—The realization that I have a systematic distortion in my mental evaluation of plans, making actions seem less promising than they are. When I’m deciding whether to do stuff, I can apply a conscious correction to this, to arrive at a properly calibrated judgment.
—The realization that, in general, my thinking can have systematic distortions, and that I shouldn’t believe everything I think. This is basic less-wrong style rationalism, but it took years to work through all the actual consequences on me.
This is useful. Now that I think about it, I do this. Specifically, I have extremely unrealistic assumptions about how much I can do, such that these are impossible to accomplish. And then I feel bad for not accomplishing the thing.
I haven’t tried to be mindful of that. The problem is that this is I think mainly subconscious. I don’t think things like “I am dumb” or “I am a failure” basically at all. At least not in explicit language. I might have accidentally suppressed these and thought I had now succeeded in not being harsh to myself. But maybe I only moved it to the subconscious level where it is harder to debug.
I would highly recommend getting someone else to debug your subconscious for you. At least it worked for me. I don’t think it would be possible for me to have debugged myself.
My first therapist was highly directive. He’d say stuff like “Try noticing when you think X, and asking yourself what happened immediately before that. Report back next week.” And listing agenda items and drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. As an engineer, I loved it. My second therapist was more in the “providing supportive comments while I talk about my life” school. I don’t think that helped much, at least subjectively from the inside.
Here‘s a possibly instructive anecdote about my first therapist. Near the end of a session, I feel like my mind has been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction. It’s a sensation I’ve never had before. So I say, “Wow, my mind feels like it’s been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction. How do you do that?” He says, “Do you want me to explain?” And I say, “Does it still work if I know what you’re doing?” And he says, “Possibly not, but it’s important you feel I’m trustworthy, so I’ll explain if you want.” So I say “Why mess with success? Keep doing the thing. I trust you.” That’s an example of a debugging procedure you can’t do to yourself.
This is useful. Now that I think about it, I do this. Specifically, I have extremely unrealistic assumptions about how much I can do, such that these are impossible to accomplish. And then I feel bad for not accomplishing the thing.
I haven’t tried to be mindful of that. The problem is that this is I think mainly subconscious. I don’t think things like “I am dumb” or “I am a failure” basically at all. At least not in explicit language. I might have accidentally suppressed these and thought I had now succeeded in not being harsh to myself. But maybe I only moved it to the subconscious level where it is harder to debug.
I would highly recommend getting someone else to debug your subconscious for you. At least it worked for me. I don’t think it would be possible for me to have debugged myself.
My first therapist was highly directive. He’d say stuff like “Try noticing when you think X, and asking yourself what happened immediately before that. Report back next week.” And listing agenda items and drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. As an engineer, I loved it. My second therapist was more in the “providing supportive comments while I talk about my life” school. I don’t think that helped much, at least subjectively from the inside.
Here‘s a possibly instructive anecdote about my first therapist. Near the end of a session, I feel like my mind has been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction. It’s a sensation I’ve never had before. So I say, “Wow, my mind feels like it’s been stretched in some heretofore-unknown direction. How do you do that?” He says, “Do you want me to explain?” And I say, “Does it still work if I know what you’re doing?” And he says, “Possibly not, but it’s important you feel I’m trustworthy, so I’ll explain if you want.” So I say “Why mess with success? Keep doing the thing. I trust you.” That’s an example of a debugging procedure you can’t do to yourself.