I did something similar, though less conscious and systematic, to combat what would probably be referred to as social anxiety. I just couldn’t interact with people. At least people who weren’t my close family. So at some point I started telling myself that it wasn’t ok to always feel awkward in social situations and I decided to fight the feelings I had—which resulted in some self administered exposure therapy. And it worked pretty well.
When I suggest that someone try something like this and cite my own experience, they usually scoff and say something like, “You were just lucky to be able to control your emotions. I certainly can’t control mine. Do you think I choose to feel like this all the time?” It seems they never tried to fight their feelings.
I think it’s easy for people to conflate “I did not consciously cause myself to have this emotion” with “I cannot consciously cause myself to not have this emotion”.
That’s probably right. I think most people also think it will be easy—like they just have to think it, and it will happen. So when they think to themselves, “I don’t want to feel depressed anymore” or something similar, and nothing happens, they conclude that it must not be under their control.
Of course, it is a rather long, arduous process to change your mental habits (depending on the degree of change).
Right. And it’s not transparent how arduous any given hack will be until you have lots of general mind hack practice. I can now pretty well estimate how long and unpleasant any given change will be and make a cost-benefit evaluation, but in the beginning I had to decide that becoming happier was my top priority and was therefore worth as long as it took, and as much effort as it called for, however long and effortful that was.
Another way this can work is for the external situation to get bad enough that changing one’s habits, however unpleasant, still feels like an improvement over the status quo. I’m told recovering addicts call this “hitting bottom.”
In my own case, this happened a couple of years ago when I suffered a stroke… the status quo was no longer remotely tolerable; I had to change my habits (both mental and physical… they aren’t cleanly separable).
The end result was a much better baseline mood than I had before the stroke, which still seems an implausible win.
Still, on balance, I suspect that your approach was way better. :-)
I like this way of talking about “hitting bottom”… as if it’s just reality doing the priority-setting work for you, but if you were a little smarter, you would have done it for yourself. I have found that thinking of “hitting bottom” as a prerequisite to getting better is SPECTACULARLY counterproductive; but until you said that, I didn’t have a compact alternative (besides just not thinking that way, which works about as well as not thinking of bears).
I think it’s easy for people to conflate “I did not consciously cause myself to have this emotion” with “I cannot consciously cause myself to not have this emotion”.
I have little trouble with happiness, but some with sudden anger bouts. Trouble is, when I’m in one, I kinda like it and don’t really want to get out of it.
Thanks to your series I’ll try to consciously attack it next time.
Was it Yoda who said “There is no try, there is only do”? The point is Alicorn’s point about making it a top priority. You may have meant to be this positive, but you didn’t sound this positive.
Having social anxiety myself, I have come throughout the years to somewhat being able to manage it. However, I have realized that I haven’t eliminated it or even made it weaker—it’s always there and it’s exactly as strong as before, I’m just consciously trying to suppress it.
Does this correlate with your experience? Or did you actually manage to make the Fear (you know what I mean) go away?
Also, about awkwardness, I’m gradually coming to realize that I am not innately awkward or stupid in social situations, it’s just that the Fear clouds my judgement and preoccupies my thought processes so that when I am in the presence of someone unfamiliar I am significantly less intelligent than I would be otherwise. Imagine trying to be funny and witty while in the presence of a growling tiger or with a gun to your head, and you begin to see what I mean :)
Does this correlate with your experience? Or did you actually manage to make the Fear (you know what I mean) go away?
I’ve made the Fear, as you call it, go away. At least selectively. The Fear seems to be positive correlated with situations where I feel low status. E.g. at minicamp I had a bit of it once I realized just how frickin’ smart everyone else was. Confidence, based on reality or imagined, seems to be the cure-all for me.
I know exactly what you mean about your judgment being clouded. Your brain is so busy worrying about how you’ll be perceived that you can’t concentrate on actually holding a conversation—there’s just no computing power left over! But I was just making a joke about the particular turn of phrase you used. You basically quoted Yoda and this made me giggle.
It occurred to me one useful way to get rid of the Fear for some people (including me) is the “just fuck it” mentality. So named because often to induce the mentality I, and others I’m sure, tell myself “Fuck it! I don’t care about what they think anyway. I’m just going to screw around.” And suddenly, I’m goofing around in the conversation as if it’s for my own amusement rather than worrying about what others think. This is a particularly useful strategy for interacting with females (in fact I’ve read PUAs talking about it often in the context of “fake it til you make it”), but it seems be useful in a wide range of situations. Your mileage may vary.
I did something similar, though less conscious and systematic, to combat what would probably be referred to as social anxiety. I just couldn’t interact with people. At least people who weren’t my close family. So at some point I started telling myself that it wasn’t ok to always feel awkward in social situations and I decided to fight the feelings I had—which resulted in some self administered exposure therapy. And it worked pretty well.
When I suggest that someone try something like this and cite my own experience, they usually scoff and say something like, “You were just lucky to be able to control your emotions. I certainly can’t control mine. Do you think I choose to feel like this all the time?” It seems they never tried to fight their feelings.
I think it’s easy for people to conflate “I did not consciously cause myself to have this emotion” with “I cannot consciously cause myself to not have this emotion”.
That’s probably right. I think most people also think it will be easy—like they just have to think it, and it will happen. So when they think to themselves, “I don’t want to feel depressed anymore” or something similar, and nothing happens, they conclude that it must not be under their control.
Of course, it is a rather long, arduous process to change your mental habits (depending on the degree of change).
Right. And it’s not transparent how arduous any given hack will be until you have lots of general mind hack practice. I can now pretty well estimate how long and unpleasant any given change will be and make a cost-benefit evaluation, but in the beginning I had to decide that becoming happier was my top priority and was therefore worth as long as it took, and as much effort as it called for, however long and effortful that was.
Yes, exactly.
Another way this can work is for the external situation to get bad enough that changing one’s habits, however unpleasant, still feels like an improvement over the status quo. I’m told recovering addicts call this “hitting bottom.”
In my own case, this happened a couple of years ago when I suffered a stroke… the status quo was no longer remotely tolerable; I had to change my habits (both mental and physical… they aren’t cleanly separable).
The end result was a much better baseline mood than I had before the stroke, which still seems an implausible win.
Still, on balance, I suspect that your approach was way better. :-)
I like this way of talking about “hitting bottom”… as if it’s just reality doing the priority-setting work for you, but if you were a little smarter, you would have done it for yourself. I have found that thinking of “hitting bottom” as a prerequisite to getting better is SPECTACULARLY counterproductive; but until you said that, I didn’t have a compact alternative (besides just not thinking that way, which works about as well as not thinking of bears).
I have little trouble with happiness, but some with sudden anger bouts. Trouble is, when I’m in one, I kinda like it and don’t really want to get out of it.
Thanks to your series I’ll try to consciously attack it next time.
Was it Yoda who said “There is no try, there is only do”? The point is Alicorn’s point about making it a top priority. You may have meant to be this positive, but you didn’t sound this positive.
“Do or do not; there is no try.”
Having social anxiety myself, I have come throughout the years to somewhat being able to manage it. However, I have realized that I haven’t eliminated it or even made it weaker—it’s always there and it’s exactly as strong as before, I’m just consciously trying to suppress it.
Does this correlate with your experience? Or did you actually manage to make the Fear (you know what I mean) go away?
Also, about awkwardness, I’m gradually coming to realize that I am not innately awkward or stupid in social situations, it’s just that the Fear clouds my judgement and preoccupies my thought processes so that when I am in the presence of someone unfamiliar I am significantly less intelligent than I would be otherwise. Imagine trying to be funny and witty while in the presence of a growling tiger or with a gun to your head, and you begin to see what I mean :)
I’ve made the Fear, as you call it, go away. At least selectively. The Fear seems to be positive correlated with situations where I feel low status. E.g. at minicamp I had a bit of it once I realized just how frickin’ smart everyone else was. Confidence, based on reality or imagined, seems to be the cure-all for me.
Alright Yoda ;)
About ‘clouding my judgement’, I meant that I’m led into making irrational decisions just to make it go away.
I suppose I can see how having increased confidence can lead to being much better able to handle social situations.
I know exactly what you mean about your judgment being clouded. Your brain is so busy worrying about how you’ll be perceived that you can’t concentrate on actually holding a conversation—there’s just no computing power left over! But I was just making a joke about the particular turn of phrase you used. You basically quoted Yoda and this made me giggle.
It occurred to me one useful way to get rid of the Fear for some people (including me) is the “just fuck it” mentality. So named because often to induce the mentality I, and others I’m sure, tell myself “Fuck it! I don’t care about what they think anyway. I’m just going to screw around.” And suddenly, I’m goofing around in the conversation as if it’s for my own amusement rather than worrying about what others think. This is a particularly useful strategy for interacting with females (in fact I’ve read PUAs talking about it often in the context of “fake it til you make it”), but it seems be useful in a wide range of situations. Your mileage may vary.