Could you expand on identifying the source of a state?
Endlessly. ;-) But rather than try to do that here, Gendlin’s book “Focusing” isn’t a bad place to start.
I’ve got a bad case of self-hating thoughts, and I would be very glad to get rid of them.
A lot of times, these are a simple case of inaccurate morals, and the trick to getting rid of them is to use their symmetry. Instead of judging yourself, you judge someone else in the same way for the same behavior, and then decide not to disapprove of people who do that. When you no longer see the behavior as wrong, you stop judging yourself for it as well.
This isn’t a universal fix for all self-hating thoughts, but the basic approach works on quite a lot of things.
The Work of Byron Katie (e.g. the book “Loving What Is”, or the free excerpts from her website), and Lawrence Crane’s “Love Yourself And Let The Other Person Have It Your Way” are good resources for exercises and practical tips to applying this approach. (Both are about letting go of judgments applied to others as a way of removing both self-judgment and improving one’s state of mind in general, although they go about the process quite differently.)
Again, this won’t take care of everything—if you have second-order moral objections, for example, you might not be able to drop the judgment, or there might be another cause besides a moral judgment.
(Btw, when I say “moral judgment” in all of the above, I don’t mean “considered ethical injunction” but “conditioned responses of disgust or moral reproach, often at a semi-conscious or entirely unconscious level”.)
Btw, when I say “moral judgment” in all of the above, I don’t mean “considered ethical injunction” but “conditioned responses of disgust or moral reproach, often at a semi-conscious or entirely unconscious level”.)
It’s the semi-conscious level that gets me. I have this voice in my head which keeps going “you stupid piece of shit”. Sometimes it’s “you stupid piece of shit, why don’t you just kill yourself?”, though that variant has become less common. I can tell it’s in my head, but it doesn’t feel like I’m doing it.
Doing something useful for myself is likely to trigger it. Since I’m likely to give in and give up, this means that my actual circumstances get worse. It also makes it hard to get to doing something like focusing, which can lead to more self-hatred for not being tough enough to just bull through the problem.
I don’t treat other people like that. I know the voice is vicious and stupid.
One of the things that helped me get over this sort of critical self talk is the distinction between being involved in reading a book for pleasure, and reading a book as author trying to get to be a better writer.
In the first case, you are going along with the flow of the experience. It is entrancing, and your emotions change with the fictional scene.
In the second case, you’re reading for technique. What person is this written in? What level of difficulty of the language? Why did they choose this word rather than that word? What is the theme?
pjeby’s suggestion of Byron Katie’s work is a good one. She starts with the idea “Is it true?”
I found it helpful to try to figure out where in my past I heard the phrase that I’m stuck on. Often times, with patient inquiry, I can come to recall a specific experience. And, through understanding the emotional charge of that experience, which is distinct from my circumstance now, I can feel it and let it go.
Another technique that I’ve found effective is to treat it as an environmental research project. What is different about the last few minutes which brings up this thought? Have I done anything different? What do I see and hear? Who am I with? What is the story around this? Is it true? How can I change my environment to reduce this? I’ve used this questioning technique to eliminate cravings. Again, it’s not a fast technique, but with patient application, it works.
Meditation helped. Less Wrong helped. Patience helped. Changing my environment helped a lot. Having the intention to be as kind to myself as I would be to a dear friend helped a lot.
Could you expand on identifying the source of a state?
I’ve got a bad case of self-hating thoughts, and I would be very glad to get rid of them.
Endlessly. ;-) But rather than try to do that here, Gendlin’s book “Focusing” isn’t a bad place to start.
A lot of times, these are a simple case of inaccurate morals, and the trick to getting rid of them is to use their symmetry. Instead of judging yourself, you judge someone else in the same way for the same behavior, and then decide not to disapprove of people who do that. When you no longer see the behavior as wrong, you stop judging yourself for it as well.
This isn’t a universal fix for all self-hating thoughts, but the basic approach works on quite a lot of things.
The Work of Byron Katie (e.g. the book “Loving What Is”, or the free excerpts from her website), and Lawrence Crane’s “Love Yourself And Let The Other Person Have It Your Way” are good resources for exercises and practical tips to applying this approach. (Both are about letting go of judgments applied to others as a way of removing both self-judgment and improving one’s state of mind in general, although they go about the process quite differently.)
Again, this won’t take care of everything—if you have second-order moral objections, for example, you might not be able to drop the judgment, or there might be another cause besides a moral judgment.
(Btw, when I say “moral judgment” in all of the above, I don’t mean “considered ethical injunction” but “conditioned responses of disgust or moral reproach, often at a semi-conscious or entirely unconscious level”.)
It’s the semi-conscious level that gets me. I have this voice in my head which keeps going “you stupid piece of shit”. Sometimes it’s “you stupid piece of shit, why don’t you just kill yourself?”, though that variant has become less common. I can tell it’s in my head, but it doesn’t feel like I’m doing it.
Doing something useful for myself is likely to trigger it. Since I’m likely to give in and give up, this means that my actual circumstances get worse. It also makes it hard to get to doing something like focusing, which can lead to more self-hatred for not being tough enough to just bull through the problem.
I don’t treat other people like that. I know the voice is vicious and stupid.
One of the things that helped me get over this sort of critical self talk is the distinction between being involved in reading a book for pleasure, and reading a book as author trying to get to be a better writer.
In the first case, you are going along with the flow of the experience. It is entrancing, and your emotions change with the fictional scene.
In the second case, you’re reading for technique. What person is this written in? What level of difficulty of the language? Why did they choose this word rather than that word? What is the theme?
pjeby’s suggestion of Byron Katie’s work is a good one. She starts with the idea “Is it true?”
I found it helpful to try to figure out where in my past I heard the phrase that I’m stuck on. Often times, with patient inquiry, I can come to recall a specific experience. And, through understanding the emotional charge of that experience, which is distinct from my circumstance now, I can feel it and let it go.
Another technique that I’ve found effective is to treat it as an environmental research project. What is different about the last few minutes which brings up this thought? Have I done anything different? What do I see and hear? Who am I with? What is the story around this? Is it true? How can I change my environment to reduce this? I’ve used this questioning technique to eliminate cravings. Again, it’s not a fast technique, but with patient application, it works.
Meditation helped. Less Wrong helped. Patience helped. Changing my environment helped a lot. Having the intention to be as kind to myself as I would be to a dear friend helped a lot.
I hope that you may find help in this.
Who does it feel like, then? That might be a clue.
Is there any sort of person about whom you would feel that way, though?