My issue is that I don’t have a good procedure in place for constructive blame: by default, when I blame myself for something mostly what happens is that I rehearse to myself what a terrible person I am without trying to figure out what I could do differently in the future (and then actually making sure that that happens).
Well, being a stoic for such a long time means my reflex is usually, “What is useful here?” And when I run that check on kvetching, it doesn’t make the cut. Sometimes I pretend to feel guiltier, since most people read practicality as callousness, but internally, I focus on, “What different action should I take or new data should I look for?”
ETA: Actually, the other check that helps me is asking: “Is there a causal link between my feeling bad and my being helpful?” Usually, no, or if there is, it does the opposite of what I’d like!
It’s blame in the sense of responsibility, not in the sense of just feeling bad. I tend to frame things in terms of heroic responsibility, but a bit more regatively—in terms of negligence. Every day I go out and sin against people, by commission or omission (or, in a more secular phrasing: every day I go out and metaphorically punch a few people in the face, in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done, and what I have failed to do).
The reason I use the word ‘blame’ is because the harm I inflict on others is real and it’s not alright. The fact that I haven’t figured out how to be less negligent, more empathetic, etc does not magically mitigate their hurt. I use the word blame because working out right actions is not an abstract question that I plan to apply in the future, it’s something I’m doing fumblingly enough to hurt people now, so I’d better improve right quick.
Current theory: rehearsing to yourself or to other people what a terrible person you are is a natural, self-protective response to what seems like an impossible demand. Sometimes the demand actually is impossible, sometimes the demand is understood correctly and falsely believed to be impossible, and sometimes the demand is defensively interpreted as impossible because the reasonable part is felt to be not worth doing but it doesn’t feel safe to just refuse it.
I think this analysis is helping me to break the cycle of rumination about being a terrible person because it lowers the intensity. It’s much better than “you shouldn’t think you’re a terrible person”—that just becomes another failure.
a natural, self-protective response to what seems like an impossible demand. Sometimes the demand actually is impossible, sometimes the demand is understood correctly and falsely believed to be impossible, and sometimes the demand is defensively interpreted as impossible because the reasonable part is felt to be not worth doing but it doesn’t feel safe to just refuse it.
This can be a response to any demand which is felt to be impossible.
Here’s an example which is going to be a little vague because there’s some privacy I want to maintain, but recently I demanded that someone not repeat the huge social mistake he’d just made. He started talking about what an awful person he was.
In my opinion, what was going on was that he wasn’t sure what the boundaries that he needed to not cross were, and wasn’t sure he could regulate his behavior, so he was trying to avoid further punishment by saying he was helpless and suffering enough already.
Since then, he’s apologized in a way which I think means he understands the issues and will do better.
In my opinion, what was going on was that he wasn’t sure what the boundaries that he needed to not cross were, and wasn’t sure he could regulate his behavior, so he was trying to avoid further punishment by saying he was helpless and suffering enough already.
This is very enlightening. I’m going to probe this by modulating my response to it, and see what I find. Thanks; one karma point feels insufficent.
I think a post on this (?and related) would be much apprecaited if you and/or someone with similar experience could put one together.
Since then, he’s apologized in a way which I think means he understands the issues and will do better.
I fear you lost me agian. What is this evidence for?
I may write something up when I’m more sure that I’m right and have resolved more of my difficulties. At this point, I’ve toned down a lot of the self-hatred, but there’s an underlying difficulty with doing much of anything that’s still a serious problem for me.
That last sentence was mostly included because I imagined people wanting to know what happened next. However, it’s also evidence that what I was asking of him wasn’t as impossible as he initially thought it was.
I am sometimes successful at this; when I am, the script usually goes something like, “What am I worried/upset about? What should I have done differently? What can I do to prepare for this next time?” And then I actually talk myself through the things I could have done differently and whether they would have been successful, and if I hit upon something that would have worked, I try to identify a heuristic or plan that would help me do better in situations like these in the future. And do something to implement it immediately, if possible, or at least burn in into my head so I won’t forget.
And if I don’t hit upon anything I could have done that I think would have been a good idea, I just say to myself, well, that was just a bad situation. (Like if I happened to do badly at something because of luck, even though statistically, I’m pretty sure what I did was a good idea, even having updated on the evidence of it not going well once.)
This usually helps because if I keep worrying, I just ask myself, “is this a different concern I need to address, or is it the same just feeling-bad as before?” And then if it’s a different concern, I do the same thing, trying to identify if this worry is actually a signal I need to think harder about the problem.
And if I really, truly decide, on reflection, that the worry isn’t a useful signal, I find that really helps in getting it to go away. Because that way my worrying side feels vindicated, because the concerns have really been addressed; I’m not just forcing them out of my brain because they are worries and worries are bad, but because they are worries with no basis in reality. Once I actually feel confident of that, then I’m not worried anymore.
The trickier part, sometimes, is remembering to do this. I’m less sure about how to do that.
I used to have this problem a lot more than I do now.
It’s possible the change is just the result of the aging chemistry of my body, but I like to think that the thing that turned it around was literally telling myself, “I want to be the kind of person who is cool with having done that.” I had to accept the thing that had happened and had to become the kind of person that would accept it.
Or maybe I just had to age. It’s possible that’s why I don’t do a lot of the things I used to find myself unable to stop doing.
“I’m trying to think if there’s anything I should be doing right now,”
Naturally Harry thinks of what he could have done differently and/or what he can do better in the future, but his main conscious focus is “here and now”. No past, no future, no daydreaming. Here and now. I think this is an excellent advice.
“I’m trying to think if there’s anything I should be doing right now,” said Harry Potter. “It’s hard, though. My mind keeps on imagining ways the past could have gone differently if I’d thought faster, and I can’t rule out that there might be a key insight in there somewhere.”
I’d misremembered this—I thought he’d been trying to get his mind off his possible mistakes, but couldn’t, and I get the impression that the people in this part of the discussion didn’t think he’d even been trying to get his mind off possible mistakes.
Actually, he wasn’t sure where the answer lies, so thinking about his past mistakes might actually offer a useful clue, though I wonder whether his mind is drawn to the topic more than it should be.
It’s also possible that this discussion is using HPMOR as springboard to talk about the problem of attending too much to past mistakes rather than trying to find solutions.
“Allow” is a strange word; when I’m rehearsing to myself what a terrible person I am it’s more like “I caused this bad thing to happen because of my terribleness.”
When you feel that way, do you feel that terribleness in you is an inherent unchangeable state, like ‘vanquishes dark lords’, which causes bad things to happen around you?
Meta: I’m not trying to do anything related to blame; I’m trying to understand something odd and interesting, with a likely side effect of being able to provide useful advice.
Can you project that onto outside influences? I’ve got qualms about suggesting how to blame other people, but can you replace “I am a terrible person” with “I have bad luck”?
So then, NOT attempting to do so must be evidence that you aren’t a terrible person? Would it help to consider all of the things that you could have done worse?
My issue is that I don’t have a good procedure in place for constructive blame: by default, when I blame myself for something mostly what happens is that I rehearse to myself what a terrible person I am without trying to figure out what I could do differently in the future (and then actually making sure that that happens).
Well, being a stoic for such a long time means my reflex is usually, “What is useful here?” And when I run that check on kvetching, it doesn’t make the cut. Sometimes I pretend to feel guiltier, since most people read practicality as callousness, but internally, I focus on, “What different action should I take or new data should I look for?”
ETA: Actually, the other check that helps me is asking: “Is there a causal link between my feeling bad and my being helpful?” Usually, no, or if there is, it does the opposite of what I’d like!
That’s the productive question. Blaming yourself is unproductive.
It’s blame in the sense of responsibility, not in the sense of just feeling bad. I tend to frame things in terms of heroic responsibility, but a bit more regatively—in terms of negligence. Every day I go out and sin against people, by commission or omission (or, in a more secular phrasing: every day I go out and metaphorically punch a few people in the face, in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done, and what I have failed to do).
The reason I use the word ‘blame’ is because the harm I inflict on others is real and it’s not alright. The fact that I haven’t figured out how to be less negligent, more empathetic, etc does not magically mitigate their hurt. I use the word blame because working out right actions is not an abstract question that I plan to apply in the future, it’s something I’m doing fumblingly enough to hurt people now, so I’d better improve right quick.
Current theory: rehearsing to yourself or to other people what a terrible person you are is a natural, self-protective response to what seems like an impossible demand. Sometimes the demand actually is impossible, sometimes the demand is understood correctly and falsely believed to be impossible, and sometimes the demand is defensively interpreted as impossible because the reasonable part is felt to be not worth doing but it doesn’t feel safe to just refuse it.
I think this analysis is helping me to break the cycle of rumination about being a terrible person because it lowers the intensity. It’s much better than “you shouldn’t think you’re a terrible person”—that just becomes another failure.
I’m not sure I follow. What demand?
This can be a response to any demand which is felt to be impossible.
Here’s an example which is going to be a little vague because there’s some privacy I want to maintain, but recently I demanded that someone not repeat the huge social mistake he’d just made. He started talking about what an awful person he was.
In my opinion, what was going on was that he wasn’t sure what the boundaries that he needed to not cross were, and wasn’t sure he could regulate his behavior, so he was trying to avoid further punishment by saying he was helpless and suffering enough already.
Since then, he’s apologized in a way which I think means he understands the issues and will do better.
This is very enlightening. I’m going to probe this by modulating my response to it, and see what I find. Thanks; one karma point feels insufficent.
I think a post on this (?and related) would be much apprecaited if you and/or someone with similar experience could put one together.
I fear you lost me agian. What is this evidence for?
I may write something up when I’m more sure that I’m right and have resolved more of my difficulties. At this point, I’ve toned down a lot of the self-hatred, but there’s an underlying difficulty with doing much of anything that’s still a serious problem for me.
That last sentence was mostly included because I imagined people wanting to know what happened next. However, it’s also evidence that what I was asking of him wasn’t as impossible as he initially thought it was.
I am sometimes successful at this; when I am, the script usually goes something like, “What am I worried/upset about? What should I have done differently? What can I do to prepare for this next time?” And then I actually talk myself through the things I could have done differently and whether they would have been successful, and if I hit upon something that would have worked, I try to identify a heuristic or plan that would help me do better in situations like these in the future. And do something to implement it immediately, if possible, or at least burn in into my head so I won’t forget.
And if I don’t hit upon anything I could have done that I think would have been a good idea, I just say to myself, well, that was just a bad situation. (Like if I happened to do badly at something because of luck, even though statistically, I’m pretty sure what I did was a good idea, even having updated on the evidence of it not going well once.)
This usually helps because if I keep worrying, I just ask myself, “is this a different concern I need to address, or is it the same just feeling-bad as before?” And then if it’s a different concern, I do the same thing, trying to identify if this worry is actually a signal I need to think harder about the problem.
And if I really, truly decide, on reflection, that the worry isn’t a useful signal, I find that really helps in getting it to go away. Because that way my worrying side feels vindicated, because the concerns have really been addressed; I’m not just forcing them out of my brain because they are worries and worries are bad, but because they are worries with no basis in reality. Once I actually feel confident of that, then I’m not worried anymore.
The trickier part, sometimes, is remembering to do this. I’m less sure about how to do that.
I used to have this problem a lot more than I do now.
It’s possible the change is just the result of the aging chemistry of my body, but I like to think that the thing that turned it around was literally telling myself, “I want to be the kind of person who is cool with having done that.” I had to accept the thing that had happened and had to become the kind of person that would accept it.
Or maybe I just had to age. It’s possible that’s why I don’t do a lot of the things I used to find myself unable to stop doing.
Me too.
The answer is already in the story:
“I’m trying to think if there’s anything I should be doing right now,”
Naturally Harry thinks of what he could have done differently and/or what he can do better in the future, but his main conscious focus is “here and now”. No past, no future, no daydreaming. Here and now. I think this is an excellent advice.
I’d misremembered this—I thought he’d been trying to get his mind off his possible mistakes, but couldn’t, and I get the impression that the people in this part of the discussion didn’t think he’d even been trying to get his mind off possible mistakes.
Actually, he wasn’t sure where the answer lies, so thinking about his past mistakes might actually offer a useful clue, though I wonder whether his mind is drawn to the topic more than it should be.
It’s also possible that this discussion is using HPMOR as springboard to talk about the problem of attending too much to past mistakes rather than trying to find solutions.
Do you emotionally believe that only terrible people allow bad things to happen?
“Allow” is a strange word; when I’m rehearsing to myself what a terrible person I am it’s more like “I caused this bad thing to happen because of my terribleness.”
When you feel that way, do you feel that terribleness in you is an inherent unchangeable state, like ‘vanquishes dark lords’, which causes bad things to happen around you?
Meta: I’m not trying to do anything related to blame; I’m trying to understand something odd and interesting, with a likely side effect of being able to provide useful advice.
That is the worry, yes.
Can you project that onto outside influences? I’ve got qualms about suggesting how to blame other people, but can you replace “I am a terrible person” with “I have bad luck”?
In the case I have in mind, attempting to do so would provide more evidence that I am a terrible person.
So then, NOT attempting to do so must be evidence that you aren’t a terrible person? Would it help to consider all of the things that you could have done worse?
Not particularly.