I changed my mind about my own effectiveness at relationships, and downgraded my confidence in being actually in control of my brain. I’ve upgraded my estimation of the extent to which I am like a typical female.
Specifically, what I’ve learned is that in dealing with things that are, to a large extent, affected by my unconscious, it is helpful to treat my conscious and unconscious as separate agents, only one of which I am in control of. In doing this, I noticed that the proportion of my decision making affected by unconscious “blips” was higher than I thought, and furthermore that my unconscious reacts to stimuli in a way which is predicted by pua-Game to a far greater extent than I believed (despite me being a very atypical female).
Concrete predictions which have changed as a result of this experience: I’ve increased my confidence in being able to deal with future relationship problems. If future problems do arise, I plan to use trusted sources on LTR-Game (to decipher my unconscious) as well as conscious reasoning. I’ve also massively decreased my confidence that polyamory is a worthwhile relationship model for me to attempt at any point (while my conscious thinks it’s a great idea, I’ve now narrowed down how my unconscious would react, and accepted that there is little I can do to change that reaction).
A great positive to this experience is that I can now, if I concentrate, notice which of my thoughts are conscious and which are unconscious “blips” which I rationalise. This helps if I’m trying to make a reasoned decision on anything, not just relationships.
I had a very similar experience a few months ago (replacing “typical female” with “typical male”). Or at least an experience that could have outputted a nearly identical post.
The experience felt incredibly crippling and dehumanizing. Towards the beginning of my experience I predicted ways in which I was likely to make bad decisions, and ways I was likely to be emotionally affected. For a few weeks I made an effort (which felt near-herculean) NOT to make those errors and avoiding those emotional consequences. Eventually I ran out of willpower, and spent a month watching myself making the bad decisions I had predicted.
I came out this with a very different mental model of myself. I’m not sure I consider it a positive yet. I make better predictions about myself but am not noticeably better at actually acting on the information.
This experience has definitely been a positive for me, because I now have a more accurate model of my own behaviour which does allow me to more successfully solve problems. (Solving this particular problem has cause relationship satisfaction to shoot up from an albeit quite low slump to a real high point for both me and my OH.)
I’ll just share the main specific technique I learned from the experience, just in case it might also work for you. When I treat my conscious and unconscious as separate agents, I accept that I cannot control my unconscious thinking (so just trying really hard not to do it won’t help much), but I can /model/ how my unconscious reacts to different stimuli. If you draw the diagram with “Me”, “Hamster” (what I call my unconscious) and “World” (including, specifically to here, the behaviour of my OH), and use arrows to represent what can affect what, then it’s a two-way arrow between Me and World, a one-way arrow from World to Hamster, and a one-way arrow from Hamster to Me. After I drew that diagram it became pretty bloody obvious that I needed to affect the world in such a way as to cause positive reactions in Hamster (and for which I need accurate models of both World and Hamster), and most ideally, kickstart a Me → World → Hamster → Me positive feedback loop.
Would the Litany of Tarski and a hug from nyan_sandwich help?
I’m interested in the ways you and Sarokrae actually noticed these “blips.” I usually don’t notice myself making decisions, when I make them; perhaps if I did spend some time predicting how a person in my circumstances would make bad decisions, I could notice them afterwards.
I’m not sure if describing what the blip feels like would help without going through the process of discovery, but I’ll have a go anyway: it’s noticing that you have a thought in your head without remembering the process you got through to reach it. When there’s a new thought formed that’s within easy mental grasp distance, especially when it’s a judgement of a person or an emotion e.g. attraction, and the reason for it is not within an easy grasp distance, then that’s a sign for me that it’s an unconscious conclusion.
Basically if a new thought that feels “near” appears, but when I ask myself why, the answer feels “far”, that’s a sign that if I did retrieve the answer it would be a rationalisation rather than the actual explanation, and I attempt to abort the retrieval process (or at least proceed with many mental warning signs).
Specifically, what I’ve learned is that in dealing with things that are, to a large extent, affected by my unconscious, it is helpful to treat my conscious and unconscious as separate agents, only one of which I am in control of. In doing this, I noticed that the proportion of my decision making affected by unconscious “blips” was higher than I thought, and furthermore that my unconscious reacts to stimuli in a way which is predicted by pua-Game to a far greater extent than I believed (despite me being a very atypical female).
...
A great positive to this experience is that I can now, if I concentrate, notice which of my thoughts are conscious and which are unconscious “blips” which I rationalise.
I may have read too much Roissy but I’ve grown used to calling that part of me my hamster. (^_^)
I changed my mind about my own effectiveness at relationships, and downgraded my confidence in being actually in control of my brain. I’ve upgraded my estimation of the extent to which I am like a typical female.
Specifically, what I’ve learned is that in dealing with things that are, to a large extent, affected by my unconscious, it is helpful to treat my conscious and unconscious as separate agents, only one of which I am in control of. In doing this, I noticed that the proportion of my decision making affected by unconscious “blips” was higher than I thought, and furthermore that my unconscious reacts to stimuli in a way which is predicted by pua-Game to a far greater extent than I believed (despite me being a very atypical female).
Concrete predictions which have changed as a result of this experience: I’ve increased my confidence in being able to deal with future relationship problems. If future problems do arise, I plan to use trusted sources on LTR-Game (to decipher my unconscious) as well as conscious reasoning. I’ve also massively decreased my confidence that polyamory is a worthwhile relationship model for me to attempt at any point (while my conscious thinks it’s a great idea, I’ve now narrowed down how my unconscious would react, and accepted that there is little I can do to change that reaction).
A great positive to this experience is that I can now, if I concentrate, notice which of my thoughts are conscious and which are unconscious “blips” which I rationalise. This helps if I’m trying to make a reasoned decision on anything, not just relationships.
I had a very similar experience a few months ago (replacing “typical female” with “typical male”). Or at least an experience that could have outputted a nearly identical post.
The experience felt incredibly crippling and dehumanizing. Towards the beginning of my experience I predicted ways in which I was likely to make bad decisions, and ways I was likely to be emotionally affected. For a few weeks I made an effort (which felt near-herculean) NOT to make those errors and avoiding those emotional consequences. Eventually I ran out of willpower, and spent a month watching myself making the bad decisions I had predicted.
I came out this with a very different mental model of myself. I’m not sure I consider it a positive yet. I make better predictions about myself but am not noticeably better at actually acting on the information.
This experience has definitely been a positive for me, because I now have a more accurate model of my own behaviour which does allow me to more successfully solve problems. (Solving this particular problem has cause relationship satisfaction to shoot up from an albeit quite low slump to a real high point for both me and my OH.)
I’ll just share the main specific technique I learned from the experience, just in case it might also work for you. When I treat my conscious and unconscious as separate agents, I accept that I cannot control my unconscious thinking (so just trying really hard not to do it won’t help much), but I can /model/ how my unconscious reacts to different stimuli. If you draw the diagram with “Me”, “Hamster” (what I call my unconscious) and “World” (including, specifically to here, the behaviour of my OH), and use arrows to represent what can affect what, then it’s a two-way arrow between Me and World, a one-way arrow from World to Hamster, and a one-way arrow from Hamster to Me. After I drew that diagram it became pretty bloody obvious that I needed to affect the world in such a way as to cause positive reactions in Hamster (and for which I need accurate models of both World and Hamster), and most ideally, kickstart a Me → World → Hamster → Me positive feedback loop.
Would the Litany of Tarski and a hug from nyan_sandwich help?
I’m interested in the ways you and Sarokrae actually noticed these “blips.” I usually don’t notice myself making decisions, when I make them; perhaps if I did spend some time predicting how a person in my circumstances would make bad decisions, I could notice them afterwards.
I’m not sure if describing what the blip feels like would help without going through the process of discovery, but I’ll have a go anyway: it’s noticing that you have a thought in your head without remembering the process you got through to reach it. When there’s a new thought formed that’s within easy mental grasp distance, especially when it’s a judgement of a person or an emotion e.g. attraction, and the reason for it is not within an easy grasp distance, then that’s a sign for me that it’s an unconscious conclusion.
Basically if a new thought that feels “near” appears, but when I ask myself why, the answer feels “far”, that’s a sign that if I did retrieve the answer it would be a rationalisation rather than the actual explanation, and I attempt to abort the retrieval process (or at least proceed with many mental warning signs).
I may have read too much Roissy but I’ve grown used to calling that part of me my hamster. (^_^)
Edit: Heh. It seems I’m not alone in using this terminology. Also overall my personal experience has been very similar, except I haven’t yet tried poly.