Second — an observation and a bit of an abstract question.
Observation: it seems to me that it’s often the most introspective, pro-social, and thoughtful people that seem to wrestle with things like shame and potentially damaging self-concept.
Can you think of why that might be true? Obviously I don’t know you super well, but you always came across like a very admirable person to me; i.e., exactly the type of person that would benefit least from rumination and feelings of shame or anxiety that might lead to some sort of paralysis.
It seems to me the more pro-social, reflective, and thoughtful someone is, the most ideal position for society would be for that person to go most confidently through life, no? Yes, of course, everyone gets some stuff wrong, and you don’t want to shut down introspection, but...… I wonder why this is? Is it being very thoughtful causes both pro-sociality and rumination/shame/anxiety? Or that going through a round of heavy rumination makes one more pro-social? Or that becoming pro-social leads one to higher standards and more rumination?
Trying to navigate the cause-and-effect a little bit, but it seems like a darn shame to me.
Congrats again, of course — and any thoughts on why the general case occurs?
I don’t know of a definite explanation; some ideas that come to mind would be:
1. I’ve seen one theory suggesting that the kind of thoughtfulness and trauma sensitivity would be linked together, in a personality type which the writer describes as a “brain wired for danger”—a combination of strong pattern-recognition abilities (with overlap on the autism spectrum), a powerful drive to understand the world, and a sensitivity to signals from the outside world, particularly signals which might indicate threats.
If you are super-sensitive to noticing signals of “behavior X is bad”, then you might also be super-sensitive to noticing when you yourself engage in a bad behavior (a sensitivity which might be useful in some environments), leading to a higher-than-average probability of developing feelings of shame etc. But at the same time it could also drive prosocial behavior, if you also notice *good* behavior and what other people might need.
I find particularly interesting the list of traits that you get if you search for the phrase “In my experience with people with primary CAPS who present with psychiatric concerns I find” in the article I linked above. Some people had the reaction that this reads as a horoscope—lots of different traits, so that some are guaranteed to match with anyone. But if you just tossed out a lot of different traits, then that would increase the probability that *some* of them matched for everyone, while drastically reducing the probability that they would *all* match for someone. My experience reading that list was that I match *all* of them, with some of them being pretty specific things which I’ve struggled with for a long time. Which isn’t something you would expect for a horoscopy “a bit of everything thrown together” list… *and* I can also think of a few other people who match this list better than you might expect by random chance:
In my experience with people with primary CAPS who present with psychiatric concernsI find:
*Anxiety/high arousal during times of stress (evidence of high adrenaline) with resulting insomnia, sometimes manic-like characteristics, “tired and wired”, “turbo” (hyperfocus/adrenaline/acute stress response/orienting response)
*Extreme hyperfocus, can get into “flow” and even forget to urinate (children will wet self sometimes)
*Evidence of increased sympathetic nervous system tone and blood pooling (if hypermobile): dilated pupils, increased startle, livedo reticularis, bluish toes, sitting with legs wrapped around each-other, complaints of temperature dysregulation, hunched over, rocking and fidgeting
*Under-arousal during times of low stress (often leading diagnosis of ADD) usually associated with behaviors to modify this state: compulsive (sometimes addictive) behaviors like eating, substance abuse and sometimes, thrill-seeking behaviors, etc. to increase arousal
*High sensitivity/reactivity/emotionality often associated with intruding environmental stimuli when trying to hyper-focus or sleep, sensory processing disorders which present with over-stimulation in places with an excess of noise, stimulation. Of note, can be elated in high stimuli environments, if still finding the excess adrenaline to be a “fun rush”
*A remarkable ability to read emotions in others (which can be overwhelming for some), but often social awkwardness and inappropriateness in response (“mind-blindness”-thinking others know how they are feeling and assuming others see the world the way they do.) Difficulty with social rhythms, eye contact, speaking in turn. Very upset by interpersonal cruelty.
*Can be easily traumatized by “small” events (horror movie or off-hand comment by another person for example) once the adrenaline is no longer thrilling
*Easily distracted when not hyper-focused, shiny object syndrome (sometimes meets criteria for ADD), hyper-vigilant
*A tendency toward non-conformity due to different priorities than others
*Special abilities (the type varies-but often includes very gifted musicians, scientists, etc...) due to highly developed circuits not found in others, coupled with hyper-focus and obsession with certain areas of interest (orienting response), often leading to remarkable accomplishments.
*Exceptionally good at processing large amounts of information and reaching conclusions, picking out patterns, seeing small details others miss
2. Even without the specific hypothesis mentioned above, it seems easy to imagine there being connections between feelings of shame on the other hand, and a drive for introspection and pro-sociality on the other. If you have lots of shame, you might be more motivated to figure out how to avoid accumulating more of it and to fix your perceived shamefulness; and on the other hand, the more motivated you are in figuring out how you think you should act, the easier time you might have noticing whenever you act badly.
As described by the self-concept book, a self-concept for something is basically something which instantiates a set of patterns, and then chimes whenever you act in a way that matches the pattern. (And also actively drives you to act in ways which correspond to the pattern.) So if you’ve developed a finely honed pattern-detector for “this is bad behavior”, then whenever you do something which resembles that pattern, it reinforces your image of yourself as a bad person. If you haven’t picked up positive self-concepts as well, then it’s possible for you to do fifty nice things and two mean things in a day, and only have your “bad behavior” detector ring a bell, leaving you with the feeling of being a terrible person.
3. Lots of shame has its origins in childhood, and childhood in Western countries is often not very kind to introspective and thoughtful people, especially not if those people are boys. Those are “nerd” traits, and even if the social environment didn’t actively consider them harmful, having interests in that sphere trades off from time and effort that could be spent on learning social skills and becoming more popular.
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All of this is just random speculation though; I don’t think that I actually know what the real answer is. :)
Not Kaj, but shame and self-concept (damaging or otherwise) are thoughts (or self-concept is a thought and shame is an emotion produced by certain thoughts). It seems obvious that people with a greater tendency to think will be at greater risk of harmful thoughts. Of course, they’ll also have a better chance of coming up with something beneficial as well, but that doesn’t strike me as likely to cancel out the harm. Humans are fairly well adapted for our intellectual and social niche; there are a lot more ways for introspection to break things than to improve them.
First — congratulations.
Second — an observation and a bit of an abstract question.
Observation: it seems to me that it’s often the most introspective, pro-social, and thoughtful people that seem to wrestle with things like shame and potentially damaging self-concept.
Can you think of why that might be true? Obviously I don’t know you super well, but you always came across like a very admirable person to me; i.e., exactly the type of person that would benefit least from rumination and feelings of shame or anxiety that might lead to some sort of paralysis.
It seems to me the more pro-social, reflective, and thoughtful someone is, the most ideal position for society would be for that person to go most confidently through life, no? Yes, of course, everyone gets some stuff wrong, and you don’t want to shut down introspection, but...… I wonder why this is? Is it being very thoughtful causes both pro-sociality and rumination/shame/anxiety? Or that going through a round of heavy rumination makes one more pro-social? Or that becoming pro-social leads one to higher standards and more rumination?
Trying to navigate the cause-and-effect a little bit, but it seems like a darn shame to me.
Congrats again, of course — and any thoughts on why the general case occurs?
Thank you for your kind words!
I don’t know of a definite explanation; some ideas that come to mind would be:
1. I’ve seen one theory suggesting that the kind of thoughtfulness and trauma sensitivity would be linked together, in a personality type which the writer describes as a “brain wired for danger”—a combination of strong pattern-recognition abilities (with overlap on the autism spectrum), a powerful drive to understand the world, and a sensitivity to signals from the outside world, particularly signals which might indicate threats.
If you are super-sensitive to noticing signals of “behavior X is bad”, then you might also be super-sensitive to noticing when you yourself engage in a bad behavior (a sensitivity which might be useful in some environments), leading to a higher-than-average probability of developing feelings of shame etc. But at the same time it could also drive prosocial behavior, if you also notice *good* behavior and what other people might need.
I find particularly interesting the list of traits that you get if you search for the phrase “In my experience with people with primary CAPS who present with psychiatric concerns I find” in the article I linked above. Some people had the reaction that this reads as a horoscope—lots of different traits, so that some are guaranteed to match with anyone. But if you just tossed out a lot of different traits, then that would increase the probability that *some* of them matched for everyone, while drastically reducing the probability that they would *all* match for someone. My experience reading that list was that I match *all* of them, with some of them being pretty specific things which I’ve struggled with for a long time. Which isn’t something you would expect for a horoscopy “a bit of everything thrown together” list… *and* I can also think of a few other people who match this list better than you might expect by random chance:
2. Even without the specific hypothesis mentioned above, it seems easy to imagine there being connections between feelings of shame on the other hand, and a drive for introspection and pro-sociality on the other. If you have lots of shame, you might be more motivated to figure out how to avoid accumulating more of it and to fix your perceived shamefulness; and on the other hand, the more motivated you are in figuring out how you think you should act, the easier time you might have noticing whenever you act badly.
As described by the self-concept book, a self-concept for something is basically something which instantiates a set of patterns, and then chimes whenever you act in a way that matches the pattern. (And also actively drives you to act in ways which correspond to the pattern.) So if you’ve developed a finely honed pattern-detector for “this is bad behavior”, then whenever you do something which resembles that pattern, it reinforces your image of yourself as a bad person. If you haven’t picked up positive self-concepts as well, then it’s possible for you to do fifty nice things and two mean things in a day, and only have your “bad behavior” detector ring a bell, leaving you with the feeling of being a terrible person.
3. Lots of shame has its origins in childhood, and childhood in Western countries is often not very kind to introspective and thoughtful people, especially not if those people are boys. Those are “nerd” traits, and even if the social environment didn’t actively consider them harmful, having interests in that sphere trades off from time and effort that could be spent on learning social skills and becoming more popular.
---
All of this is just random speculation though; I don’t think that I actually know what the real answer is. :)
Not Kaj, but shame and self-concept (damaging or otherwise) are thoughts (or self-concept is a thought and shame is an emotion produced by certain thoughts). It seems obvious that people with a greater tendency to think will be at greater risk of harmful thoughts. Of course, they’ll also have a better chance of coming up with something beneficial as well, but that doesn’t strike me as likely to cancel out the harm. Humans are fairly well adapted for our intellectual and social niche; there are a lot more ways for introspection to break things than to improve them.