms, it would "crash your computer".

...the only logic paradox example really that I can think of in dealing with an extreme fear is the one I read and posted..it would be the fear of an inevitable/something that the prisoner had no control over, rather than something they could possibly control, because it was imaginary...a fear that hadn't really been broken down as to the logic of it.../so you're right it changed nothing, other than death came for him with no fear because he was convinced and had absolute total belief that he wouldn't die...the only logics that I can think of and apply to things like 'mind monsters' and dispelling fear, aren't paradoxes, they are just logic controlling extreme emotion etc..I guess it's a concentration on things that can be controlled and changed and dispelling and dismissing anything that can't and not allowing that to 'clog up' either the mind so that it's clearer or any energy on it...