At poker Monday night I played pretty well for a while, meaning I was careful with position and played the player before the cards. Then a couple of players left and another joined and the game changed and I did not adapt, or maybe I did but in the wrong direction, and I played poorly for some time and bluffed away a lot of money. When I took a moment to explore how I felt, I noticed I was in a cloud of unhappiness, all angry and red. There was a certain familiarity to the feeling. I'd been there before.
I awoke the next morning at 5 when the dog began whining for her breakfast, and immediately a thought came up, a reflection on, or more accurately, through, the previous night's game. It fell into place with a click, like a puzzle piece finding its home.
The problem isn't that I lack the tools. It's that I actively but unconsciously engage in self-defeating behaviors. I don't play badly because I don't know better. I play badly because losing confirms something I want, on some level, to see confirmed.