Not necessarily! If you work out ahead of time what your reasonable limits are, this can serve as mental license to stop worrying and go right up to those limits—and no one said you had to set them cautiously.
This has been one of my most effective tricks for having fun doing things that are kind of scary.
Oh, sure. And in that case, such a person suddenly realizes that they WANT to cross that line. They’ll remember wanting to cross the line and reconsider when they’re calm.
It only gets to be a problem if someone’s line is drawn so far away that they never even get a hint that they might want to cross it, and so never reconsider. I have seen one case of that, and it lasted a few years. It is possible that was from trauma, and the limit contracted once she recovered. I do not think being more aggressive in tearing down the wall would have been any help.
this seems like a rule for permanently stifling the unadventurous.
Not necessarily! If you work out ahead of time what your reasonable limits are, this can serve as mental license to stop worrying and go right up to those limits—and no one said you had to set them cautiously.
This has been one of my most effective tricks for having fun doing things that are kind of scary.
If it ever seems stifling when you’re not in the heat of the moment—which is almost all the time—then change your rule. Was I unclear?
Not unclear. My point was that some people will never do things they wind up enjoying until someone pushes their boundaries in the heat of the moment.
Oh, sure. And in that case, such a person suddenly realizes that they WANT to cross that line. They’ll remember wanting to cross the line and reconsider when they’re calm.
It only gets to be a problem if someone’s line is drawn so far away that they never even get a hint that they might want to cross it, and so never reconsider. I have seen one case of that, and it lasted a few years. It is possible that was from trauma, and the limit contracted once she recovered. I do not think being more aggressive in tearing down the wall would have been any help.