Say someone takes the guy’s comb again and he has the same emotional reaction with “yes, I remember our conversation from last time” tacked onto the end. How do you think Gram_Stone would respond to that? How would you?
I think it’s a big mistake to take it as an example of him “being bad at reasoning himself out of non-constructive responses”. To do so frames the problem as external to you and internal to him—that is, something not under your direct control.
If we go back and look at Gram’s explanation for why what he did worked, it has to do with giving consideration to the idea that the outburst is warranted and meeting them where they’re at so that rational argument has a chance to reach them at an emotional level. Framing them as irredeemably irrational not only writes the problem off as insoluble (and therefore mental stop-signs you before you can get to the answer) but it does so by failing to do the the exact thing that got Gram the results (remember, his friend started off angry and ended up laughing—his arguments did connect on an emotional level and even if he gets angry again next time his comb is taken, I bet ya he didn’t get angry again about that instance of comb stealing!)
Perhaps we’re of the belief that it wasn’t just this instance of anger that is misguided but rather all instances (and that he will continue to have these types of emotional responses), but this is a very different thing than “he keeps emotionally ‘forgetting’ what we talked about!”. The latter just isn’t true. He won’t get angry about this offense again. The issue is that you think the arguments should cause him to generalize further then he is generalizing, which is a very very different disagreement than the initial one over whether his current anger was justified. If you track these precisely, you’ll find that people never emotionally forget, but they will fail to make connections sometimes and they will disagree with you on things that you thought obviously followed.
On emotional responses like these, it turns out that the issues are more complicated and inherently harder to generalize than you’d naively think. Perhaps it’s partly me failing the art of going meta, but in my experience, training someone in empathy (for example) requires many many “and this response works here too” experiences before they all add up to an expectation for empathy to work in a new situation that seems unlike anything they’ve seen it work in before.
There is an important caveat here which is that if people never actually emotionally change their minds but merely concede that they cannot logically argue their emotions, they’ll continue to have their emotions. It’s not emotionally forgetting because they never changed their emotions, but it can seem that way if they did start to suppress them once they couldn’t justify them. The important thing here is to look for and notice signs of suppression vs signs of shifting. That will tell you whether you’ve ratcheted in some progress or not (and therefore whether you’re being sufficiently empathetic enough).
If you’re constantly getting feedback as a good listener and never feedback that you’re an asshole, you’re probably falling into this error mode at least sometimes because often the mental/emotional spaces people need to be pushed into in order to change their emotional mindsets are inherently “assholish” things. However, this isn’t a bad thing. In those cases, the feedback should look like this example from Frank Farrely’s book “Provocative Therapy”
“(Sincerely, warmly.): You’re the kindest, most understanding man I ever met in my entire life - (Grinning) wrapped up in the biggest son of a bitch I ever met. (T. and C. laugh together.).”
In my opinion, by far the most important part of learning this art is knowing that it exists and that any failures are your own. Once you have that internalized, picking up the rest kinda happens automatically.
So, I think this comment is largely correct and yet I don’t think it’s in conflict with my comment. The likely explanation of this discrepancy that what I intended to communicate wasn’t sufficiently explained as I was making a short off-the-cuff comment that was not intended to denigrate in any way the OP’s post.
I now feel bad about the off-the-cuff-ness of my comment because it engendered two large comments.
Just saw this: I upvoted your original comment immediately after reading it and have historically agreed with ChristianKI’s perspective that comments can sometimes be useful merely by the discussion that they generate. Also, I’ve seen you around enough to have a positive impression of you; in fact, I was surprised when I found your comment more pessimistic and hastily reckoned than I expected given my memory of your comment history.
Say someone takes the guy’s comb again and he has the same emotional reaction with “yes, I remember our conversation from last time” tacked onto the end. How do you think Gram_Stone would respond to that? How would you?
I think it’s a big mistake to take it as an example of him “being bad at reasoning himself out of non-constructive responses”. To do so frames the problem as external to you and internal to him—that is, something not under your direct control.
If we go back and look at Gram’s explanation for why what he did worked, it has to do with giving consideration to the idea that the outburst is warranted and meeting them where they’re at so that rational argument has a chance to reach them at an emotional level. Framing them as irredeemably irrational not only writes the problem off as insoluble (and therefore mental stop-signs you before you can get to the answer) but it does so by failing to do the the exact thing that got Gram the results (remember, his friend started off angry and ended up laughing—his arguments did connect on an emotional level and even if he gets angry again next time his comb is taken, I bet ya he didn’t get angry again about that instance of comb stealing!)
Perhaps we’re of the belief that it wasn’t just this instance of anger that is misguided but rather all instances (and that he will continue to have these types of emotional responses), but this is a very different thing than “he keeps emotionally ‘forgetting’ what we talked about!”. The latter just isn’t true. He won’t get angry about this offense again. The issue is that you think the arguments should cause him to generalize further then he is generalizing, which is a very very different disagreement than the initial one over whether his current anger was justified. If you track these precisely, you’ll find that people never emotionally forget, but they will fail to make connections sometimes and they will disagree with you on things that you thought obviously followed.
On emotional responses like these, it turns out that the issues are more complicated and inherently harder to generalize than you’d naively think. Perhaps it’s partly me failing the art of going meta, but in my experience, training someone in empathy (for example) requires many many “and this response works here too” experiences before they all add up to an expectation for empathy to work in a new situation that seems unlike anything they’ve seen it work in before.
There is an important caveat here which is that if people never actually emotionally change their minds but merely concede that they cannot logically argue their emotions, they’ll continue to have their emotions. It’s not emotionally forgetting because they never changed their emotions, but it can seem that way if they did start to suppress them once they couldn’t justify them. The important thing here is to look for and notice signs of suppression vs signs of shifting. That will tell you whether you’ve ratcheted in some progress or not (and therefore whether you’re being sufficiently empathetic enough).
If you’re constantly getting feedback as a good listener and never feedback that you’re an asshole, you’re probably falling into this error mode at least sometimes because often the mental/emotional spaces people need to be pushed into in order to change their emotional mindsets are inherently “assholish” things. However, this isn’t a bad thing. In those cases, the feedback should look like this example from Frank Farrely’s book “Provocative Therapy”
“(Sincerely, warmly.): You’re the kindest, most understanding man I ever met in my entire life - (Grinning) wrapped up in the biggest son of a bitch I ever met. (T. and C. laugh together.).”
In my opinion, by far the most important part of learning this art is knowing that it exists and that any failures are your own. Once you have that internalized, picking up the rest kinda happens automatically.
So, I think this comment is largely correct and yet I don’t think it’s in conflict with my comment. The likely explanation of this discrepancy that what I intended to communicate wasn’t sufficiently explained as I was making a short off-the-cuff comment that was not intended to denigrate in any way the OP’s post.
I now feel bad about the off-the-cuff-ness of my comment because it engendered two large comments.
Just saw this: I upvoted your original comment immediately after reading it and have historically agreed with ChristianKI’s perspective that comments can sometimes be useful merely by the discussion that they generate. Also, I’ve seen you around enough to have a positive impression of you; in fact, I was surprised when I found your comment more pessimistic and hastily reckoned than I expected given my memory of your comment history.
I think the comments it created are valuable discussion. There’s no reason to feel bad about it.
For clarity, I highly endorse this response.