The Two Dart System. When something bad happens, it as if we are hit by two darts. The bad thing, the pain, is often very real… we can call it the first dart. For example, if we stumble and hit our head, it probably hurts. This is the first dart. If we then think about how unlucky we are, and why couldn’t we have known better, and keep replaying the incident in our head, this is the second dart. The second dart is insidious because we don’t realize that we have control over it