I “cheated” a bit, in that I had them spend ~15-20 minutes with a chat bot that taught them some skills for getting in touch with those parts of their mind. Actually working through the problem was a few minutes of text chat that basically pointed out that there was no magic option and that they needed to let go of the problem emotions. All the real magic was in putting them in the state of mind to shut up and listen.
I suppose the best analogy I could offer here is getting robbed. It takes maybe 5 minutes to get robbed. There’s (usually) nothing you can do to fix the situation or recoup the cost. But people still feel bad about it for a while.
Your link seems to suggest, more or less, using hypnosis to just wipe out this guilt—except the examples you give don’t really seem to address that emotional side at all. You’re focusing on the intellectual acceptance of “yes, I should drop the PhD”, which isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the emotional baggage that comes with that, the sense that you’ve wasted 2 years as a sunk cost that isn’t even doing you any good at this point.
If you’re really hypnotizing way that guilt, that emotional response, then I guess I am misunderstanding you. Is that the case? Because I would say that, based on my personal experience, that is seriously dangerous territory. Not to say you shouldn’t trust yourself with it—I do it myself. But it is a technique I have seen cause a lot of people serious problems, and definitely not one I’d teach casually.
If you’re really hypnotizing way that guilt, that emotional response, then I guess I am misunderstanding you. Is that the case?
Haha! YES!
...people still feel bad about it for a while.
Yep. They’re doing it wrong.
You’re focusing on the intellectual acceptance of “yes, I should drop the PhD”
No no no no no! I’m talking about the emotional acceptance. It is a very different thing than intellectual acceptance, but that does not mean they can’t track each other. If your mind is organized well, they do track.
I would say that, based on my personal experience, that is seriously dangerous territory
There is a very important distinction between suppressing emotion (perhaps successfully) and eliminating the cause of the emotion directly by coming up with a better way of handling the conflict. The latter is healthy and quite low risk compared to the null option. This is what I do - with or without “hypnosis”.
Please elaborate!
I “cheated” a bit, in that I had them spend ~15-20 minutes with a chat bot that taught them some skills for getting in touch with those parts of their mind. Actually working through the problem was a few minutes of text chat that basically pointed out that there was no magic option and that they needed to let go of the problem emotions. All the real magic was in putting them in the state of mind to shut up and listen.
I talk about it a bit here
I suppose the best analogy I could offer here is getting robbed. It takes maybe 5 minutes to get robbed. There’s (usually) nothing you can do to fix the situation or recoup the cost. But people still feel bad about it for a while.
Your link seems to suggest, more or less, using hypnosis to just wipe out this guilt—except the examples you give don’t really seem to address that emotional side at all. You’re focusing on the intellectual acceptance of “yes, I should drop the PhD”, which isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the emotional baggage that comes with that, the sense that you’ve wasted 2 years as a sunk cost that isn’t even doing you any good at this point.
If you’re really hypnotizing way that guilt, that emotional response, then I guess I am misunderstanding you. Is that the case? Because I would say that, based on my personal experience, that is seriously dangerous territory. Not to say you shouldn’t trust yourself with it—I do it myself. But it is a technique I have seen cause a lot of people serious problems, and definitely not one I’d teach casually.
Haha! YES!
Yep. They’re doing it wrong.
No no no no no! I’m talking about the emotional acceptance. It is a very different thing than intellectual acceptance, but that does not mean they can’t track each other. If your mind is organized well, they do track.
Have you read Kaj’s post on overcoming suffering and suffering as attention allocation conflicts? This is basically what I’m talking about
There is a very important distinction between suppressing emotion (perhaps successfully) and eliminating the cause of the emotion directly by coming up with a better way of handling the conflict. The latter is healthy and quite low risk compared to the null option. This is what I do - with or without “hypnosis”.
Suppressing emotion is a recipe for disaster.