You’ve got my sympathy—borderline is strong stuff.
I’m still digging my way out from childhood emotional abuse of a different variety, so my advice is tentative, but here are a couple of things I think are helpful. One is what I call moving back behind my own eyes. Even though it’s based on homunculus beliefs, the general idea is to check on whether I’m in my own relatively direct view of the universe, or if my focus is on what other people might be thinking of me.
This seems to be a special case of something I’ve been using lately—asking myself what I’m doing, with the intent of looking at a fairly small chunk. For example, if the answer is “I’m playing a video game while thinking about what an awful person I am”, there might be a clue in there somewhere. Recent surprise: You know, it might be a mistake to beat myself up because someone else is making money from the same business idea that I had twenty years ago and never did anything with.
I think you’re up against emotional habits of thinking it was urgent to accommodate her as much as specific issues about the occult.
Thank you for the advice. And I’m willing to agree about the occult being the minimal issue. I guess the rest of my issues feel off-topic. Still, I am really thinking about writing a post about this and what rationality skills helped, it would be a good case study. Perhaps I shouldn’t limit it to just the supernatural stuff. Any thoughts on if it’d be of enough value to people?
You’ve got my sympathy—borderline is strong stuff.
I’m still digging my way out from childhood emotional abuse of a different variety, so my advice is tentative, but here are a couple of things I think are helpful. One is what I call moving back behind my own eyes. Even though it’s based on homunculus beliefs, the general idea is to check on whether I’m in my own relatively direct view of the universe, or if my focus is on what other people might be thinking of me.
This seems to be a special case of something I’ve been using lately—asking myself what I’m doing, with the intent of looking at a fairly small chunk. For example, if the answer is “I’m playing a video game while thinking about what an awful person I am”, there might be a clue in there somewhere. Recent surprise: You know, it might be a mistake to beat myself up because someone else is making money from the same business idea that I had twenty years ago and never did anything with.
I think you’re up against emotional habits of thinking it was urgent to accommodate her as much as specific issues about the occult.
Thank you for the advice. And I’m willing to agree about the occult being the minimal issue. I guess the rest of my issues feel off-topic. Still, I am really thinking about writing a post about this and what rationality skills helped, it would be a good case study. Perhaps I shouldn’t limit it to just the supernatural stuff. Any thoughts on if it’d be of enough value to people?
I think it would be valuable, though it may just mean that I think it would be valuable for me.
Instrumental rationality includes all aspects of how one can live better and/or more in accordance with one’s goals by thinking more clearly.
Alright, as a motivational technique, I publicly commit to complete it within the next two weeks. Would you be willing to do some copyediting?
Yes.