Interpersonal Strategy and Associated Irrational Ideas

The "cognitive part" of character is the system an individual builds to understand and give meaning to experiences. Humans need coherence to navigate relationships with others and themselves, and to build a stable identity. However, since learning is guided by passionate drives and must be adapted to the relational system in which one lives, the ability to "know" and interpret facts is partial and distorted, as if the visual field were narrowed to include only manageable and recognizable elements.

With psychological and intellectual development, interpretations form a constellation arising from the distorted cognitive core (the fixation), which includes numerous beliefs disconnected from reality testing (the irrational ideas). The individual operates within an entirely subjective value system, a personal philosophy of life, believed to correspond to objective reality.

The Sexual 6 builds its identity from the conviction of defending against the other's attack, lurking in every corner. Several expressions of common sense define this philosophy of life: "The best defense is an attack," "your best friend can become your worst enemy," and so on.

As explained, the basic cognitive distortion of E6 is self-rejection, which, in the case of the counterphobic, manifests as attributing to the other the blame for one's own suffering of being rejected. It is a projection onto the other of self-rejection, to avoid contact with low self-esteem actually experienced as self-contempt for one's own falsehood, weakness, and dependency.

Projecting the threat and aggressive punishment onto the environment allows the counterphobic to calm down, thinking that the other is bad and wrong; in short, the culprit of errors or damages. Self-rejection is thus displaced to the external world through a massive, automatic, and constant process of accusation (another term that defines this fixation).

The future Sexual 6 child learns that the most important thing is to save one's own skin and that if others are guilty, one can sleep peacefully: mom will not destroy them, nocturnal

ghosts will not come, and perhaps they can reward themselves by doing something nice. In this way, an ambivalent sense of identity is built, which includes an internal feeling of precariousness, timidity, and self-loathing, well protected by a rigid exterior that shows security, attacks or defends, explains its reasons, and expects everyone to confirm righteous behavior and intelligent thinking.