Written Eugene Morgan
“You don’t want a charming movie to end, you don’t want a flower to wilt, but you do like reality.” Milton Erickson
Sometimes, we like to keep our fantasies alive. In fact, some of us would rather live inside our heads. We create fantasies because we are trying to fulfill an unmet need. In the quote above, is an example of Erickson trying to return the subject, he was talking with, back to reality.
Reality is where we can get our unmet needs met, not in dreams or fantasies. When we get thirsty, we don’t have to fantasize about getting an ice-cold drink of water, instead we can get up and go to the kitchen and pour ourselves a glass of water. A useful fantasies is when we’re in the middle of the desert with only a short supply of water. Knowing we would have to ration the water so it would last long enough to find more water. But in the meantime, we can fantasize about drinking as much water to quench our thirst as we wish.