Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so

"No one can humiliate you without your permission" (Eleanor Rooseveldt)

In CBT and similar approaches between external event and internal emotional response there is the interpretive, meaning making faculty of the mind. "He / they made me feel dirty..." "She hurt me" "You're making me angry.."...all of these statements demonstrate the principle of false causation. It is your - and my -unquestioned thoughts about the external event which leave us feeling sad, heavy, tense, hurt, angry, numb, resentful or the opposite - light, easy, relaxed, open, alive.

This is why two people can respond completely differently to the same external event, and experience opposite emotional reactions.

When Shakespeare said nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so he meant it, and with no exceptions. Violence, disease, death, the end of relationships, accidents, amputations - all of these have hidden blessings and their meaning in our lives shifts depending upon which set of thoughts we have about them. Gam zoo letovah - "also this is for the good", it says in the Talmud, i.e something that at first seems like a terrible tragedy may slowly or quickly reveal itself as a gift, if we are open enough to receive it. Perhps this is also a reason the Talmud says a person

That this is so is experientially verifiable. It puts people firmly back in the driving seat, able to generate an internal contentment irrespective of what happens and how it initially differed from our expectations ( really demands) of how Life and people "should be".

But people give this power away to others - treat me right and I'll be happy, treat me (what I consider) bad and I'll be sad. These are the mind forged manacles Blake writes about, and these are the mind forged manacles Victor Frankl threw aside in the concentration camps.