I wonder if there’s another even more annoying confounder where pro-vaccine people pretend that they don’t have needle anxiety, even though needles are sort of naturally anxiety-inducing. I mention this because I feel like I might be doing this. I do find getting needled pretty uncomfortable! I pretty deliberately control my thoughts about it to avoid thinking about, or reframe, the aversive aspects of hte experience. But if an impressionable member of my tribe asked me about that I would probably downplay the aversion, to some extent, to minimize transmitting discomfort via empathy. Sorry if I’ve made anyone less comfortable with needles by acknowledging this, here!
Maybe a better way of putting it is, I kind of expect everyone to start out with similar levels of needle anxiety then to not identify with, or to unmake, the anxiety as soon as that would be useful. Causality could legitimately run both ways here.
Sorry if I’ve made anyone less comfortable with needles by acknowledging this, here!
Those kinds of attempts to “distort” the truth for people for their own good don’t actually work well in practice. People tend to notice, as you have, that it’s wishful thinking and not actually (completely) true. This means that even though you consciously “believe” that needles are fine and no big deal, that there’s still that asterisk there causing anxiety that you try to look away from and try to help others look away from. If you think about what your model is of this hypothetical person becoming less comfortable, I bet you’ll find that they already had this asterisk too, and that the thing you’re apologizing for isn’t for shattering a trust that was pure but rather “making it more difficult to look away from the thing you don’t want to see”.
The problem isn’t the acknowledgement of the strategy, but lack of acknowledgement in the strategy. By attempting to “control” or “downplay” or “reframe” the aversive aspects, the actual impression left on the impressionable is that that needles are so scary that we can’t even be honest about it, not even with ourselves (but hey, we can pretend! And if you pretend with me that needles aren’t scary then we can also pretend that you’re okay!). It’s not a complete failure to the extent that you also kinda believe it, but the success sure isn’t complete either, and the partial credit for partial success doesn’t go to the pretending but to the reasons that cause you to see it as somewhat true.
The opposite approach may be counter-intuitive and sometimes a little uncomfortable (e.g. if you still don’t like needles yourself), but it works very well. People will look at you like you’re crazy if you play up how scary needles are and how much they hurt in front of an impressionable two year old, but If you play up the discomfort to the point where it’s hard to tell how serious you are (and enough that it’s clear that the answer can’t be “entirely”), then the impression left is that it is play, and therefore not too scary to be played with. And that means that when your two year old cries after getting her shot, it’s because she couldn’t get a second one, which is a much preferable problem to have. When you go out of your way to seek out and highlight the most difficult parts of the experience, it makes it much easier for people to fully trust, because you can be seen to be not-avoiding the difficult parts, and so there’s no asterisk left behind.
I wonder if there’s another even more annoying confounder where pro-vaccine people pretend that they don’t have needle anxiety, even though needles are sort of naturally anxiety-inducing. I mention this because I feel like I might be doing this. I do find getting needled pretty uncomfortable! I pretty deliberately control my thoughts about it to avoid thinking about, or reframe, the aversive aspects of hte experience. But if an impressionable member of my tribe asked me about that I would probably downplay the aversion, to some extent, to minimize transmitting discomfort via empathy. Sorry if I’ve made anyone less comfortable with needles by acknowledging this, here!
Maybe a better way of putting it is, I kind of expect everyone to start out with similar levels of needle anxiety then to not identify with, or to unmake, the anxiety as soon as that would be useful. Causality could legitimately run both ways here.
Those kinds of attempts to “distort” the truth for people for their own good don’t actually work well in practice. People tend to notice, as you have, that it’s wishful thinking and not actually (completely) true. This means that even though you consciously “believe” that needles are fine and no big deal, that there’s still that asterisk there causing anxiety that you try to look away from and try to help others look away from. If you think about what your model is of this hypothetical person becoming less comfortable, I bet you’ll find that they already had this asterisk too, and that the thing you’re apologizing for isn’t for shattering a trust that was pure but rather “making it more difficult to look away from the thing you don’t want to see”.
The problem isn’t the acknowledgement of the strategy, but lack of acknowledgement in the strategy. By attempting to “control” or “downplay” or “reframe” the aversive aspects, the actual impression left on the impressionable is that that needles are so scary that we can’t even be honest about it, not even with ourselves (but hey, we can pretend! And if you pretend with me that needles aren’t scary then we can also pretend that you’re okay!). It’s not a complete failure to the extent that you also kinda believe it, but the success sure isn’t complete either, and the partial credit for partial success doesn’t go to the pretending but to the reasons that cause you to see it as somewhat true.
The opposite approach may be counter-intuitive and sometimes a little uncomfortable (e.g. if you still don’t like needles yourself), but it works very well. People will look at you like you’re crazy if you play up how scary needles are and how much they hurt in front of an impressionable two year old, but If you play up the discomfort to the point where it’s hard to tell how serious you are (and enough that it’s clear that the answer can’t be “entirely”), then the impression left is that it is play, and therefore not too scary to be played with. And that means that when your two year old cries after getting her shot, it’s because she couldn’t get a second one, which is a much preferable problem to have. When you go out of your way to seek out and highlight the most difficult parts of the experience, it makes it much easier for people to fully trust, because you can be seen to be not-avoiding the difficult parts, and so there’s no asterisk left behind.