The question “is it true” is exactly what informs me when I say “I know this fear to be irrational”. I’ve seen situations in which one person is little more than a burden on another, and is still accepted and even taken care of much like one would do with any given loved one regardless of their practical worth. The failure I’m pointing to is that I can completely understand that line of reason, but my intuitive belief seems to be unaffected by it. The update in information created by this test didn’t cascade down into my intuition, which I think is because my intuition is holding a piece (or set) of stronger beliefs that conflict with this anticipation. There is something arguing a “Yes, but...” where the ‘but’ is still more convincing than the ‘yes’.
I’m not sure I follow you on the idea of lines of retreat. It seems like it a ‘line of retreat’ is moving around an obstacle deemed to difficult rather than through it. It would be useful to accept the obstacle as insurmountable without rigorous testing if you need to move forward before you can complete the testing. But my issue is that if this obstacle is too long, then I’m constantly skirting a more optimal path. It’s like walking around a forest instead of through it because you don’t trust yourself how to survive in the forest. What I’m after right now is how to survive in the forest because I think it will be faster and better in the long term to learn this skill than to become really good at skirting the forest.
I hadn’t heard Confidence All The Way Up as a name but I’m familiar with the concept, in some places I have this, and more often than not other people had called it a weakness. That I would too readily dismiss other people’s ideas as “not aligned with the evidence” because I was spending more time developing my own theory than I was about thinking about the implications of the statements of others. Part of me would think “So now I’m selfish because I don’t care about things that are easily disproven?” and part of me would think “Maybe I didn’t understand what they actually meant.” The second part recently started winning (probably due to a deterioration of a key relationship and not necessarily based on evidence in the strictest sense) and so I’ve been purposefully suppressing Confidence All The Way Up and trying to be a better listener. But I think he has a point that this is a useful way to function, and I would do well to apply it here. I don’t think I’ve sunk into hopelessness, so much as I’ve gotten stuck.
I missed this response because I hadn’t found the “someone has replied to your comment” indicator
The question “is it true” is exactly what informs me when I say “I know this fear to be irrational”. I’ve seen situations in which one person is little more than a burden on another, and is still accepted and even taken care of much like one would do with any given loved one regardless of their practical worth. The failure I’m pointing to is that I can completely understand that line of reason, but my intuitive belief seems to be unaffected by it. The update in information created by this test didn’t cascade down into my intuition, which I think is because my intuition is holding a piece (or set) of stronger beliefs that conflict with this anticipation. There is something arguing a “Yes, but...” where the ‘but’ is still more convincing than the ‘yes’.
Is it that the information “didn’t cascade down” to your intuition, or is it just that your intuition doesn’t find that piece of information as convincing as you think it ought to be?
In general, when you get a “yes, but” (and *especially* when the “but” is explicitly more convincing than the “yes”), focus on the “but”. But what? Yes, you understand that you’ve seen situations where one person sure seems to be little more than a burden and is still accepted, but that part of you still isn’t convinced. Why not? What’s in the “but”?
If I had to take a guess, you probably don’t *want* to be little more than a burden on someone else, even if they still accept you (maybe they *shouldn’t*, even). I know that’s the case with other people, and if you feel the same way it would make sense that “but they’ll accept me anyway” doesn’t feel like it changes anything, no?
I’m not sure I follow you on the idea of lines of retreat. It seems like it a ‘line of retreat’ is moving around an obstacle deemed to difficult rather than through it. It would be useful to accept the obstacle as insurmountable without rigorous testing if you need to move forward before you can complete the testing. But my issue is that if this obstacle is too long, then I’m constantly skirting a more optimal path. It’s like walking around a forest instead of through it because you don’t trust yourself how to survive in the forest. What I’m after right now is how to survive in the forest because I think it will be faster and better in the long term to learn this skill than to become really good at skirting the forest.
I’m not sure I follow you either. Are you saying that you’d rather go forward with convincing yourself of something that you think is true rather than “going around” by making a line of retreat? If so, that’s not really what I’m getting at. I’m not saying “go around instead”, I’m saying “*even if* you want to go forward, the best way to do that when stuck is to open up the option of going around”.
I’ll give you an example. I recently had a client that wanted me to hypnotize him to forget something. I pointed out to him that what he wants is to *believe differently* he actually doesn’t know for sure that the thing he’s asking to forget actually happened—after all it’s possible that I hypnotized him to think it was real to prove a point. He was “yeah, but”ing me by saying stuff like “yeah, I mean, I guess that’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very likely”—and then not taking the idea seriously at all. I picked apart his reasoning and let him know that doing that kind of thing to prove a point is *exactly* the kind of thing I’d do, and that I have indeed done it in the past. Eventually it got down to “yeah, I mean, everything you’re saying makes sense, but I just don’t believe it”.
Seems irrational, no? Like, if you aren’t going to open your mind to evidence, then how do you expect to learn when you’re wrong. If I had doubled down on the wrongness of this decision, it would have pushed him to agreeing with what I’m saying, yet being unable to actually experience the uncertainty that I was pointing him towards. Instead, what I said was “while that may *seem* silly, that’s actually a really good strategy to keep yourself from being manipulated by tricky hypnotists”. I was giving him a line of retreat by saying “we don’t have to do this”, and putting to words his reluctance to let me inspire doubt on such seemingly fundamental things. I didn’t do it because I thought he should *take* it, but because I knew giving him the option would keep him from getting hung up and stuck on it *regardless* of which he felt was the better option. Reminding him that don’t *have to* keep going forward turned out to be a *really quick* way of getting him to accept his passage through the forest. It reminded him that he *wanted* to get his perspective manipulated by me, that his is why he was there, and so he admitted that it really was a serious possibility and took it appropriately seriously and we were back on track.
I hadn’t heard Confidence All The Way Up as a name but I’m familiar with the concept, in some places I have this, and more often than not other people had called it a weakness. That I would too readily dismiss other people’s ideas as “not aligned with the evidence” because I was spending more time developing my own theory than I was about thinking about the implications of the statements of others. >Part of me would think “So now I’m selfish because I don’t care about things that are easily disproven?” and part of me would think “Maybe I didn’t understand what they actually meant.” The second part recently started winning (probably due to a deterioration of a key relationship and not necessarily based on evidence in the strictest sense) and so I’ve been purposefully suppressing Confidence All The Way Up and trying to be a better listener. But I think he has a point that this is a useful way to function, and I would do well to apply it here. I don’t think I’ve sunk into hopelessness, so much as I’ve gotten stuck.
The weakness isn’t “being confident”, it’s in “dismissing the ideas of people who he wants to continue relating to before they agree that he would be right to”.
The question is “does the fact that their ideas are not aligned with the evidence as I see it mean that I should dismiss their views?”, and I think the answer is a pretty strong “no”, in general. You don’t have to object that people’s views aren’t aligned with the evidence just because (in your view) they are not. You don’t have to squash your feeling of confidence to listen once you realize that you can listen for reasons other than “I’m likely wrong”. You can still listen out of a desire to understand where they’re coming from *regardless* of whether they turn out to be righter than you had known. You can refrain from objecting simply be realizing that they don’t (yet) want to hear what you think.
Maybe you *didn’t* understand what they actually meant. Maybe you did, and they just didn’t recognize how much freaking thought you put into making sure you’re right, and taking into account what other people think. I’ve had both happen. Listen because they don’t see eye to eye with you, and you want to figure out how to get there.
The question “is it true” is exactly what informs me when I say “I know this fear to be irrational”. I’ve seen situations in which one person is little more than a burden on another, and is still accepted and even taken care of much like one would do with any given loved one regardless of their practical worth. The failure I’m pointing to is that I can completely understand that line of reason, but my intuitive belief seems to be unaffected by it. The update in information created by this test didn’t cascade down into my intuition, which I think is because my intuition is holding a piece (or set) of stronger beliefs that conflict with this anticipation. There is something arguing a “Yes, but...” where the ‘but’ is still more convincing than the ‘yes’.
I’m not sure I follow you on the idea of lines of retreat. It seems like it a ‘line of retreat’ is moving around an obstacle deemed to difficult rather than through it. It would be useful to accept the obstacle as insurmountable without rigorous testing if you need to move forward before you can complete the testing. But my issue is that if this obstacle is too long, then I’m constantly skirting a more optimal path. It’s like walking around a forest instead of through it because you don’t trust yourself how to survive in the forest. What I’m after right now is how to survive in the forest because I think it will be faster and better in the long term to learn this skill than to become really good at skirting the forest.
I hadn’t heard Confidence All The Way Up as a name but I’m familiar with the concept, in some places I have this, and more often than not other people had called it a weakness. That I would too readily dismiss other people’s ideas as “not aligned with the evidence” because I was spending more time developing my own theory than I was about thinking about the implications of the statements of others. Part of me would think “So now I’m selfish because I don’t care about things that are easily disproven?” and part of me would think “Maybe I didn’t understand what they actually meant.” The second part recently started winning (probably due to a deterioration of a key relationship and not necessarily based on evidence in the strictest sense) and so I’ve been purposefully suppressing Confidence All The Way Up and trying to be a better listener. But I think he has a point that this is a useful way to function, and I would do well to apply it here. I don’t think I’ve sunk into hopelessness, so much as I’ve gotten stuck.
I missed this response because I hadn’t found the “someone has replied to your comment” indicator
Is it that the information “didn’t cascade down” to your intuition, or is it just that your intuition doesn’t find that piece of information as convincing as you think it ought to be?
In general, when you get a “yes, but” (and *especially* when the “but” is explicitly more convincing than the “yes”), focus on the “but”. But what? Yes, you understand that you’ve seen situations where one person sure seems to be little more than a burden and is still accepted, but that part of you still isn’t convinced. Why not? What’s in the “but”?
If I had to take a guess, you probably don’t *want* to be little more than a burden on someone else, even if they still accept you (maybe they *shouldn’t*, even). I know that’s the case with other people, and if you feel the same way it would make sense that “but they’ll accept me anyway” doesn’t feel like it changes anything, no?
I’m not sure I follow you either. Are you saying that you’d rather go forward with convincing yourself of something that you think is true rather than “going around” by making a line of retreat? If so, that’s not really what I’m getting at. I’m not saying “go around instead”, I’m saying “*even if* you want to go forward, the best way to do that when stuck is to open up the option of going around”.
I’ll give you an example. I recently had a client that wanted me to hypnotize him to forget something. I pointed out to him that what he wants is to *believe differently* he actually doesn’t know for sure that the thing he’s asking to forget actually happened—after all it’s possible that I hypnotized him to think it was real to prove a point. He was “yeah, but”ing me by saying stuff like “yeah, I mean, I guess that’s possible, but I don’t think it’s very likely”—and then not taking the idea seriously at all. I picked apart his reasoning and let him know that doing that kind of thing to prove a point is *exactly* the kind of thing I’d do, and that I have indeed done it in the past. Eventually it got down to “yeah, I mean, everything you’re saying makes sense, but I just don’t believe it”.
Seems irrational, no? Like, if you aren’t going to open your mind to evidence, then how do you expect to learn when you’re wrong. If I had doubled down on the wrongness of this decision, it would have pushed him to agreeing with what I’m saying, yet being unable to actually experience the uncertainty that I was pointing him towards. Instead, what I said was “while that may *seem* silly, that’s actually a really good strategy to keep yourself from being manipulated by tricky hypnotists”. I was giving him a line of retreat by saying “we don’t have to do this”, and putting to words his reluctance to let me inspire doubt on such seemingly fundamental things. I didn’t do it because I thought he should *take* it, but because I knew giving him the option would keep him from getting hung up and stuck on it *regardless* of which he felt was the better option. Reminding him that don’t *have to* keep going forward turned out to be a *really quick* way of getting him to accept his passage through the forest. It reminded him that he *wanted* to get his perspective manipulated by me, that his is why he was there, and so he admitted that it really was a serious possibility and took it appropriately seriously and we were back on track.
The weakness isn’t “being confident”, it’s in “dismissing the ideas of people who he wants to continue relating to before they agree that he would be right to”.
The question is “does the fact that their ideas are not aligned with the evidence as I see it mean that I should dismiss their views?”, and I think the answer is a pretty strong “no”, in general. You don’t have to object that people’s views aren’t aligned with the evidence just because (in your view) they are not. You don’t have to squash your feeling of confidence to listen once you realize that you can listen for reasons other than “I’m likely wrong”. You can still listen out of a desire to understand where they’re coming from *regardless* of whether they turn out to be righter than you had known. You can refrain from objecting simply be realizing that they don’t (yet) want to hear what you think.
Maybe you *didn’t* understand what they actually meant. Maybe you did, and they just didn’t recognize how much freaking thought you put into making sure you’re right, and taking into account what other people think. I’ve had both happen. Listen because they don’t see eye to eye with you, and you want to figure out how to get there.