Originally Posted by GingerM

Conversely, saying it to yourself can stop YOU dead in your tracks of going down that thought path as well. You find yourself thinking "what he's really saying" or "what he really means is..." Remind yourself that he didn't say that, you did. And you have the option to chose to listen to what he said or to what you said. I normally followed this by asking WHY I was saying that to myself (there's usually an underlying reason).

This is probably the tool that made the biggest all-around difference in my life and my way of being in the world - both in telling other people that I refuse to accept responsibility for things I didn't say, and in terms of finding what was underneath my own interpretations of meta-messages.

Becoming aware of what I was doing helped me realize that the world as I believed it was was holding me hostage. The world as it really is was not the problem, it was my perception and interpretation of it.