This is an excellent post, with a valuable and well-presented message. This review is going to push back a bit, talk about some ways that the post falls short, with the understanding that it’s still a great post.
There’s this video of a toddler throwing a tantrum. Whenever the mother (holding the camera) is visible, the child rolls on the floor and loudly cries. But when the mother walks out of sight, the toddler soon stops crying, gets up, and goes in search of the mother. Once the toddler sees the mother again, it’s back to rolling on the floor crying.
A key piece of my model here is that the child’s emotions aren’t faked. I think this child really does feel overcome, when he’s rolling on the floor crying. (My evidence for this is mostly based on discussing analogous experiences with adults—I know at least one person who has noticed some tantrum-like emotions just go away when there’s nobody around to see them, and then come back once someone else is present.)
More generally, a lot of human emotions are performative. They’re emotions which some subconscious process puts on for an audience. When the audience goes away, or even just expresses sufficient disinterest, the subconscious stops expressing that emotion.
In other words: ignoring these emotions is actually a pretty good way to deal with them. “Ignore the emotion” is decent first-pass advice for grown-up analogues of that toddler. In many such cases, the negative emotion will actually just go away if ignored.
Now, obviously a lot of emotions don’t fall into this category. The post is talking about over-applying the “ignore your emotions” heuristic, and the hazards of applying in places where it doesn’t work. But what we really want is not an argument that applying the heuristic more/less often is better, but rather a useful criterion for when the “ignore your emotions” heuristic is useful. I suggest something like: will this emotion actually go away if ignored?
The post is mainly talking about dealing with your own emotions, but this criterion is especially useful for dealing with others’ emotions. When you are audience, it’s relatively easy to remove the audience. Sometimes, another person’s negative emotion will just die down if you walk away, but will sustain itself if you hang around trying to “help”. The key thing to ask is “will this emotion just go away if it doesn’t have an audience?”.
This is an excellent post, with a valuable and well-presented message. This review is going to push back a bit, talk about some ways that the post falls short, with the understanding that it’s still a great post.
There’s this video of a toddler throwing a tantrum. Whenever the mother (holding the camera) is visible, the child rolls on the floor and loudly cries. But when the mother walks out of sight, the toddler soon stops crying, gets up, and goes in search of the mother. Once the toddler sees the mother again, it’s back to rolling on the floor crying.
A key piece of my model here is that the child’s emotions aren’t faked. I think this child really does feel overcome, when he’s rolling on the floor crying. (My evidence for this is mostly based on discussing analogous experiences with adults—I know at least one person who has noticed some tantrum-like emotions just go away when there’s nobody around to see them, and then come back once someone else is present.)
More generally, a lot of human emotions are performative. They’re emotions which some subconscious process puts on for an audience. When the audience goes away, or even just expresses sufficient disinterest, the subconscious stops expressing that emotion.
In other words: ignoring these emotions is actually a pretty good way to deal with them. “Ignore the emotion” is decent first-pass advice for grown-up analogues of that toddler. In many such cases, the negative emotion will actually just go away if ignored.
Now, obviously a lot of emotions don’t fall into this category. The post is talking about over-applying the “ignore your emotions” heuristic, and the hazards of applying in places where it doesn’t work. But what we really want is not an argument that applying the heuristic more/less often is better, but rather a useful criterion for when the “ignore your emotions” heuristic is useful. I suggest something like: will this emotion actually go away if ignored?
The post is mainly talking about dealing with your own emotions, but this criterion is especially useful for dealing with others’ emotions. When you are audience, it’s relatively easy to remove the audience. Sometimes, another person’s negative emotion will just die down if you walk away, but will sustain itself if you hang around trying to “help”. The key thing to ask is “will this emotion just go away if it doesn’t have an audience?”.