I definitely notice this pattern of “feeling like the thing someone is pointing at is them pointing at me. then having to defend it to defend myself.”
I move that’s similar to the Calvanism concept that I’ve done (but makes me feel less like shit) is something like forgiving myself for making mistakes, and realizing that my mistakes don’t define me. Thus when someone points at something that feels like one of my mistakes, I can see that as them pointing at the mistake, instead of me.
This is all a framing game of course, the Calvinism frame is implicitly “My mistakes do define me, and I’m evil, so lets’ just try to be a little better.” This framing is “My mistakes don’t define me, and I’m usually good, so I’ll just try to be a little better.” When I can seperate my self-concept from my mistakes, I can work to make less mistakes over time, but from a frame that feels I’m inherently good and feels much better to me personally.
In “Transforming Yourself”, Steve Andreas talks about the importance of including “counter examples” in your self-concept, to make them more robust and be able to notice your mistakes instead of having motivated reasoning to maintain your self concept. I think this is the technical mental movement that underlies the intuition above.
I definitely notice this pattern of “feeling like the thing someone is pointing at is them pointing at me. then having to defend it to defend myself.”
I move that’s similar to the Calvanism concept that I’ve done (but makes me feel less like shit) is something like forgiving myself for making mistakes, and realizing that my mistakes don’t define me. Thus when someone points at something that feels like one of my mistakes, I can see that as them pointing at the mistake, instead of me.
This is all a framing game of course, the Calvinism frame is implicitly “My mistakes do define me, and I’m evil, so lets’ just try to be a little better.” This framing is “My mistakes don’t define me, and I’m usually good, so I’ll just try to be a little better.” When I can seperate my self-concept from my mistakes, I can work to make less mistakes over time, but from a frame that feels I’m inherently good and feels much better to me personally.
In “Transforming Yourself”, Steve Andreas talks about the importance of including “counter examples” in your self-concept, to make them more robust and be able to notice your mistakes instead of having motivated reasoning to maintain your self concept. I think this is the technical mental movement that underlies the intuition above.