There’s a pattern of chronic aversive ideation I have seen multiple times, inside and outside rationalist circles, that I think might be a special case of what you describe: active impulsive “yang” thoughts accusing slower careful ones of “depression” and getting accused right back of “ADHD”. Leading to neverending internal arguments and chrinic discomfort.
I intend to write something here in LW about framing of psychological discomfort as bad “cognitive communication culture” (analogous to “company culture”) between different mental events (thoughts) sharing a brain. Your post was helpful for my work on this when I saw it on Substack, thank you for crossposting it to here too.
I’m glad it’s been helpful for your work and look forward to reading about it!
Re: this internal depression/ADHD conflict—that seems like a recipe for a very punishing inner dialogue. Definitely sounds like the kind of self-judgment I mean, just with psychiatric, not moralistic framing. I don’t use this terminology, but I do notice some self-criticism of both my scattered impulsive unfocussed parts and the slower, reflective ones. It’s like two internal factions fighting over what kind of mental state you “should” have, how a mind “should” think and feel, how one “should” make decisions, all of which is totally arbitrary…
Good, thank you.
There’s a pattern of chronic aversive ideation I have seen multiple times, inside and outside rationalist circles, that I think might be a special case of what you describe: active impulsive “yang” thoughts accusing slower careful ones of “depression” and getting accused right back of “ADHD”. Leading to neverending internal arguments and chrinic discomfort.
I intend to write something here in LW about framing of psychological discomfort as bad “cognitive communication culture” (analogous to “company culture”) between different mental events (thoughts) sharing a brain. Your post was helpful for my work on this when I saw it on Substack, thank you for crossposting it to here too.
I’m glad it’s been helpful for your work and look forward to reading about it!
Re: this internal depression/ADHD conflict—that seems like a recipe for a very punishing inner dialogue. Definitely sounds like the kind of self-judgment I mean, just with psychiatric, not moralistic framing. I don’t use this terminology, but I do notice some self-criticism of both my scattered impulsive unfocussed parts and the slower, reflective ones. It’s like two internal factions fighting over what kind of mental state you “should” have, how a mind “should” think and feel, how one “should” make decisions, all of which is totally arbitrary…