the difference between security and insecurity is basically expected value of acting.
This sounds right.
I feel insecure very seldom.I feel safe and confident in my actions. Whatever I do I’m sure it’s the right thing. Sometimes it is the right thing to try things out and consciously risk something. Most negative feedback I got from acting under stress. I know this and thus tend to not attribute such negative feedback to my action itself but to the stress that caused it. I try (and mostly succeed) in limiting stress in the long run (note: this has the disadvantage of possibly lesser productivity if overdone).
I know people who feel permanently insecure even though I’d say that they don’t get significant negative feedback about their actions. I think the key is the expected value of the action. If you have high expectations (perfectionist) than it is easy to interpret the outcome as (partly) negative.
I think the question is why someone is a perfectionist in the first place. I think the answer is that the perfectionist is afraid to be less than perfect because he is already afraid that he won’t be accepted. And I think that he is afraid that he won’t be accepted because he has been rejected in the past and never really ‘got over it’. What exactly it means to ‘get over it’ needs to be expanded but I do think we have an innate process for ‘getting over it’.
Well, failure to be rejected in a situation where rejection could plausibly occur helps. In my experience, the trouble with that is that you have to continually experience it over a longer period of time, because otherwise your brain’s going to think it was just a fluke.
[He] is afraid that he won’t be accepted because he has been rejected in the past and never really ‘got over it’.
The past is sticky. Even if the prefectionist didn’t get negative feedback for a long time he still seems to fear it. It has become a habit. A part of personality.
I do think we have an innate process for ‘getting over it’.
We have two:
Crisis. New strongly differing experiences can question old feelings or simply make them unimportant in comparison to the new situation. This seems to be related
Maturity. There are many studies about adult development (e.g. George E. Vaillant) which indicate that time heals (slowly).
A combination probably works best: Build up an environment that is stable and safe where negative experiences are by nature objectively limited—even if you don’t feel this. And from this environment try some risk. Best a risk you didn’t choose but that occurred by itself (from your point of you) e.g. you met someone awesome (or you discovered LW). Use all positive support you get in this situation. Strong emotions will work best to overcome you insecurity.
I agree. But what is causing the fear? By that I mean precisely how does this fear work? I’m not sure habit is the correct word. I think it’s a learned emotional response that has become automatic. So can it be unlearned? My supposition is that expressing the pain from the original rejection in an environment where the full expression of that pain can run it’s natural course, will extinguish the fear. The problem would be solved. This is a big difference from a habit. Its being driven by an automatic emotional response that was acquired by a painful emotional experience (or many of them). If that emotional experience can be fully processed the emotional reaction will cease and it will not drive the behavior. I see your point about the fear conditioning the behavior. But I don’t really see that as a problem once the fear is gone. The reason is that a person will not stop wanting to engage in life. Those desires will always be there. So once the fear is gone the person will jump at the opportunity to engage with people. The habit of avoidance will not overpower this inclination once the fear that was driving it is gone.
But will expressing the original pain in this way really extinguish the fear? The idea behind re-consolidation is that a disconfirming event must take place in a window of time after an emotion is activated in order to extinguish it. If a big part of the fear is not just the pain of rejection but also fear of expressing the pain, then expressing the pain in a supportive environment will extinguish the fear of expressing the pain. That will leave the pain of the rejection itself but that can also be extinguished if something disconfirms whatever the rejection was based on. If the basis of the rejection can’t be disconfirmed the person will still be better off. Rejection does happen and it does hurt. A healthy fear of rejection is ok up to a point. Not if it leaves a person isolated or afraid to take chances but maybe it’s the case that when the pain of rejection can be freely expressed in a supportive environment then it’s not THAT scary.
A prediction of failure. As if the brain asks: “what is the likely result of this?” and the memory answers: “feeling bad”.
So can it be unlearned?
Yes, by creating situations which your brain can classify as belonging to the same reference class, and the result is not feeling bad. The problem is, how to design such situations, if mere memory of feeling bad yesterday can make you feel bad today.
Here CBT has some strategies; for example creating so weakened variant of the situation that your brain does not put it in the same reference class, and you hopefully succeed; and then very slowly increasing the intensity, so that your brain still pattern-matches it to the previous weakened version, instead of the full version.
It’s an inconsistency of brain. Imagine that when some variable x = 10, you feel bad, and if x = 0 you feel good. If you ask “what happens if x = 8?”, your brain will predict feeling bad, because it’s closer to 10 than to 0. -- But if instead you ask “what happens if x = 1?”, your brain predicts feeling good; and then you ask “and if x = 2?” etc. and when you come to “and if x = 8?”, the brain will predict feeling good; especially if each step is then confirmed experimentally. And then when you come to x = 9, the memory will return: “there are multiple matches: we have good feeling for x = 8 and bad feeling for x = 10”… and then you apply some cognitive pressure and say something like: “but you know, the x = 8 data is fresh, and the x = 10 data is obsolete” and the brain gets convinced that the correct prediction is feeling good. And then you use the same trick even for x = 10, and you win.
In some situations this can happen “naturally”, but that depends on luck. In a specific situation your brain may say: “well, the old memory is not relevant here, because… something important has changed”. Or you can be tricked into doing the task first without having time to make a negative prediction.
If a big part of the fear is not just the pain of rejection but also fear of expressing the pain, then expressing the pain in a supportive environment will extinguish the fear of expressing the pain.
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
Maybe the brain processes those additional 10 units in a different way than the original 1 unit (for example because when the 1 unit is over, you know it is over; but you never know in advance when those people get tired of mocking you, it could in theory go to infinity), but this additional hypothesis is not necessary to explain why the pain in a hostile environment is worse than in a supportive environment. (By which I am not saying it is false.)
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
I am suggesting that it may work a lot like this but a little bit differently. The main difference is that I’m suggesting that there is something uniquely painful and harmful about, not the mocking that follows the expression per se, but the inhibited expression of the pain that happens because of the mocking (the inhibited expression of the pain of the original insult but I suppose expression of the additional pain caused by the mocking itself will also be inhibited). Our emotions are functional. We do not have them just to make us miserable or to make us happy. They serve an evolutionary function ( is there any other kind of function in living things?). So my idea here is that when a person, (or animal for that matter) is prevented from expressing an emotion it is uniquely damaging, much more so than whatever damage the event would do if they could express it.
I heard a guest on a psychology podcast that I listen to (shrinkrapradio.com #321) describe how a facial tic that he’d had all his life went away after re-experiencing a car accident that he’d been in when he was a child. He hadn’t connected the tic to the car accident but after re-experiencing it he understood it as a continual triggering of his initial attempt at a defensive reaction. The tic was on the same side of his face from which the other car had hit the car he was in. He believes that once he was allowed to complete his natural defensive reaction the tic went away. The reaction had been triggered over and over and over in his life but had never been allowed to complete. In one session, where he allowed it to run its course, it was gone forever and he hasn’t had it since. So what is happening there? He hasn’t gone out in a buch of car rides to desensitize himself. In fact in his life since the accident he’d probably ridden and/or driven cars thousands of times and it had no effect on the tic. Simple behavioral learning theory doesn’t explain this. There is more going here. Something about not completing the natural reaction to the situation created a recurring problem.
I’m not exactly sure what is going on in a case like this but I’d be curious to hear anyone’s theories.
I want to add that I think, and this may be obvious, that this also applies to entirely emotional reactions. I don’t see any reason why emotional reactions would be subject to different rules than physical protective reactions.
This sounds right.
I feel insecure very seldom.I feel safe and confident in my actions. Whatever I do I’m sure it’s the right thing. Sometimes it is the right thing to try things out and consciously risk something. Most negative feedback I got from acting under stress. I know this and thus tend to not attribute such negative feedback to my action itself but to the stress that caused it. I try (and mostly succeed) in limiting stress in the long run (note: this has the disadvantage of possibly lesser productivity if overdone).
I know people who feel permanently insecure even though I’d say that they don’t get significant negative feedback about their actions. I think the key is the expected value of the action. If you have high expectations (perfectionist) than it is easy to interpret the outcome as (partly) negative.
I think the question is why someone is a perfectionist in the first place. I think the answer is that the perfectionist is afraid to be less than perfect because he is already afraid that he won’t be accepted. And I think that he is afraid that he won’t be accepted because he has been rejected in the past and never really ‘got over it’. What exactly it means to ‘get over it’ needs to be expanded but I do think we have an innate process for ‘getting over it’.
Well, failure to be rejected in a situation where rejection could plausibly occur helps. In my experience, the trouble with that is that you have to continually experience it over a longer period of time, because otherwise your brain’s going to think it was just a fluke.
The past is sticky. Even if the prefectionist didn’t get negative feedback for a long time he still seems to fear it. It has become a habit. A part of personality.
We have two:
Crisis. New strongly differing experiences can question old feelings or simply make them unimportant in comparison to the new situation. This seems to be related
Maturity. There are many studies about adult development (e.g. George E. Vaillant) which indicate that time heals (slowly).
A combination probably works best: Build up an environment that is stable and safe where negative experiences are by nature objectively limited—even if you don’t feel this. And from this environment try some risk. Best a risk you didn’t choose but that occurred by itself (from your point of you) e.g. you met someone awesome (or you discovered LW). Use all positive support you get in this situation. Strong emotions will work best to overcome you insecurity.
The perfectionist keeps punishing themselves by generating fear.
The old causal chain was like this: trying something → rejection → feeling bad
The new causal chains are like this: trying something → fear → feeling bad
The “rejection” part is no longer there, but the “feeling bad” part still is, and it keeps conditioning against that kind of action.
I agree. But what is causing the fear? By that I mean precisely how does this fear work? I’m not sure habit is the correct word. I think it’s a learned emotional response that has become automatic. So can it be unlearned? My supposition is that expressing the pain from the original rejection in an environment where the full expression of that pain can run it’s natural course, will extinguish the fear. The problem would be solved. This is a big difference from a habit. Its being driven by an automatic emotional response that was acquired by a painful emotional experience (or many of them). If that emotional experience can be fully processed the emotional reaction will cease and it will not drive the behavior. I see your point about the fear conditioning the behavior. But I don’t really see that as a problem once the fear is gone. The reason is that a person will not stop wanting to engage in life. Those desires will always be there. So once the fear is gone the person will jump at the opportunity to engage with people. The habit of avoidance will not overpower this inclination once the fear that was driving it is gone.
But will expressing the original pain in this way really extinguish the fear? The idea behind re-consolidation is that a disconfirming event must take place in a window of time after an emotion is activated in order to extinguish it. If a big part of the fear is not just the pain of rejection but also fear of expressing the pain, then expressing the pain in a supportive environment will extinguish the fear of expressing the pain. That will leave the pain of the rejection itself but that can also be extinguished if something disconfirms whatever the rejection was based on. If the basis of the rejection can’t be disconfirmed the person will still be better off. Rejection does happen and it does hurt. A healthy fear of rejection is ok up to a point. Not if it leaves a person isolated or afraid to take chances but maybe it’s the case that when the pain of rejection can be freely expressed in a supportive environment then it’s not THAT scary.
A prediction of failure. As if the brain asks: “what is the likely result of this?” and the memory answers: “feeling bad”.
Yes, by creating situations which your brain can classify as belonging to the same reference class, and the result is not feeling bad. The problem is, how to design such situations, if mere memory of feeling bad yesterday can make you feel bad today.
Here CBT has some strategies; for example creating so weakened variant of the situation that your brain does not put it in the same reference class, and you hopefully succeed; and then very slowly increasing the intensity, so that your brain still pattern-matches it to the previous weakened version, instead of the full version.
It’s an inconsistency of brain. Imagine that when some variable x = 10, you feel bad, and if x = 0 you feel good. If you ask “what happens if x = 8?”, your brain will predict feeling bad, because it’s closer to 10 than to 0. -- But if instead you ask “what happens if x = 1?”, your brain predicts feeling good; and then you ask “and if x = 2?” etc. and when you come to “and if x = 8?”, the brain will predict feeling good; especially if each step is then confirmed experimentally. And then when you come to x = 9, the memory will return: “there are multiple matches: we have good feeling for x = 8 and bad feeling for x = 10”… and then you apply some cognitive pressure and say something like: “but you know, the x = 8 data is fresh, and the x = 10 data is obsolete” and the brain gets convinced that the correct prediction is feeling good. And then you use the same trick even for x = 10, and you win.
In some situations this can happen “naturally”, but that depends on luck. In a specific situation your brain may say: “well, the old memory is not relevant here, because… something important has changed”. Or you can be tricked into doing the task first without having time to make a negative prediction.
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
Maybe the brain processes those additional 10 units in a different way than the original 1 unit (for example because when the 1 unit is over, you know it is over; but you never know in advance when those people get tired of mocking you, it could in theory go to infinity), but this additional hypothesis is not necessary to explain why the pain in a hostile environment is worse than in a supportive environment. (By which I am not saying it is false.)
I like this :
I am suggesting that it may work a lot like this but a little bit differently. The main difference is that I’m suggesting that there is something uniquely painful and harmful about, not the mocking that follows the expression per se, but the inhibited expression of the pain that happens because of the mocking (the inhibited expression of the pain of the original insult but I suppose expression of the additional pain caused by the mocking itself will also be inhibited). Our emotions are functional. We do not have them just to make us miserable or to make us happy. They serve an evolutionary function ( is there any other kind of function in living things?). So my idea here is that when a person, (or animal for that matter) is prevented from expressing an emotion it is uniquely damaging, much more so than whatever damage the event would do if they could express it.
I heard a guest on a psychology podcast that I listen to (shrinkrapradio.com #321) describe how a facial tic that he’d had all his life went away after re-experiencing a car accident that he’d been in when he was a child. He hadn’t connected the tic to the car accident but after re-experiencing it he understood it as a continual triggering of his initial attempt at a defensive reaction. The tic was on the same side of his face from which the other car had hit the car he was in. He believes that once he was allowed to complete his natural defensive reaction the tic went away. The reaction had been triggered over and over and over in his life but had never been allowed to complete. In one session, where he allowed it to run its course, it was gone forever and he hasn’t had it since. So what is happening there? He hasn’t gone out in a buch of car rides to desensitize himself. In fact in his life since the accident he’d probably ridden and/or driven cars thousands of times and it had no effect on the tic. Simple behavioral learning theory doesn’t explain this. There is more going here. Something about not completing the natural reaction to the situation created a recurring problem.
I’m not exactly sure what is going on in a case like this but I’d be curious to hear anyone’s theories.
I want to add that I think, and this may be obvious, that this also applies to entirely emotional reactions. I don’t see any reason why emotional reactions would be subject to different rules than physical protective reactions.