Wanna have a call some time to chat about this! Really exciting to see others think about these things! :-D
It seems likely to me that one of the greatest challenges in encouraging change is that it is difficult for people to have the kinds of life experiences that shift their perceived values regarding cooperation, emotional safety, idealism, and attachment.
Yeah, on both the avoidant and the preoccupied side, there’s a lack of trust in others. Either along the lines of, “No one must know how weak/flawed/bad I really am, or they’ll banish me as punishment,” or “All these assholes are out to get me, so I need to stay one step ahead of them and never reveal any of my weaknesses.” In the preoccupied case, everyone else is judge, jury, and executioner; in the avoidant case everyone is an enemy.
But additionally, especially in the first case, you’re your own judge, jury, and executioner too, so even getting to the point where one can think the above thoughts is hard.
My hope has been that just by demonstrating that I can think and express things that are similar (hopefully) to what they’re experiencing and make it sound as normal as possible, I can create the kind of safety where they can at least allow themselves to think them.
I think that can work, but if they’re very disgusted with these parts of themselves, it can also backfire and cause them to become disgusted with me for displaying or accepting these parts. A friend of mine who had this problem had a therapist who did basically the opposite of what I would do. The therapist remained perfectly neutral and probably did the blank slate thing that therapists used to do more often, so on the one hand the experience was more scary for my friend as a result, but she didn’t run into the disgust issue. But her recovery took some 8 years, which is pretty slow, so overall, a less conservative approach might be better.
I imagine it’s all quite similar to parenting. Amanda Diekman (Low-Demand Parenting) also writes that she prioritizes a trusting relationship between her and her children over almost everything else. Once a parent manages to win the trust of their child, many other things can flow from that because the child is no longer locked inside only their own mind. I’ve heard the term “epistemic trust” in this context.
Contemporary society makes both pathways difficult to access, and many of these traits also involve behaviors that steer people away from those opportunities in the first place.
What do you mean by this?
Riffing off how this article explores different expressions of sovereignism, narcissism, and echoism across different attachment styles and contexts, I wonder whether some people also express these traits differently depending on whether they are evaluating themselves, other people, or social norms. I’ve noticed differences between what people feel comfortable expressing themselves, what they value or expect from other people, and what they perceive as baseline expectations or social norms.
Yeah, I’d be down for a call sometime ^^. I’ll take a look at your calendar.
Oh, it’s cool you mentioned Amanda Diekman. I was looking into polyvagal and PDA parenting books for a while last year while trying to understand how children (and people generally) with extreme neurotypes or trauma can be optimally accommodated and have their needs modeled.
Yeah, speaking in a nonjudgmental, descriptive, and empathetic manner makes sense for reaching out to people generally. Though, yeah, there’s only so much literature can do for people if they’re self-loathing and have a lot of aversion to the topic.
Contemporary society makes both pathways difficult to access, and many of these traits also involve behaviors that steer people away from those opportunities in the first place.
I meant that a lot of economic and social structures reward pathological versions of echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism. I also meant that, in contemporary Western society, people are fairly siloed off, and if someone doesn’t already have relevant skills or connections, it can be difficult to access on-ramps to social groups that model healthy intimacy and healthy self- and world-modeling. Lastly, I also meant that intensely pathological versions of these traits tend to push away people who might otherwise offer long-term modeling or positive experiences.
Riffing off how this article explores different expressions of sovereignism, narcissism, and echoism across different attachment styles and contexts, I wonder whether some people also express these traits differently depending on whether they are evaluating themselves, other people, or social norms. I’ve noticed differences between what people feel comfortable expressing themselves, what they value or expect from other people, and what they perceive as baseline expectations or social norms.
This is something I’m still tinkering with in terms of how to formulate and contextualize it, but I can elaborate on it in a rough form. I’ve noticed polarizing differences in the kinds of communication and value judgments that people find comforting. I think this can be broken down into three kinds of people with different primary preferences: moralizers, stabilizers, and challengers. This split doesn’t map particularly cleanly onto echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism, but it seems to capture a lot of overlapping phenomena. I suspect these preferences arise from underlying game-theoretic preferences in establishing in-groups and out-groups, along with the resulting antagonism and standard-setting.
Furthermore, these three kinds of people don’t necessarily prefer interacting only with people like themselves. On one hand, there are moralizers who most appreciate input and social norms constructed with other moralizers and find challengers and stabilizers stressful. On the other hand, there are also moralizers who prefer a contrasting collaboration with challengers. I think all of the possible dyadic combinations are observable in people and establish different optimal practices in terms of expressing opinions and articulating goals.
In terms of specific examples, the neutral, third-party, default therapist approach you described your friend receiving would fit the stabilizer-stabilizer dyad. This may serve people who value that dyad particularly well while being less effective for people who value other dyads. I think this framework can be applied to communities at large, too. For example, I suspect the rationalist community tends to lean toward the values of the moralizer-challenger dyad. This often looks like argumentative and strongly worded descriptions of particular value systems that establish clear in-groups and out-groups, with those clear standards of value paired with bluntly phrased evaluations of power, violence, rewards and loss.
At the same time, the way these dyadic values are expressed can look very different depending on people’s political and social beliefs. For example, fundamentalist Christian and Marxist communities could both primarily express moralizer-challenger dyad values despite having radically different belief systems. My model would aim to predict individuals’ relative comfort with particular forms of conflict and problem formulation, while treating this as secondary in importance to the impact of differing social and political beliefs. One potential use would be explaining why two people with approximately similar values nevertheless find each other’s ways of evaluating issues aggravating. The framework could also help identify collaborators who are likely to be stable and fulfilling over the long term, as well as explain persistent social tensions or recurring difficulties addressing particular issues within specific communities or institutions.
Interesting, thanks! How would you define moralizers, stabilizers, and challengers?
I feel like “economic and social structures reward pathological versions of echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism” is a minor factor. Most of life sucks as a result of those adaptations, and when they come in handy in some situations (that probably resemble typical childhood situations), it doesn’t offset how much they suck in all other situations. But there’s the combined problem that people have had these adaptations from early on and so don’t know anything better, don’t know what they’re missing out on, and that the steps that would lead in the direction of healing feel like suicide.
Maybe we need more content that contrasts secure, non-disordered ways to engage with the world against disordered ways (but in an authentic, nuanced, relatable way) to drive home the effectiveness of the first?
I agree that quality of life is horrible with these adaptations, and social rewards don’t counter that enough to offset it. Maybe “reward” is the wrong word for describing how I think it works. Some hegemonic societal structures contain messaging that significantly reinforces shame, distorted self- and world-concepts, and perceptions of threat. This incentivizes not letting go of pathological adaptations. Sometimes, in the case of communities that actively value exploitation, domination, or dehumanization, this involves the idea that letting go of certain mindsets or practices would be disloyal to an in-group. I agree with the point that this conditioning still does not improve people’s crappy quality of life, and that people who have these pathological adaptations often cannot perceive or internalize what they’re missing out on. I agree that content which positively models the alternative can help some people. I do think some recent popular shows do this well. I’m a big fan of shows that do this! (leans cartoons like owl house cuz I’m a geek tho)
I’m still working out how to best define it, but here’s one potential way of defining it:
Moralizers are people interested in framing goals and rewards in ways they believe will maximize benefit for both their in-group and out-groups. This isn’t necessarily compassionate, just, or liberatory. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, believe they’re doing this while pushing conversion therapy on LGBT people. This process of maximization tends to come with an interest in optimizing toward generalized ideals. It often looks like creating systems and policies for high standards of performance towards what they consider ideal for society and a greater good. Despite the name, this doesn’t have to involve a moralistic, legalistic presentation. Someone can be opposed to puritanical, black-and-white, harsh application of rules while still being interested in continual, principled, proactive evaluation of how they and others should behave optimally.
Stabilizers are people interested in what they believe will balance loss for both their in-group and out-groups. Compared to the other styles, there’s a greater focus on comfort, harmony in an environment, and not framing judgments or actions as proactively antagonistic. The manifestations of this can range widely. One example is exploitation of others fueled by apathetic justifications that pay lip service to notions of what they need to feel comfortable. Another, more idealized representation would be balanced, skillful diplomacy that facilitates peace and releases long-held tensions between two groups.
Challengers are people interested in what they believe will maximize gain for their in-group, including cases where an out-group’s losing resources benefits their in-group. They’re interested in winning. This is likely the style most correlated with psychopathy and narcissism, but it doesn’t necessarily have to manifest stereotypically that way. In healthier examples, this is often just a blunter style of describing problems. One interested in being a realist and boldly confronting people about whether situations will lead to desired outcomes.
I think a useful way to conceptualize this is that someone has a personal primary style and a secondary style, which is then further shaped by an externalized “ideal other” they value collaborating with to create social norms. These additional variables would shift the general behavioral presentation a lot. How this manifests will also often be secondary to the particular values and models someone holds, and to what their community enforces.
What someone “is,” to me, is their artificially neutral and isolated stress-response style. I suspect this would also likely line up with their autonomous, empowered, preferred way of framing problems. I would hope this could be useful for identifying comfortable collaborators and understanding conflicts in framing a problem with people with similar values otherwise. It may also help with tailoring responses to disagreements. However, people’s actual behavior and situationally expressed preferences can be more shaped by external pressures. Even so, this way of framing people can still be useful for identifying the structure of someone’s beliefs, even if their deeper personality structure isn’t perceivable.
Wanna have a call some time to chat about this! Really exciting to see others think about these things! :-D
Yeah, on both the avoidant and the preoccupied side, there’s a lack of trust in others. Either along the lines of, “No one must know how weak/flawed/bad I really am, or they’ll banish me as punishment,” or “All these assholes are out to get me, so I need to stay one step ahead of them and never reveal any of my weaknesses.” In the preoccupied case, everyone else is judge, jury, and executioner; in the avoidant case everyone is an enemy.
But additionally, especially in the first case, you’re your own judge, jury, and executioner too, so even getting to the point where one can think the above thoughts is hard.
My hope has been that just by demonstrating that I can think and express things that are similar (hopefully) to what they’re experiencing and make it sound as normal as possible, I can create the kind of safety where they can at least allow themselves to think them.
I think that can work, but if they’re very disgusted with these parts of themselves, it can also backfire and cause them to become disgusted with me for displaying or accepting these parts. A friend of mine who had this problem had a therapist who did basically the opposite of what I would do. The therapist remained perfectly neutral and probably did the blank slate thing that therapists used to do more often, so on the one hand the experience was more scary for my friend as a result, but she didn’t run into the disgust issue. But her recovery took some 8 years, which is pretty slow, so overall, a less conservative approach might be better.
I imagine it’s all quite similar to parenting. Amanda Diekman (Low-Demand Parenting) also writes that she prioritizes a trusting relationship between her and her children over almost everything else. Once a parent manages to win the trust of their child, many other things can flow from that because the child is no longer locked inside only their own mind. I’ve heard the term “epistemic trust” in this context.
What do you mean by this?
And this – do you have examples?
Yeah, I’d be down for a call sometime ^^. I’ll take a look at your calendar.
Oh, it’s cool you mentioned Amanda Diekman. I was looking into polyvagal and PDA parenting books for a while last year while trying to understand how children (and people generally) with extreme neurotypes or trauma can be optimally accommodated and have their needs modeled.
Yeah, speaking in a nonjudgmental, descriptive, and empathetic manner makes sense for reaching out to people generally. Though, yeah, there’s only so much literature can do for people if they’re self-loathing and have a lot of aversion to the topic.
I meant that a lot of economic and social structures reward pathological versions of echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism. I also meant that, in contemporary Western society, people are fairly siloed off, and if someone doesn’t already have relevant skills or connections, it can be difficult to access on-ramps to social groups that model healthy intimacy and healthy self- and world-modeling. Lastly, I also meant that intensely pathological versions of these traits tend to push away people who might otherwise offer long-term modeling or positive experiences.
This is something I’m still tinkering with in terms of how to formulate and contextualize it, but I can elaborate on it in a rough form. I’ve noticed polarizing differences in the kinds of communication and value judgments that people find comforting. I think this can be broken down into three kinds of people with different primary preferences: moralizers, stabilizers, and challengers. This split doesn’t map particularly cleanly onto echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism, but it seems to capture a lot of overlapping phenomena. I suspect these preferences arise from underlying game-theoretic preferences in establishing in-groups and out-groups, along with the resulting antagonism and standard-setting.
Furthermore, these three kinds of people don’t necessarily prefer interacting only with people like themselves. On one hand, there are moralizers who most appreciate input and social norms constructed with other moralizers and find challengers and stabilizers stressful. On the other hand, there are also moralizers who prefer a contrasting collaboration with challengers. I think all of the possible dyadic combinations are observable in people and establish different optimal practices in terms of expressing opinions and articulating goals.
In terms of specific examples, the neutral, third-party, default therapist approach you described your friend receiving would fit the stabilizer-stabilizer dyad. This may serve people who value that dyad particularly well while being less effective for people who value other dyads. I think this framework can be applied to communities at large, too. For example, I suspect the rationalist community tends to lean toward the values of the moralizer-challenger dyad. This often looks like argumentative and strongly worded descriptions of particular value systems that establish clear in-groups and out-groups, with those clear standards of value paired with bluntly phrased evaluations of power, violence, rewards and loss.
At the same time, the way these dyadic values are expressed can look very different depending on people’s political and social beliefs. For example, fundamentalist Christian and Marxist communities could both primarily express moralizer-challenger dyad values despite having radically different belief systems. My model would aim to predict individuals’ relative comfort with particular forms of conflict and problem formulation, while treating this as secondary in importance to the impact of differing social and political beliefs. One potential use would be explaining why two people with approximately similar values nevertheless find each other’s ways of evaluating issues aggravating. The framework could also help identify collaborators who are likely to be stable and fulfilling over the long term, as well as explain persistent social tensions or recurring difficulties addressing particular issues within specific communities or institutions.
Interesting, thanks! How would you define moralizers, stabilizers, and challengers?
I feel like “economic and social structures reward pathological versions of echoism, sovereignism, and narcissism” is a minor factor. Most of life sucks as a result of those adaptations, and when they come in handy in some situations (that probably resemble typical childhood situations), it doesn’t offset how much they suck in all other situations. But there’s the combined problem that people have had these adaptations from early on and so don’t know anything better, don’t know what they’re missing out on, and that the steps that would lead in the direction of healing feel like suicide.
Maybe we need more content that contrasts secure, non-disordered ways to engage with the world against disordered ways (but in an authentic, nuanced, relatable way) to drive home the effectiveness of the first?
I agree that quality of life is horrible with these adaptations, and social rewards don’t counter that enough to offset it. Maybe “reward” is the wrong word for describing how I think it works. Some hegemonic societal structures contain messaging that significantly reinforces shame, distorted self- and world-concepts, and perceptions of threat. This incentivizes not letting go of pathological adaptations. Sometimes, in the case of communities that actively value exploitation, domination, or dehumanization, this involves the idea that letting go of certain mindsets or practices would be disloyal to an in-group. I agree with the point that this conditioning still does not improve people’s crappy quality of life, and that people who have these pathological adaptations often cannot perceive or internalize what they’re missing out on. I agree that content which positively models the alternative can help some people. I do think some recent popular shows do this well. I’m a big fan of shows that do this! (leans cartoons like owl house cuz I’m a geek tho)
I’m still working out how to best define it, but here’s one potential way of defining it:
Moralizers are people interested in framing goals and rewards in ways they believe will maximize benefit for both their in-group and out-groups. This isn’t necessarily compassionate, just, or liberatory. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, believe they’re doing this while pushing conversion therapy on LGBT people. This process of maximization tends to come with an interest in optimizing toward generalized ideals. It often looks like creating systems and policies for high standards of performance towards what they consider ideal for society and a greater good. Despite the name, this doesn’t have to involve a moralistic, legalistic presentation. Someone can be opposed to puritanical, black-and-white, harsh application of rules while still being interested in continual, principled, proactive evaluation of how they and others should behave optimally.
Stabilizers are people interested in what they believe will balance loss for both their in-group and out-groups. Compared to the other styles, there’s a greater focus on comfort, harmony in an environment, and not framing judgments or actions as proactively antagonistic. The manifestations of this can range widely. One example is exploitation of others fueled by apathetic justifications that pay lip service to notions of what they need to feel comfortable. Another, more idealized representation would be balanced, skillful diplomacy that facilitates peace and releases long-held tensions between two groups.
Challengers are people interested in what they believe will maximize gain for their in-group, including cases where an out-group’s losing resources benefits their in-group. They’re interested in winning. This is likely the style most correlated with psychopathy and narcissism, but it doesn’t necessarily have to manifest stereotypically that way. In healthier examples, this is often just a blunter style of describing problems. One interested in being a realist and boldly confronting people about whether situations will lead to desired outcomes.
I think a useful way to conceptualize this is that someone has a personal primary style and a secondary style, which is then further shaped by an externalized “ideal other” they value collaborating with to create social norms. These additional variables would shift the general behavioral presentation a lot. How this manifests will also often be secondary to the particular values and models someone holds, and to what their community enforces.
What someone “is,” to me, is their artificially neutral and isolated stress-response style. I suspect this would also likely line up with their autonomous, empowered, preferred way of framing problems. I would hope this could be useful for identifying comfortable collaborators and understanding conflicts in framing a problem with people with similar values otherwise. It may also help with tailoring responses to disagreements. However, people’s actual behavior and situationally expressed preferences can be more shaped by external pressures. Even so, this way of framing people can still be useful for identifying the structure of someone’s beliefs, even if their deeper personality structure isn’t perceivable.