Design for Disaster

1. Hide the truth. Keep your emotions, ideas, and behavior carefully hidden. Reveal just enough to keep people guessing. Play the word game with your sponsor, doctor, or minister. This can be prolonged for years and can even be fun.


2. Blame others. Whatever your predicament, it's somebody else's fault and responsibility. Start with standard scapegoats like your parents, spouse, brothers, and sisters; expand to include your boss, friends, psychiatrists, and Congress.


3. Threaten. If you don't get your way, threaten to break things, run away, or hurt someone. Best threat is suicide. Remember, the threat is the name of the game. You get no points for carrying it out.


4. Nurse your guilt. Increase it by continuing to do things you know you shouldn't do.


5. Invoke the Deity. When anyone gets too close to the truth about what you've been up to, call for a time of prayer and devotions. Any reference to God will throw others off the track.


6. Assume people are out to get you. It's only logical. If everyone is like you, they're all out to get what they can. Beat them to the draw.


7. Nurse resentments. Face it--people are always doing little things to annoy you and tear you down. Nurture all grudges in your mind and heart. Avoid checking your ideas with reality. Under a thick skin of secrecy, a little pinprick of annoyance can grow to a festering sore of madness.