One of the things that I’ve noticed about this is that most people do not expect to understand things. For most people, the universe is a mysterious place filled with random events beyond their ability to comprehend or control. Think “guessing the teacher’s password”, but not just in school or knowledge, but about everything.
Such people have no problem with the idea of magic, because everything is magic to them, even science.
I had the opposite problem, for a while I divided the world (or at least mathematics) into two categories, stuff I understand and stuff I will understand later. It was a big shock when I realized that for most things this wasn’t going to happen.
Pjeby also has a really good post about figuring out why something offends you. I’ll hunt it down when I get back if someone else doesn’t find it first.
(Perhaps Yvain, rather, and I can’t find it.)
Found it. Was harder to find because I remembered it as a post but actually it was a comment.
What I mainly took from your post was the need to identify the particular norm being violated each time I’m angry/offended. I’ve found (2 or 3 examples come to mind) that it really helps to do this, especially if the anger seems to keep simmering without progress. It does typically take a few tries, to identify what I’m really upset about, but after I identify the reason, there is finally resolution because (i) I find that I finally agree with myself (the self-validation seems to be very important step for moving on, I no longer feel a need to petulantly keep defending myself by protesting) and (ii) I usually find that my anger was a little bit misdirected or not appropriate for the context. In any case, I’m able to let it go.
I’m often surprised how primitive the ‘norm’ is that I felt was violated. Typically for me it’s a basic need for love and acceptance that isn’t being met (which seems strange when I’m a grown, independent adult).
The most recent example is that I was offended/upset by a critical remark by a health technician who matter-of-fact told me I needed to do something differently. Of course there was the initial sting of being criticized, but I was disproportionately angry. At first I thought I was upset because she “wasn’t being professional” about other peripheral things, which is the first argument that came to mind because that’s what people tend to say, and also mentally attacking her relatively lower level of education compared to the doctor was distracting me from identifying the real reason.
It took a while, but I discovered I was upset because I wanted her to be loving and supporting, because I’ve been putting a lot of effort in this aspect of my health. As soon as I realized I was looking for positive feedback for my efforts I (i) agreed with myself, it is true I ought to receive positive feedback for my efforts if I’m going to succeed in this and (ii) realized my anger was misdirected; it would have been nice if there was some support coming from the technician, but once consciously realized I wouldn’t depend on it.
… for caring and support there are, fortunately, friends that I can call, but as soon as I identified the problem, it wasn’t necessary. I know that I’m doing a good job and working harder than the technician gave me credit for, which is (for me) a relatively atypical occasion of self-validation.
Maybe in retrospect the reason was obvious, but I don’t seem to be as strong in identifying the source of negative feelings, so identifying the ‘norm being violated’ is a very useful exercise for me.
Typically for me it’s a basic need for love and acceptance that isn’t being met (which seems strange when I’m a grown, independent adult)
It’s not that strange at all, actually. It’s quite common for us to not learn how to take care of our own emotional needs as children. And in my case at least, it’s been taking me a great deal of study to learn how to do it now. There are quite a lot of non-intuitive things about it, including the part where getting other people to love and accept you doesn’t actually help, unless you’re trying to use it as an example.
To put it another way, we don’t have emotional problems because we didn’t get “enough” love as kids, but because we didn’t get enough examples of how to treat ourselves in a loving way, e.g. to approach our own thoughts and feelings with kindness instead of pushing them away or invalidating them (or whatever else we got as an example).
Or to put it yet another way, this is a matter of “emotional intelligence” being far more about nurture than nature.
But now I’m babbling. Anyway, from the rest of what you describe, you sound like you’ve actually got better skills than me in the area of the actual “taking care of your needs” part, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m glad the specific tip about norm violations helped. Those are one of those things that our brains seem to do just out of conscious awareness, like “lost purposes”, that you sort of have to explicitly ask yourself in order to do anything about the automatic reaction.
It also helps to get rid of the norm or expectation itself, if it’s not a reasonable one. For example, expecting all of your colleagues to always treat you with love and acceptance might not be realistic, in which case “upgrading an addiction to a preference” (replacing the shoulds with like/prefer statements) can be helpful in preventing the need to keep running round the “get offended, figure out what’s happening, address the specifics” loop every single time. If you stop expecting and start preferring, the anger or sense of offense doesn’t arise in the first place.
Reminds me of an comment by pjeby (holy cow, 100 upvotes!) in an old thread:
I had the opposite problem, for a while I divided the world (or at least mathematics) into two categories, stuff I understand and stuff I will understand later. It was a big shock when I realized that for most things this wasn’t going to happen.
When you combine that with a mistrust for logically-consistent thinking that’s burned them in the past, you get a MESS.
Pjeby also has a really good post about figuring out why something offends you. I’ll hunt it down when I get back if someone else doesn’t find it first.(Perhaps Yvain, rather, and I can’t find it.)
Found it. Was harder to find because I remembered it as a post but actually it was a comment.
Out of curiosity, did you ever have occasion to use the advice in that comment, and if so, what was the result?
What I mainly took from your post was the need to identify the particular norm being violated each time I’m angry/offended. I’ve found (2 or 3 examples come to mind) that it really helps to do this, especially if the anger seems to keep simmering without progress. It does typically take a few tries, to identify what I’m really upset about, but after I identify the reason, there is finally resolution because (i) I find that I finally agree with myself (the self-validation seems to be very important step for moving on, I no longer feel a need to petulantly keep defending myself by protesting) and (ii) I usually find that my anger was a little bit misdirected or not appropriate for the context. In any case, I’m able to let it go.
I’m often surprised how primitive the ‘norm’ is that I felt was violated. Typically for me it’s a basic need for love and acceptance that isn’t being met (which seems strange when I’m a grown, independent adult).
The most recent example is that I was offended/upset by a critical remark by a health technician who matter-of-fact told me I needed to do something differently. Of course there was the initial sting of being criticized, but I was disproportionately angry. At first I thought I was upset because she “wasn’t being professional” about other peripheral things, which is the first argument that came to mind because that’s what people tend to say, and also mentally attacking her relatively lower level of education compared to the doctor was distracting me from identifying the real reason.
It took a while, but I discovered I was upset because I wanted her to be loving and supporting, because I’ve been putting a lot of effort in this aspect of my health. As soon as I realized I was looking for positive feedback for my efforts I (i) agreed with myself, it is true I ought to receive positive feedback for my efforts if I’m going to succeed in this and (ii) realized my anger was misdirected; it would have been nice if there was some support coming from the technician, but once consciously realized I wouldn’t depend on it.
… for caring and support there are, fortunately, friends that I can call, but as soon as I identified the problem, it wasn’t necessary. I know that I’m doing a good job and working harder than the technician gave me credit for, which is (for me) a relatively atypical occasion of self-validation.
Maybe in retrospect the reason was obvious, but I don’t seem to be as strong in identifying the source of negative feelings, so identifying the ‘norm being violated’ is a very useful exercise for me.
Thanks for the reply.
It’s not that strange at all, actually. It’s quite common for us to not learn how to take care of our own emotional needs as children. And in my case at least, it’s been taking me a great deal of study to learn how to do it now. There are quite a lot of non-intuitive things about it, including the part where getting other people to love and accept you doesn’t actually help, unless you’re trying to use it as an example.
To put it another way, we don’t have emotional problems because we didn’t get “enough” love as kids, but because we didn’t get enough examples of how to treat ourselves in a loving way, e.g. to approach our own thoughts and feelings with kindness instead of pushing them away or invalidating them (or whatever else we got as an example).
Or to put it yet another way, this is a matter of “emotional intelligence” being far more about nurture than nature.
But now I’m babbling. Anyway, from the rest of what you describe, you sound like you’ve actually got better skills than me in the area of the actual “taking care of your needs” part, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m glad the specific tip about norm violations helped. Those are one of those things that our brains seem to do just out of conscious awareness, like “lost purposes”, that you sort of have to explicitly ask yourself in order to do anything about the automatic reaction.
It also helps to get rid of the norm or expectation itself, if it’s not a reasonable one. For example, expecting all of your colleagues to always treat you with love and acceptance might not be realistic, in which case “upgrading an addiction to a preference” (replacing the shoulds with like/prefer statements) can be helpful in preventing the need to keep running round the “get offended, figure out what’s happening, address the specifics” loop every single time. If you stop expecting and start preferring, the anger or sense of offense doesn’t arise in the first place.
Out of curiosity, how did you make the strikethrough line which extends far to the right outside the comment box?
I used the tool on this webpage.
It appears it added underscores between each letter… but the underscores are actually part of the font, I think.
e x a m p l e (with spaces)