The Swamp & Swamp Addiction

Research, Practice, & A Trail of Breadcrumbs

Drawing by the spectacular Qinu: https://qinu.art/

There is an Underworld territory that exists in most — possibly all — human beings, called the Swamp. As its name implies, the Swamp is a stinking, belching, life-killing quagmire. It can come on as suddenly as an aggressive flu, sucking the sunlight out of people who otherwise shine with life and radiance, or it can seep in more slowly, like a black tea darkening the water in a cup.

Some people rarely ever spend more than a few minutes, or at most a few days, in the Swamp. They enter, they say hello, they exit. Others are ruled by it. They live there. Even in their best moments, they maintain a foot in Swampland, unconsciously stirring the ooze, savoring the pain, like an opiate addict fingering the stash in her pocket. Such people have in fact become addicted to the hellscape of the Swamp. Even if they weep, protest, moan, or bewail, the truth is that for them, the Swamp is planet home, the main channel, the first position, the comfy marshmallow zone at the center of the Box. Sometimes these people also have a larger core survival strategy of a Loser Box (see the description of Box 11 under the 18 Standard Box Designs).

The Swamp goes by different names, some of which might be more or less familiar to you. These include self-hatred, self-censure, self-rebuke, self-flagellation, self-cannibalism, self-abuse, shame spiral, self-doubt, etc. On their own, none of these terms quite captures the full range and texture of the Swamp, though each describes a facet.

Swamp symptoms vary, but some common denominators are misery, voices (Parent Ego State), trigger sentences (Demon Ego State), unhealed childhood emotions (Child Ego State), unhealable Gremlin emotions (Gremlin Ego State), mixed emotions (e.g., isolation and despair from mixed fear and sadness), disempowering identities, expectations about how you or life should be, unconscious decisions about yourself or the world, low energy, and nightmares.

For addicts, the Swamp is no trivial matter. It is likely that a significant portion of people who commit suicide are Swamp addicts who never learned to own and navigate this portion of their Underworld. But suicide comes in many forms, and it is far more common to see people with a Swamp addiction who never finish projects, never manage to hold space for their soul work, and never let their shine expand and touch the world at the breadth and depth that it could.

In April, 2023, I authentically discovered and admitted that I am a Swamp addict. I say “authentically” because, in a way, it is something I had known for a long time. But it was during the process of working Steps 4 and 5 in the Violence Anonymous (VA) 12-Step Program that the widespread cost of this addiction revealed itself.

Steps 4 and 5 are about identifying destructive, unconscious habits and patterns, and then sharing them with a fellow VA member, usually a sponsor. When my sponsor and I came to the end of my 5th Step, he reflected something back to me that I did not expect. He said, “If you only focus on processing your Swamp (he did not use the word ‘Swamp’) for a while, many of your other patterns will clear up. This one is at the bottom of almost everything.”

In the month following this discovery, I got ample evidence of its accuracy. I was apprenticing in four back-to-back Possibility Management trainings in Guatemala and California. From day one, hour one of the first training, I was already in the Swamp. I tried to fight it, but my efforts had little impact. I was, afterall, still addicted to the Swamp and had almost no practice navigating it. What I did have was consciousness, just enough to be aware of how powerless I seemed to be. So I watched as I sank deeper into misery, unable to give myself fully to my work in the trainings, unable to be present and make contact with the Beings there, unable to lovingly, supportively, or imaginatively create any intimacy with my partner that did not revolve around blame, suffering, or self-pity. The toll of the Swamp is high.

Over time, I have embraced many practices in an effort to alter my relationship with the Swamp. Some of the practices have been completely ineffective, some have been helpful, and a few have been transformative.

The article below is a trail of breadcrumbs. It starts with the thing I found most fundamental for transformation — the shift from Swamp Victim to Swamp Researcher. It continues with practices supporting this shift, as well as hints, distinctions, and considerations

There are many discoveries beyond this article. My hope is that it provides a highly valuable starting point for those wanting to shift their relationship with the Swamp.

Becoming A Researcher

Although the below is languaged specifically in reference to the Swamp, it is relevant and applicable to a wide range of Underworld work.

Victim of the Swamp

Who are you in relation to your Swamp? What identity do you step into when your Swamp is active?

For most people, the answer to this question is Victim. When the Swamp comes on, they are deep inside it, deeply identified with it. They cannot help but believe the life-negating stories flying around their heads. They sink helplessly into the churning sump that swirls in their hearts and energetic bodies. A Victim seeks a Rescuer, and a Victim in the Swamp either finds someone who will listen to their complaints while comforting and reassuring them, or rescues themselves by anesthetizing the pain of the Swamp with food, Netflix, sex, endless hot showers, or other numbing strategies.

Even if a person has enough clarity to say, “I am in the Swamp,” if they still relate to the Swamp as a Victim swimming in disempowerment, then they are at war with themselves. The Swamp is the enemy, their curse, the most hated of things, and any strategy or practice they deploy will be aimed at killing it.

Unfortunately, this does not work. The Swamp cannot be hated, shamed, maimed, or even loved, for that matter, out of existence (I have tried; maybe you have too). Even when dormant, it exists in the Underworld as potential, available at any moment. What can happen, though, is that you can radically transform your relationship to the Swamp. You can discover how you unconsciously open the door to go there. You can learn how you keep yourself there. You can even find out how you secretly benefit from living life in the Swamp. And you can reclaim your Agency so that you no longer unconsciously choose to go there anymore.

But you cannot do any of these things as a Victim. If you want to change your relationship with the Swamp, you need a new identity. A good place to start is with the Researcher.

Researcher of the Swamp

What are the attributes of a Researcher? What are her qualities? What are her tools?

A Researcher is genuinely interested in her subject. If she is studying the Swamp, she really wants to know about it. Her interest in the Swamp isn’t neurotic or obsessive like the Victim, nor is it fueled by an agenda to dispose of the Swamp or a timeline by which this disposal must be complete. If you asked her, “Why are you interested in the Swamp?” her answer might be, “Because I really want to discover what it is about.”

The Researcher uses the faculty of attention to research the Swamp. Unlike the Victim, whose attention is clouded by stories like, “The Swamp is bad,” “The Swamp is evil,” “I must get rid of the Swamp,” the Researcher’s attention is neutral. ‘Bad’ and ‘evil’ do not come into the picture. What she scans for is reality — clear, unevaluated, unstoried reality.

‘Neutral’ does not mean ‘numb.’ Numb is unfeeling and insensitive. With neutral attention, the Researcher of the Swamp may, and likely will, feel a great deal. As she encounters the Swamp without judgment, discovering just how great a price she has paid in time, energy, love, relationships, and purpose, her heart will break. This heartbreak is not the same as the Swamp sadness that emerges from someone beating themselves up about having a Swamp. Swamp sadness is not transformative. The sadness of heartbreak is deeply transformative.

In addition to neutral attention, one of the key tools of the Researcher is questions. Questions can also emerge from victimhood. For instance, “Why won’t the Swamp go away?” “Why does God hate me?” “Why am I so broken?” The types of questions the Researcher has come from her baseline attitude toward the Swamp: “I want to discover what this is about.” Here are some examples:

• How long does my Swamp last?
• What triggers my Swamp, specifically?
• What do I experience in my Mental Body? (E.g., thoughts, stories, conclusions, beliefs, loops, voices, trigger sentences, etc.)
• What do I experience in my Emotional Body? (E.g., emotional anger, sadness, joy, fear, Mixed Emotions like despair, isolation, nostalgia, depression, hysteria, shame, envy, guilt, unhealable Gremlin Emotions, etc.)
• What do I experience in my Physical Body? (E.g., tension, strain, difficulty breathing, low heart rate, itchiness, etc.)
• What do I experience in my Energetic Body? (E.g., lack of ‘shine,’ closure, body-covering slime, grayness, sourness, etc.)
• How identified am I with my Swamp right now, on a scale of 1–10?
• What is the noble Survival purpose of my Swamp?
• What is the Gremlin benefit and purpose of my Swamp?
• What impulses arise when I am in the Swamp? What do I think I ‘should’ do?
• Etc.

The answers to these questions are not meant to be clinically dry nor to occur only in the mind. For these questions to yield transformational results, the answers must be experienced clearly, observationally, neutrally, agendalessly, often multiple times, the contour of the information becoming more known and familiar.

Just as an electron cannot be observed without being affected by that which observes it, the Swamp begins to shift the moment it’s touched by neutral attention. This is part of the magic of the Researcher Identity. The Researcher’s attention functions like rain water passing down a dirt road. Over time, the water softens the dirt, clearing the dust, unearthing and loosening the rocks beneath, clarifying what is actually there, and making the ground malleable. This type of malleability is critical for beginning to authentically navigate in and around the Swamp.

So, how does one practically shift into a Researcher? Before that, a comment about the Experimenter.

Map of Victim and Researcher of The Swamp by Author

The Experimenter

You may have noticed that the Researcher questions above are all aimed at discovering ‘what is.’ There is another class of question, one that usually starts with something like, “What would happen if…?” or “What if I try…?” These questions are about adding in new practices and experiments to work with an existing behavior, like the Swamp, and they are questions of the Experimenter, an identity closely connected to the Researcher.

It may be tempting to skip the step of the Researcher Identity and jump straight to Experimenter, because that’s where all the action and real results are… There is a danger in doing this. If you have lived your life as a Victim in relation to the Swamp, then your attitude toward it will be, “I must get rid of this thing.” The impulse to skip the Researcher step and head straight into ‘real’ experiments is almost always contaminated by the Victim’s hatred and urgency to make the thing go away. The fruits of experimenting in this way match the seed and soil from which they spring.

The message is simple: Do the groundwork of becoming a Researcher. Enjoy it. Do it until the benefits of the practice are obvious. Then, let your experimenting emerge from enthusiasm rather than restless urgency.

The Shift to Researcher

We pick up where we left off: How do you practically make the shift from Victim to Researcher? If you are serious about discovering how to make this shift, you will find your own way over time. For now, here is a guide to practice with:

1. DECLARE YOU ARE IN THE SWAMP: The moment you notice you are in the Swamp, declare it out loud. Say: “I am in the Swamp.” You can say this to someone else, you can say it to yourself if you are alone, or you can even write it down. The important thing is that you acknowledge and name what is happening. This declaration acts like a wedge, opening the gap between ‘You’ and the Swamp.
2. ENTER FIRST POSITION: Enter First Position of a Possibility Manager. That means becoming Centered, Grounded, and Bubbled. If the processes of Centering, Grounding, and Bubbling have become empty automatisms for you, it is time to start over. In order for these practices to be effective, they require deliberateness and consciousness. Even if that means declaring and undeclaring your Grounding Cord five times because you keep falling asleep, do it. It is worth it.
3. DECLARE YOURSELF A RESEARCHER OF THE SWAMP: Again, you can say this aloud to someone else, to yourself, or you can write it down. It may seem formal, but this declaration shifts the entire basis upon which you are engaging with the Swamp. If you need a reminder of this, you can reread the ‘Map of Victim and Researcher,’ above.

These are the basic instructions for making the identity shift into Researcher. You might elaborate this process over time. For instance, you might decide on the outfit your Researcher wears, the energetic tools he or she carries, or the specific qualities he or she embodies. My Researcher identity wears a white lab coat and sits, stands, and walks in a posture of dignity and poise. Because the Swamp is such a dignity-less place, this posture of poise and dignity is very important for me.

You will never be perfect at making this identity shift, and in the beginning, you might only be able to shift 5% of yourself from Victim to Researcher. 5% is more than sufficient to begin. You do not have to let your lack of neutrality, your slippery attention, or your Underworld commitment to remaining a Victim prevent you from practicing and getting better at shifting identity day by day, moment by moment, Swamp by Swamp.

As you enter this practice of shifting from Victim to Researcher, it can help to take on a strong, solid commitment, something along the lines of:

“For the next 15 days, no matter where I am, no matter what I am doing, I will stop myself the moment I notice I am in the Swamp, and take 5 minutes to shift from Victim to Researcher. I will do this every single time.”

Practices for the Researcher

On the right side of the ‘Map of Victim and Researcher,’ there is a list of qualities and attitudes that the Researcher inhabits. Further above, there is a list of questions the Researcher carries. In order to give these qualities, attitudes, and questions mass and substance, you must practice. Below are some practices for building your Researcher identity, all of which are only to be done after you have made the deliberate shift from Victim to Researcher.

FREEWRITE ALL OF THE VOICES, TRIGGER SENTENCES, AND OTHER GREMLIN CHATTER.

This and the next practice come from a correspondence with Gabriel Millinger, who was researching the Swamp at the same time as I and whose efforts inspired some of my own.

For this practice, get a pen and paper and freewrite for 10–15 minutes all of the insane, violent, destructive voices, trigger sentences, beliefs, stories, and other Gremlin chatter going through your head while you are in the Swamp. Do not try to make things nice, polite, reasonable, or rational. Don’t tone down the violence. If you hear a voice inside saying, “I just want to bash my head against a log until I’m dead,” WRITE IT DOWN.

As you write, let yourself feel, and notice what you feel. You might shake with fear, weep with sadness, grip the table in rage, or experience sadistic and masochistic joy. You do not have to do anything about these emotions (they will mostly be emotions, not feelings), although you may want to write them somewhere on the side of the paper for future processes (e.g., “I feel angry because I just can’t ever get anything right”).

The purpose of this practice is not to “get it all out.” There is no “getting it all out.” The Swamp is a part of your Underworld. Even when it’s dormant, it remains an option, ever available. The purpose of this exercise is to allow what has perhaps up to this point been happening only semi-consciously in your head to happen outside of your head in a place where you can more clearly view it. This begins to shift the Swamp from an invisible, unconscious process to a visible process.

This process can also work with one person holding a listening space and the other letting the words and emotions rip.

A WARNING: When you are in the Swamp, you may be tempted to take destructive actions, like sending a message that harms a relationship, or any number of other self-sabotaging moves. This exercise can stir up and aggravate those impulses. If you begin to seriously entertain such actions, you can be certain that you have exited the Researcher identity. DO NOT PLAY WITH FIRE. Stop the exercise right away, put it on the shelf for later, and Center, Ground, and Bubble yourself back in the Researcher identity.

WRITE SYSTEMATICALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY.

In this writing practice, you systematically take stock of the Swamp using the questions of the Researcher above or other similar inquiries. You do not have to use all of the questions, and in fact it may be useful to just stick with a few at first, like:

• When did the Swamp begin? Something happened, and then I opened the door to the Swamp. What was it specifically, and what was behind me using this moment to open the door to the Swamp?
• What is happening in my mental body?
• What is happening in my emotional body?
• What is happening in my energetic body?

The purpose of this exercise is to build the muscle of ‘being interested’ and to thoroughly observe the terrain of the Swamp. You have probably visited the Swamp thousands of times in your life, but how well do you really know it? How clearly can you really see it without being identified with it and without fighting it? Now is your chance.

Remember, this is not a mental exercise. You do this exercise in all of your bodies. When you write about your energetic body, do not write from what you think is happening in your energetic body. Instead, close your eyes, bring your attention into your energetic body, and begin to sense. When you notice something, only then write it down. Do not imagine things. Don’t make stuff up. Similarly, when you scan your emotional body, actually allow the emotions to be there. Feel them. Being a neutral Researcher is not the same as being a numb, bystanding observer. Being a neutral Researcher means clearly connecting with what is happening without fighting it and without evaluating it. This is the foundation of a new relationship with your Swamp.

SPEAK TO YOURSELF SYSTEMATICALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY.

You will not always be able to stop your life, grab a pen and paper, and write for a chunk of minutes. Sometimes, the Swamp will strike when you are walking through a coffee jungle in remote Chiapas, or making breakfast for a group, or regrouping after breaking up a dog fight, or… you get the point. Do not let this stop you from shifting identity and resuming your inquiry. You can do this by choosing a few questions and either speaking your noticings aloud to yourself or saying them silently but deliberately in your head. Some of your most important discoveries may come from your commitment to keep researching, one way or another, regardless of the limiting factors in your circumstances.

IDENTIFY YOUR DIFFERENT SWAMPS AND GIVE THEM NAMES.

When I first encountered the Swamp, it was in the ‘Map of Pressure Rapid Learning.’ Also known as the Feedback Swamp, this Swamp occurs when someone gives you a Beep! about something you are doing that is not working. Instead of taking the Beep!, making the Shift, and continuing to Go!, you detour straight into the Feedback Swamp. Here, two sets of voices swirl. One set of voices is about your deficiencies, e.g., “I’m an idiot,” “What the hell is wrong with me?” “I’ll never get it,” “I just can’t learn,” “I’m broken,” etc. The other set of voices is about their deficiencies: “Fuck them!” “What do they know anyway?” “Why would I take feedback from a man with a ponytail?” “Eh, shut up.”

As you engage with your Researcher practices, you will start to notice patterns. For example, you might notice that you actually have distinct Feedback Swamps. You might notice that you experience Swamps that do not originate from external feedback at all, but from inner processes. You might notice that each of these Swamps has its own set of stories, sensations, beliefs, and other qualities that, while similar to other Swamps, are in fact distinct. You might also notice that you do not have an infinite number of distinct Swamps, but that there are actually just a handful you repeatedly visit.

When this level of noticing occurs, it is time to give each Swamp a name, a shorthand, so that when you are in that Swamp, you can say, “Ah, I am in the No One Loves Me Swamp again.”

When I started researching my different Swamps, I noticed that each Swamp had a central theme connected with it. These themes live in me already, and have for years. When I hear a piece of feedback or experience an inner process that acts as evidence that the story behind the theme is true, accurate, etc., the Swamp and all its attendant qualities (voices, emotions, trigger sentences, etc.) emerge acutely.

Here are some examples of different Swamps with their names and central themes:

• MEN HATE ME Swamp: I am weak, pathetic, and incompetent in manly things, and men see that and hate me for it.
• WOMEN HATE ME Swamp: I am incompetent in things that are useful for holding the village, like cooking, cleaning, noticing what needs to be done, being with the children, etc., and women hate me for it.
• I’M REGRESSING Swamp: The evolutionary path, healing, practicing, experimenting — none of it works for me, and I am not transforming, it is my fault, and maybe I’m broken.
• DESTINY Swamp: I do not know what my work is in the world, I will never know, and it is my fault for not being better, clearer, and working harder to sort all of this out.
• MEMORY SHOCK Swamp: This occurs when a memory suddenly erupts into consciousness of a specific moment from weeks or even decades ago when you did something or said something that you are now ashamed about, and the memory shocks your nervous system.

For Those with a Loser Box…

When it comes to Swamp research, people with Loser Boxes are a special case, because even when the Swamp is not acute, it is still there, hiding in plain sight, part and parcel of the fundament that forms the basis of their core survival strategy.

A life practice for people with the Loser Box is to check with themselves frequently, many times a day, and maybe even every hour on the hour for some days or weeks, “Am I in the Swamp now?” or “Where am I in the Swamp now?” and to record what emerges from these questions.

Other Practices and Distinctions

Child Emotions, Gremlin Emotions, Emotional Healing Processes, Their Limits, and a Two-Month Practice

As you go through the practices above, you will uncover emotions. Some of these will be unhealed child emotions from the past and some will be unhealable Gremlin emotions. If you are just beginning the process of working with your Swamp and have not done many Emotional Healing Processes (EHPs), do not worry about figuring out whether your emotions are child or Gremlin emotions. Trying to do so will just confuse you. Instead, go through the processes, one emotion at a time. Feel consciously what you have avoided feeling for so long. Rediscover old decisions and vows. Make new decisions that empower you. Clean up and heal as much of your Swamp as you can.

If you do this persistently, a day may come when you go into a process with some by-now-very-familiar emotions, and these by-now-very-familiar emotions bring you back to a moment or set of moments that you have been to many times before in EHPs. When you scan this moment from the past, you see that you could go into the high intensity feelings again, but you have already done that in multiple processes, and already experienced the healing that comes with it. At this point, you might be at a loss: What do you do from here?

A possibility is that you have encountered a Gremlin emotion — a single emotion, mixed emotion, or 5-body state to which your Gremlin has become addicted. Gremlin emotions include, for example, endless despair (fear+sadness) about the way the world is, endless sadness about having been abandoned or excluded, endless anger at a parent for not loving you the way you needed to be loved, endless regret (sadness+anger+fear) about the past, etc. The keys to distinguishing these as Gremlin emotions are:

1. You have been through healing processes about the emotions, and these healing processes actually worked, meaning they were thorough and authentic.
2. Even after many (5–10) healing processes about the same emotion, it returns and grips you with the same intensity as it always has.

Gremlin emotions are not healable. You could go through 50 EHPs about a single Gremlin emotion and still see little difference around that emotion in your daily life. The reason Gremlin emotions are not healable is that at the subterranean level of your Underworld, your Gremlin is actually choosing to experience these emotions over and over again. Because this choice is unconscious, it’s unlikely that you are even aware exactly how it happens. Thus, discovering how it happens is a critical step in acquiring authentic Agency about whether or not you decide to open the door on the Gremlin emotion.

So, how do you discover how the Gremlin emotion happens? I think there are many ways, but one course of action is this:

Commit two months of your life to mastering the shift from Victim to Researcher, and practice every day tracking your Swamp. When you discover emotions, go through the EHPs. Do a minimum of one EHP per week during this period, but more may be better. You are taking a strong stand to deeply shift your relationship with your Underworld, so hold nothing back for these two months. As the two months come to a close, notice which emotion or emotions just didn’t seem to change that much, despite thorough EHPs. Which brought you to the same memory over and over and over again? Which, despite healing that you sensed in the moment was real and effective, just kept coming back? When you have identified these emotions, reach out to an experienced spaceholder and tell them, “I have discovered a Gremlin emotion. Will you hold space for me to discover how I unconsciously choose to experience this emotion over and over again even after I have done healing about it?”

You may need to go through this process more than once before you really get what is going on. When you do get what is going on, it will change your life. You will see clearly how and when your Gremlin chooses to cross the bridge into the part of your Underworld where the Swamp and the associated Gremlin emotions live. You will see the landscape of this part of your Underworld vividly. You will see the path behind you, the one that leads over the bridge and out of the Underworld, back into Life. You will be able to walk that path and cross that bridge, perhaps for the first time in your life consciously choosing to leave the Swamp. You might even put up barbed wire and a sign at the entrance of the bridge that reads: “BEWARE: SWAMP AHEAD.” When you have done all this, you will have conscious, authentic choice — the ability to choose whether you go to the Swamp or not, and if you do go there, how long you stay. (I thank Christine Duerschner for her clear, gentle spaceholding and navigating as she brought me through a big layer of this process.)

Voices, Trigger Sentences, The Voice Blaster, and Spark 135

Two distinct, though similar, attributes of the Swamp are voices and trigger sentences. Voices are stories you tell yourself that actually come from an external authority figure. These stories can be things like, “I’m too fat,” “I should work out more,” “I need to know the answer,” “No one likes an angry woman,” etc. You might have initially heard these stories from parents, the government, school, commercials, billboards, or similar sources, and over time, you integrated these stories into your Box as Voices.

Trigger sentences, on the other hand, are stories you tell yourself but that you did not hear from an authority figure or anyone else, for that matter. These can be things like, “I’m worthless,” “I’m washed up,” “I can’t…,” “I hate myself,” “I should kill myself,” etc. The origin of trigger sentences is unclear, though during one Possibility Team held by Vera Luísa Franco, a theory emerged that they actually come from inner Low Drama going round and round. Whatever the source is, trigger sentences seem to open a person up to being energetically feasted on by scavenger entities. This is one explanation for why people who constantly repeat trigger sentences to themselves regularly experience low energy or even weeks of otherwise unaccounted for bedrest.

The Voice Blaster is a tool for getting rid of voices. For more information on the Voice Blaster, check out the hyperlink, but the general instruction is that when you hear a voice, you say it aloud audibly (not a whisper), and then say ‘BANG,’ pulling the trigger on your Voice Blaster and leaving the voice a smoldering pile of smithereens.

To handle Trigger Sentences, there is a subtle but powerful process outlined in Spark 135.

I have tried both the Voice Blaster and Spark 135 multiple times. I went to extremes, walking around blasting voices in public, blasting them on planes, collecting nearly 100 trigger sentences, shifting identity into a Trigger Hunter and doing daily sword and rage practice for weeks to close and reclose the Entity Cafe that I seemed to transform myself into each morning anew. I can say that these processes and practices were helpful, and yet… they were missing something for me. For my personal process, I have needed to get closer to the voices and trigger sentences, watching them, getting to know how they work and what their effects are, before voice blasting or trigger hunting were really effective.

Positive Self-Talk and Other Unhelpful Practices

Self-hatred, self-berating, self-cannibalism, and self-abuse are major attributes of the Swamp. It’s logical to think that you can counteract these forces by practicing their opposites. You try things like telling yourself three times a day what you appreciate about yourself. You say aloud in front of the mirror, “I am grateful for how caring you are. I am grateful for what a big heart you have. I love you, I love you, I love. Thank you.” You whisper affirmations like, “I am whole, I am loved, I am cared for,” or “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful,” a la What About Bob?, attempting to override the internal voices that assert the contrary. You even ask friends and colleagues to answer questions like, “What do you value about me? What is the special thing that I bring to the world? What Bright Principles do you see working through me? What do you appreciate about me?” After weeks or months of doing this, does your Swamp go away? Does it come less frequently? Is it less intense?

The answer for me to all of these questions was ‘No.’ I have spoken with others who say the same thing. These practices may have provided temporary relief, but they did not meaningfully accrue into a permanent shift.

How can it be that practices of self-love, etc., don’t work to transform or nullify the Swamp? Here is one answer: If you are a Swamp addict, then at a level far deeper than conscious thought, you (or rather, your Gremlin) are 99.99% committed to keeping the Swamp going. That means that for every one positive affirmation, you unconsciously fire off 9,999 counteracting processes. It’s like dropping a dot of red dye into the ocean hoping that the water will change color. Every once in a while, you might catch one of these unconscious processes, such as noticing that whenever someone appreciates you, you dismiss the appreciation by telling yourself they do not really know what they are talking about, but otherwise, the unconscious commitment to staying in the Swamp remains invisible.

There may be a place for affirmations, positive self-talk, etc., in working with the Swamp, but I do not sense that these things are effective in causing deep, long-term transformation.

Final Words

The terrain of Swamp research is big. If you are making headway with the Swamp or Swamp addiction research, please share your discoveries far and wide.