In the spirit of reversing any advice you hear I would also suggest that sometimes, just waiting and suffering out the problem is a really counterproductive strategy. For example, recently, I had a pretty severe cold, with a fever and a hacking cough that would leave me debilitated for minutes. Now, I could have just laid in bed and suffered through it. And indeed, I did, for a day or so. But when the cold didn’t pass on its own, I found that it was way more productive for me to address the symptoms with cough drops, tea, hot soup, and acetaminophen than it was for me to simply wait and try to wait for the problem to go away on its own.
In the same fashion, I find that when I’m in a really bad place, in terms of mental health, trying to suffer through it is often the worst strategy. I use up a ton of willpower forcing myself to not get distracted, which then leaves me feeling drained and unproductive the next day, starting the cycle all over again. I’ve found that sometimes it’s acceptable to have a low productivity day, if you acknowledge to yourself that today will be a low productivity day (or heck, even an entire low-productivity weekend), and then you “reset” and get back into your normal groove the next day.
So what’s my advice? I’m not entirely sure. I think I would say that the most helpful thing for me to do has been to set time limits. Try to tough it out for X hours, but after that, rather than grinding one’s willpower into a nub trying to brute-force past a problem, accept that the problem will not be solved today. Sometimes, the root cause is insoluble (as was the case with my cold) and the best strategy is to address the symptoms as best as you’re able until the root cause resolves itself.
Trying to suffer through a migraine rather than treating it actually sensitizes your brain to getting migraines more easily. I think physical ailments don’t really follow the principle outlined in the OP. For primarily mental frustrations, though, I think it could be valuable.
For primarily mental frustrations, though, I think it could be valuable
It is valuable. Ozy, in their sequence on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, draws a contrast between “radical acceptance” and “opposite action”. Radical Acceptance is accepting a fact about yourself, and then deciding that fact is fundamentally okay. Opposite Action is deliberately forcing yourself to do something, even though you dislike it or have an aversion to it.
It seems to me that lionhearted is advocating for Opposite Action. Forcing yourself to “just suffer until it passes” aligns very well in my mind with the opposite action mode of thinking. The essence of opposite action is acknowledging that something sucks, that you hate doing it, and then forcing yourself to do it anyway.
However, while, Opposite Action is a valuable strategy, it is not a universal strategy. One must be careful not to make suffering a virtue unto itself. That’s where Radical Acceptance comes in. Radical Acceptance says, “It’s okay to screw up. It’s okay to choose pleasure over suffering. It’s okay that you spent the day reading reddit instead of working on your project. You’re not bad, evil or stupid because of it.”
The two approaches are in a dialectic (hence, “dialectical behavioral therapy”) because neither is effective when used individually. Radical Acceptance, practiced universally just leads you to be in a blissed-out Pollyanna state where your life is falling apart but you’ve convinced yourself that you’re fine because you’ve “radically accepted” that you can’t do anything about your problems. For people stuck in Radical Acceptance (which, in its extreme, is more like learned helpnessness) Opposite Action provides the motivation and strategy to square up to aversive tasks and tackle them head-on.
Opposite Action, practiced universally, leads to burnout and depression. Eventually you come across a problem that exceeds your capacity to suffer. What then? Do you just force yourself to “try, try again”? For people stuck in an Opposite Action mode, Radical Acceptance provides the space needed to step back and look at the problem from a broader perspective. You hate doing the homework for a class. You’ve always hated it. You suffer every time there’s an assignment. Maybe the correct thing to do is to radically accept that you will never find this class enjoyable and drop the class rather than suffering for an entire semester. This doesn’t make you a failure or a bad person. It just means you chose not to do a thing.
Neither approach works well on its own, but used together they’re effective, even for people with relatively serious mental health issues.
Ozy, in their sequence on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
I can’t find it here on LW. Can you point me to it?
Radical Acceptance says, “It’s okay to screw up. …”
I recently attended a meditation retreat organized by the Berlin LW group. Buddhist meditation is a lot about seeing yourself and your needs and actions as it is. Seeing pain as pain. Seeing feelings as feelings and distractions as distractions. In a way the thoroughness of this could be called radical. But it goes beyond acceptance. Acceptance relates to or alters your identity. But Buddhism goes farther: There is nothing to accept. Which part of you is doing the accepting?
Indeed, yes. Here was another (actually, earlier) entry from my potential countermeasures —
Proactive Recharging
— Sometimes losing steam or mentally flagging is real, and not much more can be done in terms of productive work.
— In that case, deciding intentionally to call a long break (or call done for the day) and recharging via nap or bed, and other recharging activities, can be the right call for the day.
— It takes wisdom to know if you should bear down or proactively recharge in a given situation.
With colds, I expect that waiting is roughly the best strategy. See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81788.Why_We_ Get_Sick. Our bodies are already evolved to have good defenses against pathogens, and most things we do to fight colds are ineffective, but sometimes look good because they address symptoms (those symptoms are often part of our bodies defenses) or because of regression to the mean.
Our bodies’ defenses are good, but they’re not perfect and they do have negative side-effects. It is very possible for your immune system to cause damage by causing you to cough too much, run too high a fever, be dehydrated, etc. Moreover, even in cases where the immune system isn’t causing physical damage, I find that my mental health is much improved when I’m even marginally functional as opposed to shivering and coughing in bed for 4-5 hours at a time.
Does addressing symptoms lengthen the amount of time your body needs to fight off the virus? Possibly. However, I would much rather be mildly ill for a week than severely ill for three or four days.
In the spirit of reversing any advice you hear I would also suggest that sometimes, just waiting and suffering out the problem is a really counterproductive strategy. For example, recently, I had a pretty severe cold, with a fever and a hacking cough that would leave me debilitated for minutes. Now, I could have just laid in bed and suffered through it. And indeed, I did, for a day or so. But when the cold didn’t pass on its own, I found that it was way more productive for me to address the symptoms with cough drops, tea, hot soup, and acetaminophen than it was for me to simply wait and try to wait for the problem to go away on its own.
In the same fashion, I find that when I’m in a really bad place, in terms of mental health, trying to suffer through it is often the worst strategy. I use up a ton of willpower forcing myself to not get distracted, which then leaves me feeling drained and unproductive the next day, starting the cycle all over again. I’ve found that sometimes it’s acceptable to have a low productivity day, if you acknowledge to yourself that today will be a low productivity day (or heck, even an entire low-productivity weekend), and then you “reset” and get back into your normal groove the next day.
So what’s my advice? I’m not entirely sure. I think I would say that the most helpful thing for me to do has been to set time limits. Try to tough it out for X hours, but after that, rather than grinding one’s willpower into a nub trying to brute-force past a problem, accept that the problem will not be solved today. Sometimes, the root cause is insoluble (as was the case with my cold) and the best strategy is to address the symptoms as best as you’re able until the root cause resolves itself.
Trying to suffer through a migraine rather than treating it actually sensitizes your brain to getting migraines more easily. I think physical ailments don’t really follow the principle outlined in the OP. For primarily mental frustrations, though, I think it could be valuable.
It is valuable. Ozy, in their sequence on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, draws a contrast between “radical acceptance” and “opposite action”. Radical Acceptance is accepting a fact about yourself, and then deciding that fact is fundamentally okay. Opposite Action is deliberately forcing yourself to do something, even though you dislike it or have an aversion to it.
It seems to me that lionhearted is advocating for Opposite Action. Forcing yourself to “just suffer until it passes” aligns very well in my mind with the opposite action mode of thinking. The essence of opposite action is acknowledging that something sucks, that you hate doing it, and then forcing yourself to do it anyway.
However, while, Opposite Action is a valuable strategy, it is not a universal strategy. One must be careful not to make suffering a virtue unto itself. That’s where Radical Acceptance comes in. Radical Acceptance says, “It’s okay to screw up. It’s okay to choose pleasure over suffering. It’s okay that you spent the day reading reddit instead of working on your project. You’re not bad, evil or stupid because of it.”
The two approaches are in a dialectic (hence, “dialectical behavioral therapy”) because neither is effective when used individually. Radical Acceptance, practiced universally just leads you to be in a blissed-out Pollyanna state where your life is falling apart but you’ve convinced yourself that you’re fine because you’ve “radically accepted” that you can’t do anything about your problems. For people stuck in Radical Acceptance (which, in its extreme, is more like learned helpnessness) Opposite Action provides the motivation and strategy to square up to aversive tasks and tackle them head-on.
Opposite Action, practiced universally, leads to burnout and depression. Eventually you come across a problem that exceeds your capacity to suffer. What then? Do you just force yourself to “try, try again”? For people stuck in an Opposite Action mode, Radical Acceptance provides the space needed to step back and look at the problem from a broader perspective. You hate doing the homework for a class. You’ve always hated it. You suffer every time there’s an assignment. Maybe the correct thing to do is to radically accept that you will never find this class enjoyable and drop the class rather than suffering for an entire semester. This doesn’t make you a failure or a bad person. It just means you chose not to do a thing.
Neither approach works well on its own, but used together they’re effective, even for people with relatively serious mental health issues.
I can’t find it here on LW. Can you point me to it?
I recently attended a meditation retreat organized by the Berlin LW group. Buddhist meditation is a lot about seeing yourself and your needs and actions as it is. Seeing pain as pain. Seeing feelings as feelings and distractions as distractions. In a way the thoroughness of this could be called radical. But it goes beyond acceptance. Acceptance relates to or alters your identity. But Buddhism goes farther: There is nothing to accept. Which part of you is doing the accepting?
Related to https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Litany_of_Gendlin
Linking Ozy’s DBT Sequence 2015-2017 here from ze’s blog, for the sake of completeness:
DBT Sequence: Assumptions
DBT Sequence: Dialectics
DBT Sequence: Chain Analysis
DBT Sequence: Crisis Survival
DBT Sequence: Radical Acceptance
Radical Acceptance Practice
Coping With Compulsive Behavior
Dealing With Relationship Conflict
Introduction to Emotion Regulation
Understanding and Naming Emotions
Changing Emotional Responses
Reducing Vulnerability To Emotions
Troubleshooting Emotion Regulation
Mindfulness: What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness: Doing and Being Mind
Mindfulness: Six Mindfulness Skills
Mindfulness: Thoughts Are Not Reality
DBT: Interpersonal Effectiveness Introduction
Book Post for January
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Obtaining Objectives Skillfully
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Building and Ending Relationships
DBT: Walking The Middle Path
Avoid vs. Accept
With Borderlines, Validate, Don’t Reassure
An Emotion Regulation Technique That Works For Me
How To Get A Therapist Who Does What You Want
Meditation For People Who Hate Meditating
[edit: added missing links]
Indeed, yes. Here was another (actually, earlier) entry from my potential countermeasures —
Proactive Recharging
— Sometimes losing steam or mentally flagging is real, and not much more can be done in terms of productive work.
— In that case, deciding intentionally to call a long break (or call done for the day) and recharging via nap or bed, and other recharging activities, can be the right call for the day.
— It takes wisdom to know if you should bear down or proactively recharge in a given situation.
With colds, I expect that waiting is roughly the best strategy. See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81788.Why_We_ Get_Sick. Our bodies are already evolved to have good defenses against pathogens, and most things we do to fight colds are ineffective, but sometimes look good because they address symptoms (those symptoms are often part of our bodies defenses) or because of regression to the mean.
Our bodies’ defenses are good, but they’re not perfect and they do have negative side-effects. It is very possible for your immune system to cause damage by causing you to cough too much, run too high a fever, be dehydrated, etc. Moreover, even in cases where the immune system isn’t causing physical damage, I find that my mental health is much improved when I’m even marginally functional as opposed to shivering and coughing in bed for 4-5 hours at a time.
Does addressing symptoms lengthen the amount of time your body needs to fight off the virus? Possibly. However, I would much rather be mildly ill for a week than severely ill for three or four days.