"But some feelings are real problems"

Now the objection that matters most, and I want to give it its full weight. Some of what you feel isn't a lull. It's a real problem. The tension at six is about the conversation you're not having with your partner. The flat Sunday is about a job you should have left two years ago. Sitting with those for ten minutes isn't wisdom. It's doing nothing about a real thing.

Yes. And here the remedy does its most expensive work, because a feeling that's information gets covered along with the ones that aren't. The wine at six covers the flat half hour and it also covers the conversation. The phone in the queue covers the boredom and it also covers the thing you were about to think about the job. The remedy doesn't check what it's covering. It covers everything at a two, and some of the twos were the beginning of a thought you needed to have.

So the method has two lists, not one. The first list is feelings to ride. The flicker from a lull, the awkwardness in a queue, the flatness of an unplanned hour. These have no information in them. They're weather. You name them and let them pass, and they do. The second list is feelings that are answers waiting to be asked. The tension that comes back every evening at the same time. The flatness that arrives with Monday. The low that follows every visit to a particular person. These have Verduyn's reappearance built into them, because the cause keeps coming back, and they won't pass with ten minutes because they're not waves. They're tides, with something under them.

How do you tell which list a feeling is on? Two questions. Does it come back at the same time, with the same cause? And when you name it, is there a second word behind the first? "Flat" and nothing behind it is the first list. "Flat, about work" is the second. The feelings on the second list need an answer, and chapter 20 is about answers. The remedy is not one. The remedy is what stops you finding out that there was a question.

I'd add that the second list is usually shorter than the first, by a long way. Most of the day's flickers are weather. But the remedy treats them all the same, and the two or three that weren't get lost among the thirty that were.