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Much is constantly happening that annoys us: trains pull out of platforms as we approach
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them. Taps snap off their moorings; shopping bags leak; suppliers go bankrupt; colleagues
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resign; cars break down.
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It is all - undoubtedly - maddening.
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But the question is how much does it all, beneath the surface, have to feel intentional
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as well?
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For a certain kind of personality, it is very hard to hold on to the idea that many troubles
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might come down to something as innocent as chance.
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It simply seems implausible that awful things might repeatedly unfold, at terribly inopportune
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moments, without some kind of malevolent intent being involved.
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It can’t be just an accident that the dinner order went missing,
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- that the cinema seat was double booked, - that the phone’s battery has died…
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Why did their dry cleaning - and no one else’s - end up being stolen and their new shoes
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spring a leak? Why is there a strange smell just next to
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where they are seated on the plane? How come there is a small beetle in their salad?
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It’s as though someone is trailing them, undermining them, laying traps for them - and
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laughing at them. It seems like there is some kind of conspiracy to make them look like
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a cretin to the world (why else have they been walking around all day with a sticker
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on the back of their coat and why does their zip jam exactly ten minutes before an important
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dinner?). No wonder they may get very cross indeed.
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The sad and touching truth is that there is - of course - almost never any conspiracy
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at play. But that it strongly feels like there is one on the inside tells us a lot about
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the origins of paranoic hypersensitivity: it is the bitter fruit of self-hatred.
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When we heartily dislike ourselves, it is only natural to have the impression that the
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world is ridiculing us in turn. The hotel concierge knows exactly how awful we are;
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that’s why they’ve given us the room with the malfunctioning airconditioning unit;
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the waiter has deep experience of our revoltingness; that’s why they chose our trousers on which
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to drop a piece of butter. The phone company knows that we are an idiot
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(and that we think dreadful things); that’s why they’ve made sure our mobile would give
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out on the second day of our trip.
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We need to be given the chance to see that our suspicious natures are a symptom of a
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self-hatred that owes its origins not to the prevalence of actual plots and schemes, but
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to childhood dynamics in which we lacked the reassurance, attention and care we deserved
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- and for this, we deserve immense, ongoing sympathy. The world doesn’t hate us, we
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have just learnt to have contempt for ourselves which returns to haunt us in the form of imagined
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plots. No one is actually laughing at us; we weren’t
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loved properly and now don’t like ourselves very much. That’s the true outrage for which
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we should reserve our anger and our self-compassion.