Dear Monica:

Regarding the fantasy, you asked: “are you suggesting to STOP looking or keeping those things?
or do you have any other suggestions or advices that might work to stop the fantasy?”-

I am not suggesting to stop fantasy cold turkey. It is not this or that; it is both, the fantasy and enduring distress. You do the exercise I did yesterday at one time and at another time you do your fantasy. Over time when you get experience and succeed in the relaxing into your distress, you will not have the need to resort to fantasy.

Regarding lashing out- you can’t stop that cold turkey either. Over time, as you experience success in relaxing into your distress, bringing it into your awareness and relaxing, you will experience more calm and way less rage.

It is like this, your blood is to be drawn by a nurse with a needle. You get all tense and as the nurse inserts the needle it hurts a lot. You think to yourself: it hurts a whole lot to have a needle in my arm!

Another day, you have your blood drawn, a nurse with a needle. You get all tense. The nurse says: relax, relax your arm. It will hurt less, you will see. You relax and to your surprise it hardly hurt! How can that be, you wonder- well, you relaxed into it.

You missed a class, that was your needle. It hurt and you got all tense, reacting with fantasy and anger (maybe saying to yourself: look what you did, you ruined everything!)

Then you slept, that is, you relaxed and it didn’t hurt anymore.

anita