Do you completely trust that you are completely in the shit? - despair and information -
Why am I posting this on lesswrong?
Well, someone known here as gwern expressed interest in stories from when I was a militar firefighter. link
It wasn’t really my goal, but I’ve been posting my story here. link
To summarize: it starts with my proudest moments as a firefighter and ends with despair. Maybe, all of this leads to the following question:
What could I do when I feel like I’m in a hopeless shitstorm?
It is not the most common nowadays, but it still happens.
Since I can’t save lives as a firefighter anymore, maybe I can save some ideas—or at least myself a little more—by asking for help to see other people’s best ways.
To avoid alarms
Today my state has changed a lot,
Problem
When I’m experiencing some kind like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or simply feeling despair with no breathing space, the main problem seems to be that I believe a piece of information, like:
“I’m in deep shit! There’s no way out.”
In other words, I believe I’m in the worst there is and that there’s no way out; that’s information.
And the best way I know to correct this information is with questions.
What’s the best question to ask when I feel like I’m in deep shit?
Extreme Confidence level
Apparently, the best question I have to shake confidence in something is to ask about the extreme confidence level. In the case of self-talk:
- I’m in deep shit! There’s no way out.
- Do you completely trust in this information? 100%?
- I’m 100% confident that I’m in deep shit… Wait… No! That’s too much!...
So it seems that with this question, I’ve gained a conscious opening to question myself.
Do you know of a better question?
Well, this kind of question is the foundation I have to get out of the mess I’ve gotten myself into, and it gives me space to get out of the role of victim to look for new answers. But without opening everything I say to myself internally, it tends to get lost, if I don’t doubt myself, if I don’t put myself in the posture of seeking answers, there’s nothing that can answer me, right?
A little more personal context
I wanted to ask a question here, but abstractapplic told me he needed more context.
Personally, largely due to my story I posted here, I have a hard time trusting. It’s not that I didn’t try; I went to four psychologists, two psychiatrists, and checked myself into a sanatorium. When I couldn’t trust anyone anymore, not even myself, I told the police I’d committed a crime to isolate myself from society.
Two main points that led me to this:
With requests from superiors for me to divert resources to social projects involving children.
Not to be ironic, but I expected the people I’d given my blood to be there for me when I expose this.
And since they weren’t, as I noticed that only I was concerned about maintaining the firefighter’s social projects and I realized I was a nuisance to society and that the best course of action would be to not live, to avoid being a burden to others.
With a year of preparation, I managed to separate almost everyone from my life, however… here in more datail,
However, I had a friend who didn’t give up. I didn’t tell him my plans directly, but he understood. Seeing my happiest friend crying and refusing to accept my “investiment”, begging me not to do anything stupid, made me question things. It felt like I was missing out on this: questioning my own truths.
And since I didn’t want to hurt him, I started looking for information and books that helped me through the process:
The Drunkard’s Walk,
Postgraduate degree in clinical neuroscience (I thought my path was biological, but then I saw it, studying information was cheaper for me..) sSo I followed that path further
Superforecasting,
Rationality from A to Z, and
and for 11 years I have been studying programming and mathematics and trying to apply it to personal development, (especially information theory and probabilities and now I’m taking a course on neural networks.)
And I’m here to try to rethink what I see with the community with the fewest errors I can find, haha. Although, as a Brazilian dyslexic who lived in Argentina, I find it extremely difficult to write.
Perhaps my path isn’t very relevant to many, but I find it interesting to practice all these books to question yourself and find the best questions for self-uptade. Or am I just talking nonsense?
I’ve dealt with depression too. When I have a period of prolonged stress of more than a day or two, about two weeks later, I’ll start seeing the symptoms. For a long time I didn’t notice until I was coming out of that state, but over time I have gotten better at recognizing the symptoms.
When I am in that state, I try to remember that my brain is not functioning properly. I remind myself that it’s temporary, and even if I can’t update my aliefs (how I feel), I can trust my past self enough to act as if things are no where near as bad as my brain is telling me.
Sometimes it’s helpful to try to simulate what I would say when not depressed, but it’s also sometimes hard to know when I’m depressed. That part has gotten easier over time.
When I’m depressed I find myself spontaneously saying, “What am I going to do?” I also get frustrated much easier. There are other, but those two are the easiest for me to recognize when my brain is depressed.
Honestly, the best question to ask is, “who can I ask for help?” That help may be as simple as someone to sit with quietly, or can get a hug from. Often I have found that once I push through and reach out—even when my brain is yelling at me not to—it has an immediate positive effect.
If you can, talk to a psychiatrist. They have the training to help you navigate through the depression. Also, I have way fewer depressive episodes than I used to because I was able to find medication support. It makes all of this is easier.
What you are going through is awful, and even more complex than I have experienced. I really hope that you can find some relief.
Thanks for opening up!
I didn’t mean to alarm people. I’m much better today, “from suicidal to immortal,” haha. I see it’s mainly thanks to information theory and finding the best questions.
As for your question about “who should I ask for help?”
Personally, largely due to my story I posted here, I have a hard time trusting. It’s not that I didn’t try; I went to four psychologists, two psychiatrists, and checked myself into a sanatorium. When I couldn’t trust anyone anymore, not even myself, I told the police I’d committed a crime to isolate myself from society.
But I also had a friend who didn’t give up, and since I didn’t want to hurt him, I started looking for information and books that helped me through the process:
The Drunkard’s Way,
Rationality from A to Z, and
Superforecasting.
And I’m here to try to rethink what I see with the community with the fewest errors I can find, haha. Although, as a Brazilian dyslexic who lived in Argentina, I find it extremely difficult to write.
Perhaps my path isn’t very relevant to many, but I find it interesting to practice all these books to question yourself and find the best questions for self-confidence. Or am I just talking nonsense?
Nope. You seem perfectly reasonable to me. Thank you for being vulnerable too, especially with English not being your first language.
Care on here can be a little hit-or-miss. I try to raise the average.
I’m glad you’re doing better right now. I haven’t myself had that kind of experience. I recently had a friend of a friend that was afflicted with paranoia. I thought that maybe it was schizophrenia, but after his death we learned it was likely liver failure due to heavy drinking. He’s thoroughly isolated himself.
I’ve thought a lot about how to be as rational as possible when my brain isn’t working right. My aunt died of Alzheimer’s, so that runs in my family. I’ve been journaling every day for over a year now. It’s really about the only solution that I’ve come to for mitigating the effects of cognitive decline.
It’s come in handy for the normal cognitive decline that come with age, and the memory problems I have with ADHD. Writing out my thoughts out also helps me to identify trends. It gives me a little distance from the thoughts and makes them easier to examine.
Thanks for posting.
Yes, the unpredictable of LessWrong. I don’t quite understand why my other posts are positive. I was asked to reflect on everything that happened, and I’ve already tried rewriting this text about five times, and the karma is negative. haha. Thanks to my friend, I corrected my reasoning from “I don’t fit in and I hold people back” to “how can I not fit in so that I help others fit in?”
And this also led me to a kind of diary. I spent three months recording myself every 30 minutes, looking for factors, haha, to study myself. Many are very random, right? it can be exhausting because so much is random. Today, I solve this a bit by noting more amodal moments, especially my most motivated moments, and looking for the most likely factors that led to them. As if I were betting on the factors that most contribute to my motivation and satisfaction.
Cognitive loss would be deadly, even though I lost my social life and was confused about how I was nothing without my job. I took constant cognitive tests to see if I was losing my cognition. and seems that I have a variation: on average, I process well for two days, I process avarege about four days, and I process poorly for two days (a sine curve? haha). And having these graphs and studies as quantitative as possible of how I rely on myself makes my bad days much easier.
I use moments of maximum motivation as a reference, you know? Because I see that when I’m shaken, the main thing is that I lose my reference points. Personal sharing points? Haha. I don’t know. That would be the second question I ask myself when I feel terrible: What are you terrible at compared to? Is it really negative or just less positive? Because of this bias, right? We only see part of the graph and see a worsening as negative, and we lose the whole graph. Do you know?
And how has your cognition been? There are a lot of things that help with Alzheimer’s and ADHD these days, right? What have you tried or are trying?
Thanks for responding!
My cognition is pretty good for someone 47, I think. I’m a software engineer so I’m financially dependent on my ability to perform mental labor. I have days where I can hold very complicated systems in my head, and I’m super productive. I also have days where I struggle to hold two things in my head at once, and I can’t really work. It’s worked out for me because, on average, I do pretty well.
I don’t show any symptoms of Alzheimer’s, nor do my parents, in their 70s. Hopefully that continues.
I struggle with contextual memory—like remembering to make an appointment with my doctor when I can do so. I also struggle with working memory, like by the time someone tells me the third turn, I’ve forgotten the first. I struggle with remembering to do a second thing after the current task, like if I need to both throw out some trash and put away a book, I’ll be repeating in my head, “book, book, book…” until I’ve thrown out the trash, or I’ll just carry it around, or more likely, put it in a place I won’t remember.
I used to see these as character flaws that I never seemed to be able to overcome, causing me a lot of shame and negative self-talk.
Now I just see these as limitations that I can mitigate, where trying is good enough. It’s not fair to judge someone who can’t move their arms for not shaking my hand. It’s no more fair to judge myself for not living up neurotypical standards.
I use cognitive prosthetics, like reminders on my phone, my calendar with multiple alerts, and my journal. I compensate in other ways. When I tell myself I’ll do something later, I reply, “later is a lie,” which often enough gets me to stop when I’m doing. I have shower cleaners in my shower, my one plant above the sink (or now also in my shower in the window). If I need to remember to take something with me when I go home, I’ll put it with my shoes, if not immediately in the car: I put things I need to remember in places I’ll see.
All of that only works so well.
Yes! I have everything tied to my body with strings so I don’t lose anything, like keys, my phone, and even my glasses are tied to my ears. “Later is a lie” is a bit harsh, isn’t it? Doesn’t it drain your energy to accuse yourself like that? Haha. Don’t you see a more considerate alternative?
“Later” is a lie I tell myself. If I tell some I’ll do something later, there is a decent chance won’t think about it unless I do something about it. That can be putting it in my calendar, set a reminder, or actually getting up and doing the thing.
It’s not judging myself. It’s reminding myself that the easy thought of “I can do that later” doesn’t work the way I want it to. There is a good chance I’ll not think or it, or only think of it when I am driving or something. It’s a reminder that maybe I need to step away from what I’m fixated on so I can do all of the other important things.
“Later is a lie” has become a bit of a motto and mantra for me, along with “First: be kind.” Both of those came from things I’ve repeatedly told my son, as he’s been growing up. Now when I ask him to do the dishes, and he replies, “I’ll do them later” all I have to do it raise an eyebrow and he’ll either do them or set a timer.
My go to saying with the same meaning as “later is a lie” is (tongue in cheek) “nothing has ever happened in the future”
I understand that “that’s a lie” works for you, and especially “first be kind.” I feel an enormous sweetness in your words and responses. And I read the description of the scene with your son, very tender! Like a loving sitcom, “Modern Family.”
However, personally, if I tell myself that, it’s already another burden I have: “I’m a liar.” So I prefer to ask myself something more gentle, like: “Are you 100% sure you’ll do this later? Is it worth the risk of not doing it?”
Beliefs describe the world as you think it is. Fears describe the world as it might be, or might become, if you don’t act so as to rectify things. This looks more like a fear than a belief to me, both due to the way its phrased and the way you’re responding to it.
This is important because it changes the way we relate to the information.
If it’s a belief, then it’s just true, so far as we can tell. We can try to take in more information in hopes that we’ve misestimated, or we can try to figure out what to do about it, but it’s kinda just the world [we believe] we’re living in. And if part of the belief is “There’s no way out”, then that’s pretty limiting.
If it’s a fear, then that’s not true. It’s something that might be true, or somewhat more true on the margin than we’ve been giving credit for in our world models, but there’s also a gap between what we do believe and this thing which we fear. This gap is likely to generate significant curiosity, once you notice that it exists. Questions like “Am I in deep shit?”, “Is there no way out?”, “How do/would I know?”, “What would be the appropriate action to take if it were true, and how do I know that?”, “What can I do to distinguish?, “Is there something I need to devote more attention to, if I’m going to make sure not to be/stay in deep shit?”. These questions can all be investigated relative to what we already believe, from information we already have. And if “There’s no way out!” is just being raised as a hypothesis, then it might be getting raised early and preemptively—and we’re not bound to taking it seriously, at face value.
The important difference between beliefs and fears is that fears are not bound by requiring solid evidence before making strong claims and sweeping generalizations. “One person was a jerk to me” isn’t sufficient to justify “Everyone hates me!” as the way reality is, but it might be enough to raise the hypothesis—if you don’t already have a secure foundation for rejecting such hypotheses.
Such fears are worth examining, because they are sometimes true, or partly true. But also, just because you thought it doesn’t mean it’s true. Or that you even believe it.
Noticing that makes it significantly easier to explore, in part because because it’s only a “might” and “if we don’t react in time”, and that gives us room to move and to think. And also because we get to redirect our focus to finding out what’s true about the world and let our beliefs update to match, instead of struggling trying to micromanage what we believe to be our own mistaken beliefs, ending up trapped in distinctions we don’t see.
Hi Jimmi,
Can you offer me a definition: fear vs. belief? Yes?
And the line between the two is that fear can change, right?
The bridge between the two is recognizing what type of statement we’re dealing with: belief vs. fear. That distinction decides whether we’re victims of an internal dogma or explorers of our own mental world.
Yes, that was perhaps what I wanted to say: what more powerful question do I have that reveals to me what’s a fear and not a belief?
Belief is about how we think the world is. Fear is about what we think the world might be, or might become, if we don’t act to preempt the outcome.
Both can change, because the world itself can change and we can get new information that changes what is most likely. The difference is that changing beliefs usually requires additional information. For example, if you believe that you don’t own a bike, learning that your friend bought you one for your birthday will change that belief.
In contrast, when you hear a rustling in the bushes and run screaming “There’s a tiger in that bush! It’s gonna eat me!”, does that mean that once you safely get out of that situation you will recollect and determine “Yes, there was actually a tiger in that bush”? Will you experience surprise when you don’t get eaten? Or will you just think “I don’t know if it was actually a tiger or not, but I wasn’t gonna stay and find out!”. Because if it’s the latter, then you never actually believed that you would get eaten or just that there was a tiger in the bush, just that the possibility of “Tiger!” was too high to ignore and that you might have to run to keep from getting eaten.
That alarm shouting “Tiger!” raises some hypotheses which urgently call for attention, but you don’t wait around until you believe “there is a tiger in that bush, and it is going to eat me”. You’re trying to get out of there before there is enough evidence to justify these as facts about reality.
If you find yourself “not in deep shit” and recollecting, will you look back and think “Wait, how’d that happen? There was no way out and now I’m out??? This doesn’t make sense”? Or will it feel more like “Whew! That was a close one!” or “I’m glad that didn’t turn out to be true!”?
As you look forward, do you find yourself still looking for ways out? Writing LessWrong posts in hopes of finding ways out? Because that behavior wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if you don’t think there’s anything there to be found. It makes a lot of sense if you’re not sure what’s there, and you sense a danger of losing your way out if you don’t act.
Wow! I was thrilled with the answer! Good definitions help me understand better. Even if they don’t have much in common, right? Fear or belief, they both have a hypothesis that I believe in to act, or not? From what you say, I see that the main difference is each person’s level of urgency. Could that be it?
Yes, I still find myself losing action because of this fear of being in the shit. That I have almost no chance of getting the salary I used to have or the prestige. In that sense, I would be in the shit. But then I ask myself the question: “Are you 100% sure that you’re completely in the shit and have nothing worthwhile?” In other words, the tiger exists, but it would still be possible to do something. And then there’s the opening to question more about what to do and see how in the shit I really am. Or am I talking nonsense?
For me, this is the best question that helps me not to be paralyzed by fear and to gain the openness to question myself and value other things in the shit. and for you?
The urgency comes from noticing that the beliefs you’re navigating by are likely insufficient, in light of new evidence. E.g. “There are no tigers around, so I can walk outside without getting eaten” is called into question when you hear a rustling in the bushes, and figuring out whether you can actually walk around outside without getting eaten can be pretty urgent. If you already know there are tigers are around, you just won’t go outside, so the urgency isn’t going to be there unless your beliefs are challenged in a time sensitive manner.
As applied to your situation, I don’t know what chance you have of getting the same or similar salary or prestige. “No chance” seems pretty hard to justify given the immense possibility space and inherent uncertainty of the future, but I don’t know your situation. It doesn’t sound like the end of the world either way to me. I’m not saying it’s not important, and if you’ve been navigating by beliefs that said you’d definitely keep that or more, then it totally makes sense that you’d be shaken when evidence comes in saying this might not be true.
At the same time, not everyone has to have the highest paying most prestigious jobs. Take my parent’s old mail man, for example. He’s got to be the happiest and most genuinely friendly person I’ve ever met. Not because he got the most prestigious job or hasn’t had struggles outside his work life, but because of the way he chooses to relate to the world with openness to what it might bring. I admire that, and want to be more like that. Making lots of money is definitely nice, and prestige is a good sign you’re doing things right and feels good for a reason. But I think a lot of what fuels these drives for salary and prestige is really an underlying drive for respect, and knowing that we’re making the most of what we can. And I think he has that, more than a lot of people in much more prestigious and higher paying careers. He definitely has more of my respect than most others in those categories, and I suspect this is also true of people closer to him—who tend to matter more than the broader society anyway.
If something happened and I found myself needing to deliver mail for a living it would be devastating to me. I’ve put in a lot of work and a lot of thoughts and expectations into being able to do other things that are higher paying and all that, so it wouldn’t just be a giant loss I would also be largely lost. I wouldn’t know what to do, where to go, and I certainly wouldn’t want to give up on what I once had. If that’s something like the potential reality you’re navigating right now, I can’t say “I get it” in that I haven’t actually been there, let alone in your shoes. But I get why it’d be tough, and overwhelming. I hope to never get there. If I do, I know who I’m looking to role model. Proof by example that there’s still something difficult to strive towards, which is very worth striving towards.
None of this makes any of it easy, of course. Life is a lot to figure out, regardless. Hopefully this makes it a little clearer what fuzzy light to aim towards, should your fear turn out to be a likely reality. And hopefully having a sketch of a line of retreat makes it easier to explore and figure out if it actually is.
Best of luck to you Joao. I’m looking forward to seeing where you go next, and how things turn out for you.
First thanks! Your empathy makes me vibrate! if it was devastating, mainly for the reasons that tube que dejar todo.
NOoo! I’m in agreement, my goal, it wouldn’t be to have the prestige at the same time, but at least manage to have a minimum stable income of say 800 dollars, which I’ve been waiting for for 13 years. I don’t have so much trouble taking care of gardens, walking dogs or working in prison. that are the things that im working now. But I didn’t see enough stability to be able to have a peaceful child or family.
You can check popular psychology books like:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58014670-why-has-nobody-told-me-this-before
they do describe a lot of similar questions and techniques.
Also, I would recommend looking into CBT, just google “CBT workbook”
https://cogbtherapy.com/free-online-cbt-workbook
https://www.reddit.com/r/CBT/comments/1card3p/any_cbt_workbook_recommendations_that_are/
In your post this phrase soes sound strange “Today my state has changed a lot, it’s as if I went from suicidal to immortal”.
This can be just you writing style, but please keep in mind—having sudden profound insights, and being suddenly very excited about some ideas can be a sign of hypomania/mania/delusions/grandiosity. Just be mindful if you are in control of your emotions, or it’s other way around.
Highly regarded, Sérgio,
”suicidal from imortal”, perhaps I failed, but my intention was not to alarm people, with a touch of humor. Thank you for that tip. I’ll leave the precise version as well as the poetic one. It would be that I went from having an average of 13 thoughts of self-destruction per day to an average of 2 per month.