In the conversations I’ve had that fit your definition of Unfolding, there’s been a clear trend where it leads to a realization → realization leads to an exploration of possible solutions → this feels elating and motivating → the next time we connect, the person made no progress and the turmoil unabates.
Making Jake the subject of this trend: his rage comes from a mismatch between his perceived integrity and the lack of agency he’s shown in the face of a tyrant boss → he explores confronting his boss with an ultimatum → this feels motivating because the planning of agentic action feels agentic → the original narrative reasserts itself: “the possibility of speaking it felt out of the question: most likely, his boss wouldn’t get the emotional appeal, he’d be shut down, and things wouldn’t budge.”
I suspect unfolding is augmented by immediately taking action. Conversely, unfolding and subsequently recognizing you haven’t acted on new conclusions can make you worse off: if the picture of your inner battles is sharp enough, repeated inaction makes you feel like a failure. It feels like doing an open book test and still not getting the answer right.
I have found that people will be much more likely to act in their best interests (ie acting after thoroughly exploring a problem + its possible solutions) when they take action either during the unfolding conversation or immediately after. It may be because they experience their highest clarity of mind in recent memory; that lightning bolt of lucidity clears up the tangled mess of lies and narratives, and highlights throughlines between A and B. I feel these moments as blank canvases on which I can inscribe the start of a new narrative, which will be strengthened by repeatedly taking action in line with the new narrative. If nothing is done soon after the moment of unfolding, it seems the overarching narrative prevails.
I will give you two examples in recent memory.
Friend A discusses their ongoing mental health battles with me. We cover well-trodden ground, and I commiserate by sharing my own experiences. Like always, this feels good—we feel like we’re getting somewhere as we discuss potential next steps. We reconvene weeks later to find ourselves in the same patterns. I can confidently say we both unfold in the way you describe: our secret justifications peeled back layer by layer until we get to what feels like a bottom. Almost nothing ever comes from these conversations beyond feeling good, which is okay but not always enough. There are only so many ways one can advise a friend to seek professional help.
Last time we chatted, they asked me whether I keep our conversational positivity from slipping away the following morning. I replied I’d only ever achieved progress by acting immediately on the conversational high. Whatever I have put off lately I do immediately after the conversation has ended. It could be messaging someone on the way back home or moving forward with a tough decision in that instant. I take full advantage of the lightning bolt before it fizzles out, in the hope that positive outcomes will carry the clarity further in time. The next morning, Friend A told me they had booked an appointment with a mental health specialist as soon as we parted ways, and that they had gotten done what was previously in the “maybe someday” category for over a year.
Your description of Jake’s situation with his boss is so close to mine that its relatability spurred me to comment. If you remember Jake’s situation, consider mine extremely similar. A few months back, I chose to look elsewhere while still working on the company. Except I haven’t really looked elsewhere in that time, which I justified with a slew of half reasonable arguments. When I “unfold” the whys, I usually feel good in the moment, then do nothing about it.
Cue to me chatting to a family member about this, and they start to unravel my weak arguments. They honed in on personality traits that lead to my avoidant behavior and pointed out opportunities that I wouldn’t touch for unconvincing reasons. They told me I should act immediately. It felt rough in the moment, but also motivating. I also knew I would lose this motivation by next morning, so I immediately reached out to a few people and booked in-person events in the following weeks. I am now thankful I did this, because it would have taken me a long time to do these things separately had I not acted swiftly.
Jake may be at risk of feeling worse if he stops his unfolding short of taking action. Presumably if Jake wants to tell his boss “if you don’t want to do this, I will need to leave” then he is ready to draw a line in the sand. The justification of inaction that follows, whereby “he’d be shut down, and things wouldn’t budge” is a strong sign that he should communicate his feelings the next time he feels the lucidity of unfolding. If the unfolding uncovered integrity and agency as the motivators, their exercise is paramount to Jake closing the loop.
Thanks for the insightful comment! There are a few good points I want to highlight here:
Unfolding is emotionally powerful and can lead to the “highest clarity of mind in recent memory”
Yet it’s difficult to make real progress with unfolding
Backsliding / not making progress can lead to a negative feedback loop where “repeated inaction makes you feel like a failure”
Taking action quickly is a good way to not backslide
I think this correct, and there are two things I want to add to this to help connect these ideas to a bigger picture of healing over time:
The first is about the correlation of wellbeing and insight. You describe speaking to a friend and finding “elating and motivating” possibilities. One part of this is that putting two minds together helps with unfolding. But there’s also the fact that being with someone socially feels great and charges emotional batteries. Being in this well-resourced place allows looking at problems and seeing new possibilities, and having the emotional bandwidth to believe its possible to act in new ways. I.e. agency and wellbeing go together; stuckness and anxiety/depression go together.
So the trick, really, is to create a positive feedback loop over time of increasing wellbeing --> more insight --> more action --> greater agency.
The second is that there is meta-skill in learning to remember and act on the insights of unfolding. A friend described it through the following metaphor:
You’re walking down a street and fall into a pothole. This is something that has happened to you before, many, many, times.
Eventually, you learn that you can get out of the pothole on your own. This is amazing, and you’re surprised that being in or out of the pot is a choice!
Eventually, you learn that you can use the same techniques to get out of the pothole each time. This gets faster and faster, and while some holes are bigger than others, you’re gaining confidence that falling into a pothole isn’t the end of the world.
Eventually, you learn that you can avoid potholes and not fall in at all. Over time, potholes become less and less frequent (and at this point when you fall in, you get out very quickly).
Eventually, the road becomes so wide that that majority of your life is pothole-free.
These are “stages” (bigger, more permanent shifts) rather than “states” (momentary elation / inspiration).
Your examples are good because they show what it looks like to kick off the healing feedback loop of going up stages. And they also imply what can happen in the opposite case, of the destructive feedback loop of stuckness/pain.
In the conversations I’ve had that fit your definition of Unfolding, there’s been a clear trend where it leads to a realization → realization leads to an exploration of possible solutions → this feels elating and motivating → the next time we connect, the person made no progress and the turmoil unabates.
Making Jake the subject of this trend: his rage comes from a mismatch between his perceived integrity and the lack of agency he’s shown in the face of a tyrant boss → he explores confronting his boss with an ultimatum → this feels motivating because the planning of agentic action feels agentic → the original narrative reasserts itself: “the possibility of speaking it felt out of the question: most likely, his boss wouldn’t get the emotional appeal, he’d be shut down, and things wouldn’t budge.”
I suspect unfolding is augmented by immediately taking action. Conversely, unfolding and subsequently recognizing you haven’t acted on new conclusions can make you worse off: if the picture of your inner battles is sharp enough, repeated inaction makes you feel like a failure. It feels like doing an open book test and still not getting the answer right.
I have found that people will be much more likely to act in their best interests (ie acting after thoroughly exploring a problem + its possible solutions) when they take action either during the unfolding conversation or immediately after. It may be because they experience their highest clarity of mind in recent memory; that lightning bolt of lucidity clears up the tangled mess of lies and narratives, and highlights throughlines between A and B. I feel these moments as blank canvases on which I can inscribe the start of a new narrative, which will be strengthened by repeatedly taking action in line with the new narrative. If nothing is done soon after the moment of unfolding, it seems the overarching narrative prevails.
I will give you two examples in recent memory.
Friend A discusses their ongoing mental health battles with me. We cover well-trodden ground, and I commiserate by sharing my own experiences. Like always, this feels good—we feel like we’re getting somewhere as we discuss potential next steps. We reconvene weeks later to find ourselves in the same patterns. I can confidently say we both unfold in the way you describe: our secret justifications peeled back layer by layer until we get to what feels like a bottom. Almost nothing ever comes from these conversations beyond feeling good, which is okay but not always enough. There are only so many ways one can advise a friend to seek professional help.
Last time we chatted, they asked me whether I keep our conversational positivity from slipping away the following morning. I replied I’d only ever achieved progress by acting immediately on the conversational high. Whatever I have put off lately I do immediately after the conversation has ended. It could be messaging someone on the way back home or moving forward with a tough decision in that instant. I take full advantage of the lightning bolt before it fizzles out, in the hope that positive outcomes will carry the clarity further in time. The next morning, Friend A told me they had booked an appointment with a mental health specialist as soon as we parted ways, and that they had gotten done what was previously in the “maybe someday” category for over a year.
Your description of Jake’s situation with his boss is so close to mine that its relatability spurred me to comment. If you remember Jake’s situation, consider mine extremely similar. A few months back, I chose to look elsewhere while still working on the company. Except I haven’t really looked elsewhere in that time, which I justified with a slew of half reasonable arguments. When I “unfold” the whys, I usually feel good in the moment, then do nothing about it.
Cue to me chatting to a family member about this, and they start to unravel my weak arguments. They honed in on personality traits that lead to my avoidant behavior and pointed out opportunities that I wouldn’t touch for unconvincing reasons. They told me I should act immediately. It felt rough in the moment, but also motivating. I also knew I would lose this motivation by next morning, so I immediately reached out to a few people and booked in-person events in the following weeks. I am now thankful I did this, because it would have taken me a long time to do these things separately had I not acted swiftly.
Jake may be at risk of feeling worse if he stops his unfolding short of taking action. Presumably if Jake wants to tell his boss “if you don’t want to do this, I will need to leave” then he is ready to draw a line in the sand. The justification of inaction that follows, whereby “he’d be shut down, and things wouldn’t budge” is a strong sign that he should communicate his feelings the next time he feels the lucidity of unfolding. If the unfolding uncovered integrity and agency as the motivators, their exercise is paramount to Jake closing the loop.
Thanks for the insightful comment! There are a few good points I want to highlight here:
Unfolding is emotionally powerful and can lead to the “highest clarity of mind in recent memory”
Yet it’s difficult to make real progress with unfolding
Backsliding / not making progress can lead to a negative feedback loop where “repeated inaction makes you feel like a failure”
Taking action quickly is a good way to not backslide
I think this correct, and there are two things I want to add to this to help connect these ideas to a bigger picture of healing over time:
The first is about the correlation of wellbeing and insight. You describe speaking to a friend and finding “elating and motivating” possibilities. One part of this is that putting two minds together helps with unfolding. But there’s also the fact that being with someone socially feels great and charges emotional batteries. Being in this well-resourced place allows looking at problems and seeing new possibilities, and having the emotional bandwidth to believe its possible to act in new ways. I.e. agency and wellbeing go together; stuckness and anxiety/depression go together.
So the trick, really, is to create a positive feedback loop over time of increasing wellbeing --> more insight --> more action --> greater agency.
The second is that there is meta-skill in learning to remember and act on the insights of unfolding. A friend described it through the following metaphor:
These are “stages” (bigger, more permanent shifts) rather than “states” (momentary elation / inspiration).
Your examples are good because they show what it looks like to kick off the healing feedback loop of going up stages. And they also imply what can happen in the opposite case, of the destructive feedback loop of stuckness/pain.