I intellectually liked IDC a lot when I was first exposed to it but noticed myself never doing it even though I explicitly endorsed doing it a whole ton. Recent experiences trying to do it at a CFAR workshop highlighted two tweaks I need to make to make it work for me (at least, probably I need other tweaks too because I’m still not really doing it): first, I often need to be listening to more than two voices, because e.g. often a third voice needs to interrupt saying that doing the IDC feels bad and it doesn’t want to keep going, and second, my voices often wanted to do things other than say words, often scream, but sometimes emitting pictures or poetry, etc.
Edit: I think there’s something specifically bad about writing it all down that I don’t like. My voices often don’t want to feel pinned down by whatever they’ve said or felt previously, or something like that?
second, my voices often wanted to do things other than say words, often scream, but sometimes emitting pictures or poetry, etc.
I haven’t explicitly tried doing something like the full CFAR IDC procedure, but I’ve done something vaguely inspired by it and which seems to sometimes work. It’s a little intuitive so I’m not sure if a verbal description accurately catches what I’m doing, but translating stuff said by the parts into some kind of mental imagery, rather than having it be just words, seems like a core component in making it work.
The basic procedure seems to be something like… “listen to the part that wants to do something, and translate its desired action and expectation of the likely consequences into a form that you can run through your innersimulator. While doing so, listen to any sense of objection or disagreement coming from your other parts; try to translate that objection into a language that the first part can understand, or which could be used to modify the inner sim simulation”.
(This also automatically incorporates your first tweak, since you never need to decide in advance how many voices you’re listening to—you just keep doing it for as long as you get a sense of an objection, and it doesn’t matter whether the objection comes from a voice you’ve already found or a new one. Kind of like doing Murphyjitsu.)
I’m not sure whether “translate the objection into a language that the first part can understand” and “see if you could use the objection to modify the inner sim” are two different things or the same thing expressed in different words—that is, whether the inner sim is the common language of the parts into which it’s enough to translate everything, or whether different parts have more unique languages into which things need to be tailored for. But the fact that mental contrasting works to reduce anxiety in at least some cases, seems to suggest that the inner sim is the common language—again, at least in some cases. E.g. I’ve used the technique described in the below excerpt, and found it to at least occasionally be very useful:
Think about a fear you have about the future that is vexing you quite a bit and that you know is unjustified. Summarize your fear in three to four words. For instance, suppose you’re a father who has gotten divorced and you share custody with your ex-wife, who has gotten remarried. For the sake of your daughter’s happiness, you want to become friendly with her stepfather, but you find yourself stymied by your own emotions. Your fear might be “My daughter will become less attached to me and more attached to her stepfather.” Now go on to imagine the worst possible outcome. In this case, it might be “I feel distanced from my daughter. When I see her she ignores me, but she eagerly spends time with her stepfather.” Okay, now think of the positive reality that stands in the way of this fear coming true. What in your actual life suggests that your fear won’t really come to pass? What’s the single key element? In this case, it might be “The fact that my daughter is extremely attached to me and loves me, and it’s obvious to anyone around us.” Close your eyes and elaborate on this reality.
Now take a step back. Did the exercise help? I think you’ll find that by being reminded of the positive reality standing in the way, you will be less transfixed by the anxious fantasy. When I conducted this kind of mental contrasting with people in Germany, they reported that the experience was soothing, akin to taking a warm bath or getting a massage. “It just made me feel so much calmer and more secure,” one woman told me. “I sense that I am more grounded and focused.”
Mental contrasting can produce results with both unjustified fears as well as overblown fears rooted in a kernel of truth. If as a child you suffered through a couple of painful visits to the dentist, you might today fear going to get a filling replaced, and this fear might become so terrorizing that you put off taking care of your dental needs until you just cannot avoid it. Mental contrasting will help you in this case to approach the task of going to the dentist. But if your fear is justified, then mental contrasting will confirm this, since there is nothing preventing your fear from coming true. The exercise will then help you to take preventive measures or avoid the impending danger altogether.
One caveat: mental contrasting is most appropriate for unjustified fears that are strong and debilitating. A great deal of research has shown that a total lack of anxiety detracts from performance, just as extreme anxiety does (especially when the task in question is complex). If you’re a student who experiences debilitating anxiety around taking tests, mental contrasting can help you approach the object of your fears so that you can perform better. But if you experience only mild to moderate anxiety, you may benefit from feeling a bit of anxiety, and mentally contrasting your fears may leave you feeling too relaxed and not sufficiently motivated to prepare. When trying mental contrasting to approach your own fears, I advise that you first make sure to honestly evaluate whether your fears are unjustified, or whether they might not spur you on to more effort and better performance.
Note also that this application of the technique could by itself be considered a kind of mini-IDC by itself: you look for a source of anxiety, run its prediction in your inner sim, then look for a reason for why it wouldn’t go this way and run that counter-prediction in the sim. This will either cause your anxious part to update, or it will let you know that the anxiety is founded and that you should tackle it in some other way.
I also confess that I really really liked it at CFAR and then mysteriously didn’t do any of it afterwards … as I type this comment my mind is coming up with ways to weasel out of making a commitment to do it more …
I can relate. The few times when I used IDC in the past, it did feel useful, but still it’s not really enjoyable. Maybe it’s the fact that with IDC I’m not so much solving a problem but rather figuring out something about myself. There maybe won’t be any cool hacks or workarounds to solve it all, but in the end it’s more about coming to terms with things. So maybe choosing IDC as the best tool to approach a bug already feels like a small defeat which causes me to rather not choose it and try other, more outward-facing tools instead, or ignore the bug entirely. Something like that.
I’ve had a similar experience. IDC was by far my favorite technique at CFAR, and I’ve maybe done it twice since then? I think some of it is that the formal technique fell away pretty quickly for me: once I learned to pay attention to other internal voices, I found it pretty natural to do that all the time in the flow of my normal thinking, and setting aside structured time for it felt less necessary. (And when I do set aside larger chunks of time, I usually end up just inhabiting the part that gets less “airtime” for a while, rather than having an explicit dialogue between it and another part.)
I intellectually liked IDC a lot when I was first exposed to it but noticed myself never doing it even though I explicitly endorsed doing it a whole ton. Recent experiences trying to do it at a CFAR workshop highlighted two tweaks I need to make to make it work for me (at least, probably I need other tweaks too because I’m still not really doing it): first, I often need to be listening to more than two voices, because e.g. often a third voice needs to interrupt saying that doing the IDC feels bad and it doesn’t want to keep going, and second, my voices often wanted to do things other than say words, often scream, but sometimes emitting pictures or poetry, etc.
Edit: I think there’s something specifically bad about writing it all down that I don’t like. My voices often don’t want to feel pinned down by whatever they’ve said or felt previously, or something like that?
I haven’t explicitly tried doing something like the full CFAR IDC procedure, but I’ve done something vaguely inspired by it and which seems to sometimes work. It’s a little intuitive so I’m not sure if a verbal description accurately catches what I’m doing, but translating stuff said by the parts into some kind of mental imagery, rather than having it be just words, seems like a core component in making it work.
The basic procedure seems to be something like… “listen to the part that wants to do something, and translate its desired action and expectation of the likely consequences into a form that you can run through your inner simulator. While doing so, listen to any sense of objection or disagreement coming from your other parts; try to translate that objection into a language that the first part can understand, or which could be used to modify the inner sim simulation”.
(This also automatically incorporates your first tweak, since you never need to decide in advance how many voices you’re listening to—you just keep doing it for as long as you get a sense of an objection, and it doesn’t matter whether the objection comes from a voice you’ve already found or a new one. Kind of like doing Murphyjitsu.)
I’m not sure whether “translate the objection into a language that the first part can understand” and “see if you could use the objection to modify the inner sim” are two different things or the same thing expressed in different words—that is, whether the inner sim is the common language of the parts into which it’s enough to translate everything, or whether different parts have more unique languages into which things need to be tailored for. But the fact that mental contrasting works to reduce anxiety in at least some cases, seems to suggest that the inner sim is the common language—again, at least in some cases. E.g. I’ve used the technique described in the below excerpt, and found it to at least occasionally be very useful:
(from Gabriele Oettingen: Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. Penguin Group US.)
Note also that this application of the technique could by itself be considered a kind of mini-IDC by itself: you look for a source of anxiety, run its prediction in your inner sim, then look for a reason for why it wouldn’t go this way and run that counter-prediction in the sim. This will either cause your anxious part to update, or it will let you know that the anxiety is founded and that you should tackle it in some other way.
I also confess that I really really liked it at CFAR and then mysteriously didn’t do any of it afterwards … as I type this comment my mind is coming up with ways to weasel out of making a commitment to do it more …
I can relate. The few times when I used IDC in the past, it did feel useful, but still it’s not really enjoyable. Maybe it’s the fact that with IDC I’m not so much solving a problem but rather figuring out something about myself. There maybe won’t be any cool hacks or workarounds to solve it all, but in the end it’s more about coming to terms with things. So maybe choosing IDC as the best tool to approach a bug already feels like a small defeat which causes me to rather not choose it and try other, more outward-facing tools instead, or ignore the bug entirely. Something like that.
I’ve had a similar experience. IDC was by far my favorite technique at CFAR, and I’ve maybe done it twice since then? I think some of it is that the formal technique fell away pretty quickly for me: once I learned to pay attention to other internal voices, I found it pretty natural to do that all the time in the flow of my normal thinking, and setting aside structured time for it felt less necessary. (And when I do set aside larger chunks of time, I usually end up just inhabiting the part that gets less “airtime” for a while, rather than having an explicit dialogue between it and another part.)
Yeah, the closest thing I do instead is a Focusing-y move of just asking my guts what they think about things a lot.