2) Staying silent when there’s something somebody doesn’t like
To me 1) sounds like a problem of people not having any skills that they can use to deal with emotions. When I’m doing any kind of emotional first aid, I’m very conscious about the processes and use effective processes that are targeted on the problem in question.
Eliezer refers quite early in the sequences to the Litany of Gendlin. It refers to a writing by Eugene Gendlin and Gendlin actually developed a process of dealing with emotions that he called Focusing.
On the other hand, 1) feels more complicated. There’s an art of finding the right time to say things and focusing attention on an issue always has a cost.
(Given that you want feedback, I will write a bit that’s a reaction to the vibe I’m getting from your article)
When I read your post I get the impression that there’s a lot of anxiety build up and people are generally less likely to give negative feedback to a person that doesn’t appear to have a lot of capacity to deal with feedback as they are already very anxious.
The solution to this problem is not about having more knowledge about when you are annoying other people but in actually caring less about whether you are annoying other people. If you would care less and get less anxious, you likely would get more feedback.
Instead of trying to take responsibility for other people’s feelings, take responsibility for your own. If a person has a problem with being annoyed, they can tell you. On the other hand, it’s your job to express your own needs and desires.
There is a degree to which this is absolutely the case. You read me as an anxious person, to irritating degrees, and it’s quite true. This is a monkey that’s been on my back since I was a toddler and I’ve been wrestling with it for many years. Recently, I seem to be winning much more often, I am grateful to report.
There’s a weird fine line in the middle of the whole idea of caring about what other people think, and it kind of bothers me that to the best of my knowledge we don’t have two seperate words for the different sides.
On the one side, there is the tendency to overreact. The panic spirals, the anxiety, the fear of rejection. I have that. I consider it a form of damage, something to work on healing. It is not useful and it is not virtuous, it just messes with my capacity to control my own life.
On the other side lies consideration. It should matter to me if I say or do something that upsets someone else, or that could predictably upset someone else. I don’t want to hurt other people, and when I am behaving in ways that increase the chances of doing that, I want to find ways to change my behaviour so that that happens less. Harm is on a scale, of course, and ‘temporarily offended’ is waaaay down on the unimportant end of the scale, but even so it matters to me and is something I want to reduce where possible.
I am a considerate person, and want to continue to be a considerate and thoughtful person sensitive to the needs and reactions of others. I consider it virtuous and helpful. This involves caring what other people think and feel.
I am also an anxious person with a history of rejection and traumatic responses to it. I am working on combating and changing this. It also involves caring what other people think and feel. The way these two concepts can conflate together is an extreme nuisance and I suspect I am far from being the only one who has delayed on their journey to recovery and better effectiveness because it took me so long to tear them apart from one another.
It’s not as easy as it sometimes seems to recognize that they are in fact two different things and not caring as much what other people think in terms of not going into panic spirals about it does NOT mean I have to stop caring in terms of no longer looking out for them and acting with consideration.
I understand where you are coming from. I used to be similarly. Shortly, after Circling came to Berlin I had a conversation with an acquaintance. The Circling frame allowed us to have a frank conversation. In the conversation the acquaintance told me that they can’t respect me when I’m not connected to my needs. They would like to respect me, but if I don’t change that they can’t.
When dealing with rationalists it’s not a requirement for having a friendship with another person but for a significant part of the population it’s a necessary criteria for having a friendship with them. It very directly leads to a rejection from those people if you want to be friends with them because you are not able to participate in the social push and pull that the person is used to having with their friends.
David Burns (who helped popularize CBT by writing Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and who’s book Feeling Good Together is also frequently recommended in our rationalist circles) wrote When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life. The book does a good job explaining how your need to be nice leads to your anxiety issues. I would recommend you to read it.
I feel like there are two distinct issues here:
1) Telling comforting lies
2) Staying silent when there’s something somebody doesn’t like
To me 1) sounds like a problem of people not having any skills that they can use to deal with emotions. When I’m doing any kind of emotional first aid, I’m very conscious about the processes and use effective processes that are targeted on the problem in question.
Eliezer refers quite early in the sequences to the Litany of Gendlin. It refers to a writing by Eugene Gendlin and Gendlin actually developed a process of dealing with emotions that he called Focusing.
On the other hand, 1) feels more complicated. There’s an art of finding the right time to say things and focusing attention on an issue always has a cost.
(Given that you want feedback, I will write a bit that’s a reaction to the vibe I’m getting from your article)
When I read your post I get the impression that there’s a lot of anxiety build up and people are generally less likely to give negative feedback to a person that doesn’t appear to have a lot of capacity to deal with feedback as they are already very anxious.
The solution to this problem is not about having more knowledge about when you are annoying other people but in actually caring less about whether you are annoying other people. If you would care less and get less anxious, you likely would get more feedback.
Instead of trying to take responsibility for other people’s feelings, take responsibility for your own. If a person has a problem with being annoyed, they can tell you. On the other hand, it’s your job to express your own needs and desires.
There is a degree to which this is absolutely the case. You read me as an anxious person, to irritating degrees, and it’s quite true. This is a monkey that’s been on my back since I was a toddler and I’ve been wrestling with it for many years. Recently, I seem to be winning much more often, I am grateful to report.
There’s a weird fine line in the middle of the whole idea of caring about what other people think, and it kind of bothers me that to the best of my knowledge we don’t have two seperate words for the different sides.
On the one side, there is the tendency to overreact. The panic spirals, the anxiety, the fear of rejection. I have that. I consider it a form of damage, something to work on healing. It is not useful and it is not virtuous, it just messes with my capacity to control my own life.
On the other side lies consideration. It should matter to me if I say or do something that upsets someone else, or that could predictably upset someone else. I don’t want to hurt other people, and when I am behaving in ways that increase the chances of doing that, I want to find ways to change my behaviour so that that happens less. Harm is on a scale, of course, and ‘temporarily offended’ is waaaay down on the unimportant end of the scale, but even so it matters to me and is something I want to reduce where possible.
I am a considerate person, and want to continue to be a considerate and thoughtful person sensitive to the needs and reactions of others. I consider it virtuous and helpful. This involves caring what other people think and feel.
I am also an anxious person with a history of rejection and traumatic responses to it. I am working on combating and changing this. It also involves caring what other people think and feel. The way these two concepts can conflate together is an extreme nuisance and I suspect I am far from being the only one who has delayed on their journey to recovery and better effectiveness because it took me so long to tear them apart from one another.
It’s not as easy as it sometimes seems to recognize that they are in fact two different things and not caring as much what other people think in terms of not going into panic spirals about it does NOT mean I have to stop caring in terms of no longer looking out for them and acting with consideration.
I understand where you are coming from. I used to be similarly. Shortly, after Circling came to Berlin I had a conversation with an acquaintance. The Circling frame allowed us to have a frank conversation. In the conversation the acquaintance told me that they can’t respect me when I’m not connected to my needs. They would like to respect me, but if I don’t change that they can’t.
When dealing with rationalists it’s not a requirement for having a friendship with another person but for a significant part of the population it’s a necessary criteria for having a friendship with them. It very directly leads to a rejection from those people if you want to be friends with them because you are not able to participate in the social push and pull that the person is used to having with their friends.
David Burns (who helped popularize CBT by writing Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and who’s book Feeling Good Together is also frequently recommended in our rationalist circles) wrote When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life. The book does a good job explaining how your need to be nice leads to your anxiety issues. I would recommend you to read it.