Hm. I think I just found a test stimulus that matches the feeling of frustration I had re: the deontology discussion. So I’ll work through it “live” right now.
I am frustrated at being unable to find common ground with what seems like abstract thoughts taken to the point of magical and circular thinking… and it seems the emotional memory is arguing theism and other subjects with my mother at a relatively young age… she would tie me in knots, not with clever rhetoric, but with sheer insanity—logical rudeness writ large.
But I couldn’t just come out and say that to her… not just because of the power differential, but also because I had no handy list of biases and fallacies to point to, and she had no attention span for any logically-built-up arguments.
Huh. No wonder I feel frustrated trying to understand deontology… I get the same, “I can’t even understand this craziness well enough to be able to say it’s wrong” feeling.
Okay, so what abilities did I lose to learned helplessness in this context? I learned that there was nothing I could say or do about logical craziness… which would certainly explain why I started and deleted my deontology comment multiple times before finally posting it… and didn’t really try to achieve any common ground during it… I just took a victim posture and said deontology was nonsense. I also waited until I could “safely” say it in the context of someone else’s comment, rather than directly addressing the post’s author—either to seek the truth or argue a clear position.
So, what do I want to replace that feeling of helplessness with? Would I rather be curious, so that I find out more about someone’s apparently circular reasoning before dismissing it or fighting with it? How about compassionate, so I try to help the person find the flaw in their reasoning, if they’re actually interested in the first place? What about amusement, so that I’m merely entertained and move on?
Just questioning these possibilities and bringing them into mind is already modifying the emotional response, since I’ve now had an (imagined) sensory experience of what it would be like to have those different emotions and behaviors in the circumstance. I can also see that I don’t need to understand or persuade in such a circumstance, which feels like a relief. I can see that I didn’t need to argue with my mother and frustrate myself; I could have just let her be who she was, and gone about my business.
So, this is a good time for a test. How do I feel about arguing theism with my mother? No big deal. How about deontology? Not a big deal either, but then it wasn’t earlier, either, which is why I couldn’t use it as a test directly. So the real test is the thought of “having to explain practical things to people hopelessly stuck in impractical thinking”, which was reliably causing me to wrinkle my brow, hunch slightly, and sigh in frustration.
Now, instead of that, I get a mixed feeling of compassion/patience, felt lightly in the chest area… but there’s still a hint of the old feeling, like a component is still there.
Ah… I see, I’ve dealt with only one need axis: connection/bonding, but not status/significance. A portion of the frustration was not being able to connect, and that portion I’ve resolved, but the other part was frustration with a status differential: the person making the argument is succeeding in lowering my status if I can’t address their (nonsensical) argument.
Ugh. I hate status entanglements. I can’t fix the brain’s need for status, only remove specific entries from the “status threats” table. So let’s see if we can take this one out.
I’m noticing that other memories of kids teasing or insulting me in school are coming up in connection with this—the same fundamental circumstance of being in a conversation with no good answers, silence included. No matter what I do, I will lose face.
Ouch. This is a tough one. The rookie mistake here would be to think I have to be able to come up with better comebacks or something… that is, that I have to solve the problem in the outside world, in order to change my feelings. But if I instead change my feelings first on the inside, then my behavior will change to match.
So, what do I want to feel? Amused? Confident? As with other forms of learned helplessness, I am best off if I can feel the outcome emotions in advance of tthe outside world conforming to my preference. (That is, if I already feel the self-esteem I want from the interaction, before the interaction takes place, it is more likely that I will act in a way that results in a favorable interaction.)
So how would I feel if those kids were praising, instead of teasing or insulting? I would feel honored by the attention...
Boom! The memory just changed, popping into a new interpretation: the kids teasing and insulting me were giving me positive attention. This new interpretation drives a different feeling about it… along with a change to my feelings about certain discussions that have taken place on LW. ;-) Netiher seems like a threat any more.
Similarly, thinking about being criticized in other contexts doesn’t seem like a threat… I strangely feel genuinely honored that somebody took the time to tell me how they feel, even if I don’t agree with it. Wow. Weird. ;-) (But then, as I’m constantly telling people, if your change doesn’t surprise you in some way, you probably didn’t really change anything.)
The change also sent me reeling for a moment, as suddenly the sense of loneliness and “outsider”-ness I had as a child begins to feel downright stupid and unnecessary in retrospect.
Wow. Deep stuff. Did not expect anything of this depth from your suggestion, JenniferRM. I think I will take the rest of my processing offline, as it’s been increasingly difficult to type about this while doing it… trying to explain the extra context/purpose stuff has been kind of distracting anyway, while I was in the middle of doing things.
Whew. Anyway, I hope that was helpfully illustrative, nonetheless.
Overnight, I continued working on that thread of thoughts, and dug up several related issues. One of them was that I’ve also not been nearly as generous with giving positive attention and appreciation as I would’ve liked others to be. So I made a change to fix that this morning, and I actually felt genuine warmth and gratitude in response to your comment… something that I generally haven’t felt, even towards very positive comments here in the past.
So really, thank you, as it was indeed both kind and generous of you to say it.
That was way more than I was hoping to get back and went in really interesting directions—the corrections about the way the “reprocessing” works and the limits of reprocessing was helpful. The detail about the way vivid memories can no longer be accessed through the same “index” and become more like stories was totally unexpected and fascinating.
Also, that was very impressive in terms of just… raw emotional openness, I guess. I don’t know about other readers, but it stirred up my emotions just reading about your issues as you worked through them. I have a hard time imagining the courage it would take for me to make similar emotional disclosures in a place like this if they were my own. I’m a little frightened by how much trust you gave me I think? But I’m very grateful too.
(And yes, “soul dousing” is a term I made up for the post for the sake of trying to summarize things I’ve read by you in the past in my own words to see if I was hearing what you were trying to say.)
I have a hard time imagining the courage it would take for me to make similar emotional disclosures in a place like this if they were my own.
Not as much as you might think. Bear in mind that by the time anybody reads anything I’ve written about something like that, it’s no longer the least bit emotional for me—it has become an interesting anecdote about something “once upon a time”.
If it was still emotional for me after I made the changes, I would have more trouble sharing it, here or even with my subscribers. In fact, the reason I cut off the post where I did was because there was some stuff I wasn’t yet “done” with and wanted to work on some more.
Likewise, it’s a lot easier to admit to your failures and shortcomings if you are acutely aware that 1) “you” aren’t really responsible, and 2) you can change. It’s easier to face the truth of what you did wrong, if you know that your reaction will be different in the future. It takes out the “feeling of being a bad person” part of the equation.
[split from parent comment due to length]
Hm. I think I just found a test stimulus that matches the feeling of frustration I had re: the deontology discussion. So I’ll work through it “live” right now.
I am frustrated at being unable to find common ground with what seems like abstract thoughts taken to the point of magical and circular thinking… and it seems the emotional memory is arguing theism and other subjects with my mother at a relatively young age… she would tie me in knots, not with clever rhetoric, but with sheer insanity—logical rudeness writ large.
But I couldn’t just come out and say that to her… not just because of the power differential, but also because I had no handy list of biases and fallacies to point to, and she had no attention span for any logically-built-up arguments.
Huh. No wonder I feel frustrated trying to understand deontology… I get the same, “I can’t even understand this craziness well enough to be able to say it’s wrong” feeling.
Okay, so what abilities did I lose to learned helplessness in this context? I learned that there was nothing I could say or do about logical craziness… which would certainly explain why I started and deleted my deontology comment multiple times before finally posting it… and didn’t really try to achieve any common ground during it… I just took a victim posture and said deontology was nonsense. I also waited until I could “safely” say it in the context of someone else’s comment, rather than directly addressing the post’s author—either to seek the truth or argue a clear position.
So, what do I want to replace that feeling of helplessness with? Would I rather be curious, so that I find out more about someone’s apparently circular reasoning before dismissing it or fighting with it? How about compassionate, so I try to help the person find the flaw in their reasoning, if they’re actually interested in the first place? What about amusement, so that I’m merely entertained and move on?
Just questioning these possibilities and bringing them into mind is already modifying the emotional response, since I’ve now had an (imagined) sensory experience of what it would be like to have those different emotions and behaviors in the circumstance. I can also see that I don’t need to understand or persuade in such a circumstance, which feels like a relief. I can see that I didn’t need to argue with my mother and frustrate myself; I could have just let her be who she was, and gone about my business.
So, this is a good time for a test. How do I feel about arguing theism with my mother? No big deal. How about deontology? Not a big deal either, but then it wasn’t earlier, either, which is why I couldn’t use it as a test directly. So the real test is the thought of “having to explain practical things to people hopelessly stuck in impractical thinking”, which was reliably causing me to wrinkle my brow, hunch slightly, and sigh in frustration.
Now, instead of that, I get a mixed feeling of compassion/patience, felt lightly in the chest area… but there’s still a hint of the old feeling, like a component is still there.
Ah… I see, I’ve dealt with only one need axis: connection/bonding, but not status/significance. A portion of the frustration was not being able to connect, and that portion I’ve resolved, but the other part was frustration with a status differential: the person making the argument is succeeding in lowering my status if I can’t address their (nonsensical) argument.
Ugh. I hate status entanglements. I can’t fix the brain’s need for status, only remove specific entries from the “status threats” table. So let’s see if we can take this one out.
I’m noticing that other memories of kids teasing or insulting me in school are coming up in connection with this—the same fundamental circumstance of being in a conversation with no good answers, silence included. No matter what I do, I will lose face.
Ouch. This is a tough one. The rookie mistake here would be to think I have to be able to come up with better comebacks or something… that is, that I have to solve the problem in the outside world, in order to change my feelings. But if I instead change my feelings first on the inside, then my behavior will change to match.
So, what do I want to feel? Amused? Confident? As with other forms of learned helplessness, I am best off if I can feel the outcome emotions in advance of tthe outside world conforming to my preference. (That is, if I already feel the self-esteem I want from the interaction, before the interaction takes place, it is more likely that I will act in a way that results in a favorable interaction.)
So how would I feel if those kids were praising, instead of teasing or insulting? I would feel honored by the attention...
Boom! The memory just changed, popping into a new interpretation: the kids teasing and insulting me were giving me positive attention. This new interpretation drives a different feeling about it… along with a change to my feelings about certain discussions that have taken place on LW. ;-) Netiher seems like a threat any more.
Similarly, thinking about being criticized in other contexts doesn’t seem like a threat… I strangely feel genuinely honored that somebody took the time to tell me how they feel, even if I don’t agree with it. Wow. Weird. ;-) (But then, as I’m constantly telling people, if your change doesn’t surprise you in some way, you probably didn’t really change anything.)
The change also sent me reeling for a moment, as suddenly the sense of loneliness and “outsider”-ness I had as a child begins to feel downright stupid and unnecessary in retrospect.
Wow. Deep stuff. Did not expect anything of this depth from your suggestion, JenniferRM. I think I will take the rest of my processing offline, as it’s been increasingly difficult to type about this while doing it… trying to explain the extra context/purpose stuff has been kind of distracting anyway, while I was in the middle of doing things.
Whew. Anyway, I hope that was helpfully illustrative, nonetheless.
This comment has done more than anything else you’ve written to convince me that you aren’t generally talking nonsense.
Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say.
Overnight, I continued working on that thread of thoughts, and dug up several related issues. One of them was that I’ve also not been nearly as generous with giving positive attention and appreciation as I would’ve liked others to be. So I made a change to fix that this morning, and I actually felt genuine warmth and gratitude in response to your comment… something that I generally haven’t felt, even towards very positive comments here in the past.
So really, thank you, as it was indeed both kind and generous of you to say it.
Thanks for the response.
That was way more than I was hoping to get back and went in really interesting directions—the corrections about the way the “reprocessing” works and the limits of reprocessing was helpful. The detail about the way vivid memories can no longer be accessed through the same “index” and become more like stories was totally unexpected and fascinating.
Also, that was very impressive in terms of just… raw emotional openness, I guess. I don’t know about other readers, but it stirred up my emotions just reading about your issues as you worked through them. I have a hard time imagining the courage it would take for me to make similar emotional disclosures in a place like this if they were my own. I’m a little frightened by how much trust you gave me I think? But I’m very grateful too.
(And yes, “soul dousing” is a term I made up for the post for the sake of trying to summarize things I’ve read by you in the past in my own words to see if I was hearing what you were trying to say.)
Not as much as you might think. Bear in mind that by the time anybody reads anything I’ve written about something like that, it’s no longer the least bit emotional for me—it has become an interesting anecdote about something “once upon a time”.
If it was still emotional for me after I made the changes, I would have more trouble sharing it, here or even with my subscribers. In fact, the reason I cut off the post where I did was because there was some stuff I wasn’t yet “done” with and wanted to work on some more.
Likewise, it’s a lot easier to admit to your failures and shortcomings if you are acutely aware that 1) “you” aren’t really responsible, and 2) you can change. It’s easier to face the truth of what you did wrong, if you know that your reaction will be different in the future. It takes out the “feeling of being a bad person” part of the equation.