Another way to look at these statements is to ask what the proof is that the statement is true. If I were called to testify in a court of law, what evidence could I give for my beliefs about the situation? I know this sounds a bit silly, but I realized that some of my proof was that our friends agreed with me. But did I really ask for their honest opinion, or was I seeking help in soothing my hurt feelings? During the course of my inquiry, I called a mutual friend. “Remember when Mary just stopped talking to me?” I asked her. She hesitated. I pushed. “Don’t you remember how all of a sudden she turned on me?”

After a bit of prompting, my friend said, “Well, I don’t think it was actually so sudden. I remember she started pulling away, and it was hard for you. Remember how she stopped going to lunch with all of us? I think part of the reason was that she needed a little distance from you.”

I felt as if I had been shown a tape of a situation, and the images playing on the screen were completely different than my memory of them. Maybe the breakdown in our friendship hadn’t been so sudden. Of course I remember her not going to lunch with the group, but it had never occurred to me that I was the reason. She had said she was too busy. And she had still called me whenever she needed help. But apparently others saw that she was pulling away from me. Worse, when I asked my friends for feedback about the situation, they could tell that I was asking for comfort, not truth.

Changing Reality After the Fact

I was seeing the power of my self-deception as I went through this process. There are other steps in Katie’s process that may be helpful to some, but the most powerful piece for me was yet to come. After all the testing for truth in “The Work,” Katie then suggests a final step, called “The Turnaround.” Turning the remaining statements around is an incredibly powerful but very difficult part of the process. I can’t do it effectively without much prayer and prompting by the Holy Spirit. So I enter what is called “The Turnaround” only after I have asked the Lord to guide me through it.

Whatever statements remain are now turned around. For example, Mary wasn’t very loyal to me is turned around to I wasn’t very loyal to Mary. My immediate reaction to this was denial and even a bit of frustration. Of course I was loyal to Mary. So I prayed, “Lord, show me if there was ever a time I wasn’t loyal to Mary.” I really meant it, and the Lord answered my prayer. I remembered a time when I had told another friend I couldn’t be somewhere because I had to help Mary. Wow. All of a sudden, I realized that I said things like that to make myself look needed. But was that fair to Mary? Wasn’t I possibly making her look needy,
weak, and vulnerable? It hit me like a ton of bricks. Statement after statement, when I prayed and asked God to show me, turned out to be true of me more than Mary.