When I try this, it often backfires—I decide that the “worst case” isn’t so bad, and then decide not to try to avoid it. For example, suppose I’m taking a college course and really don’t want to do the homework. If I don’t ever do the homework, I won’t pass the course, so I’ll have to drop it. If I drop it, I’ll then feel a great relief at not having to do the work for that course any more, and spend more time playing video games and surfing the Internet. This seems like an acceptable outcome, so I decide to abandon the goal of passing the course.
Short answer: So what?
Expanded answer: the fact that you think it’s bad that this was the resolution, indicates that you have some additional criteria in play, that you haven’t surfaced or brought into active consideration in your decisionmaking.
IOW, if it’s not an “acceptable outcome” to you now, but it “seems like an acceptable outcome” when you make the decision, then obviously there is some additional criterion for what’s “acceptable” that is not being included in the criteria you’re considering at the time. Make sense?
I’m going to pretend I didn’t write the other response I wrote, because I thought up a much better one some time after writing it. That other response was a cached thought that’s probably just something I picked up from my parents. Repeating it now would just be a form of bullshit.
The actual problem is that, when I start giving up on goals, no matter how stupid, I soon find myself running down a psychological slippery slope. I start thinking that everything I do is pointless, and end up lying in bed, miserable, and thinking about what it would be like not to exist.
I can make a good case that much of what I do is indeed pointless. Why should I try to get 100% completion in a certain video game? Because I want to have done it. Why do I want to have done it? No reason in particular. It will make absolutely no difference, except in my own mind, whether or not I get 100% completion. I only seem to want it because I have decided to want it. And if I that’s the case, then I should be able to decide not to want it. And maybe I’m getting a little bit bored or frustrated with the game, so maybe I’d be better off not wanting it, so I can go do something else. Maybe there’s a better game to play, or something. Okay, I don’t care about this particular goal any more. What should I do now?
...
::stares at shelves of unfinished and unplayed video games::
...
You know, I don’t think I care about these other games any more than I care about the one I just decided not to care about...
...
Actually, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I want to do at all. Why is it that even a bad game can hold my attention when I have some real work to avoid, but the moment I have nothing else to do, they lose a lot of their appeal?
...
The only things I can get myself to do without turning into a horrible wreck are pointless ones, like playing video games.
...
I only do pointless things; therefore my existence is pointless. And it’s worse than that, because other people expend resources on maintaining my existence, because I can’t seem to do it myself. I don’t value my life, but because I exist, other people do. So the world would have been a better place if I had not existed, but killing myself would be even worse than continuing to live a worthless life. On the other hand, maybe killing myself is actually the right thing to do?
...
Wow, it sure sucks to be thinking like this. I should stop thinking about myself. Maybe if I played a video game, I could take my mind off all the reasons I have to be miserable? That’s worked before. Let’s see, I was trying to get 100% completion in that one game...
So, yeah. If I let myself start questioning the value of what I’m doing and give up, I sometimes end up in a horrible pit of despair. (The last time this happened to me was… last night, as a matter of fact.)
(nods) I’m familiar with this state of mind. I spent rather a lot of time in it while recovering from my stroke.
It’s pretty awful. I’m sorry you’re experiencing it.
I doubt that killing yourself would improve matters by any metric worth discussing.
My own experience was that the fastest way out of it was to do something for someone else. What the thing was didn’t matter too much, as long as it represented a significant effort for me (some days, that included simply getting out of bed and checking the mail) and interacted in some way with someone other than me (e.g., my partner).
Are you receiving any professional assistance with any of this?
Are you receiving any professional assistance with any of this?
Every therapist I’ve gone to has done little more than waste my time. (They’ve been helpful for my mom, but not so much for me; the only thing any mental health professional has done that has helped me directly has been to prescribe medication.)
(nods) You might find it worthwhile to try and state somewhat precisely what it is about those experiences that made them worthless. Insofar as it is actions or inactions on their part, it may help you look for useful assistance in a more targeted way. Insofar as it is actions or inactions on your part, it may help you identify habits that aren’t getting you what you want. (Or, if you prefer: strategies that earn you suboptimal scores in this fully immersive multiplayer game we’re all playing.)
My own experience was that the fastest way out of it was to do something for someone else.
Eep. I have trouble with this. I don’t like it when other people rely on me to do things for them, because I frequently end up failing to do them (because I oversleep, or can’t pry myself away from the computer, or whatever). I can barely do things for myself, at times. And “doing things for someone else” also brings up memories of being yelled at by my parents to go do something not very pleasant while I’m in the middle of doing something on the computer...
Well, perhaps you’ll find a road out that works better for you. I certainly don’t claim to have any general solution to the problem of depression, merely techniques that worked for me when I needed them.
That said, there is a broad gap between doing something for someone and having them rely on you to do it. Doing someone a favor is not the same thing as becoming their employee, for example.
And there is a similarly broad gap between choosing to do something and being forced to do it. If your experiences with performing services for people are primarily the latter, you might be surprised by how different the former feels.
Obvious question: if the only reason you care about computer games is because you’ve chosen to care about it, why not choose to care about something else instead?
I don’t know if “chosen” is quite the right word… “stumbled into caring about”, or “conditioned into caring about” might be more accurate. There wasn’t a specific moment when I consciously decided to care about completing video games, it just sort of happened on its own, as a result of some ongoing process or other...
For various reasons, video games are a rather convenient, if useless, thing to care about… If you play them, I’m sure you know what I mean. I’d rather not care about something I fail at a lot...
I know exactly what you mean about computer games, I used to get addicted to them fairly easily and be able to play for 12-14 hours at a time. I’ve also been down that particular hole of “everything I do is pointless, I’m pointless, I’m trapped into remaining alive by the people around me”.
As to what to choose to care about, I haven’t got anything to suggest that I know will work.
My instinct is to suggest that you start caring about societally-approved things like exercise or taking care of your mother because you’re more likely to get external positive feedback that’ll help get you through the uncomfortable parts and give you a sense of accomplishment. Or if you have a camera, start a 365 project. If you don’t, start some other kind of creative project like writing or programming or whatever it is that you think you might find interesting.
But.. I don’t know if any of those suggestions are likely to help. You’ve been at this computer game thing for long enough that almost any other activity is going to look understimulating and difficult/uncomfortable in comparison. In my own situation I was helped along partly by a belief that I deserve to suffer, which meant that feeling uncomfortable often wasn’t a sufficient reason not to do something. I assume you don’t have that belief, which means you’ll need to find some other reason to keep going rather than thinking “oh well, failed again, time to distract myself with some more games”.
In theory, it’s bad because there supposed to be long-term consequences to things like not graduating from college, not having a job, etc. My parents have told me they won’t be able to support me forever, but I think I’ll deal with that when it actually starts to impact me...
In theory, it’s bad because there supposed to be long-term consequences
You’re not exactly using your rationalist skills here. What do you mean by, “in theory”? Does that mean you think those consequences are imaginary? What are the actual consequences? What do you actually value?
Either there will be consequences or not. Either you care about them, or you don’t. You cannot seriously claim to be a rationalist and still adhere to the proposition that your behavior is consistent with your values, AND that this is a bad thing! That is exactly like saying, “What I’m about to say is true: what I just said is false.” Or more colloquially, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” Or, “The food is terrible here, but you can eat all you want!”
The truth you aren’t facing or admitting to here—and not just in this thread, but in ALL your whining on LW—is that either the things you’re complaining about really are acceptable/valuable to you, or they are not. Your failure to decide which thing you value more, does not grant you any special status as a victim.
Instead, it marks you as someone who’s not only trying to have their cake and eat it too, but who also goes onto online forums to (ostensibly) whine about the incompatibility of having and eating, while really just looking for attention and sympathy to prop up an otherwise-empty existence.
You are not a victim. You’re just whining about your own failure to decide what’s more important to you… and this whining behavior has been richly rewarded with attention and sympathy. So it appears from your behavior that what you actually value most, is to both fuck around and get sympathy for the fact.
Based on that, I predict that your next response will be to justify how your behavior is outside of your control, and that you deserve sympathy. This may take the form of claiming that I’m unfairly attacking you, or saying that I’m right, but you really don’t have control over your hypocrisy, etc.
But your real alternatives are as follows:
Continue on your present tack, making it clear to all of LW that attention and sympathy are higher values for you than discovering the truth (in which case, I intend to silently downvote any future whining of yours I encounter, on the grounds of your lack of logical rigor),
Decide that you don’t really care about the “theoretical” future consequences of your action, and stop fucking whining about how bad it is that you don’t care,
Decide that you do care about those “theoretical” consequences, that your current behavior is therefore not consistent with your values, and seek to self-modify accordingly (rather than simply talking about how helpless you are, whenever a self-modification discussion arises on LW), or
Admit that your actions are inconsistent, and seek actual assistance with the process of arriving at a consistent understanding of your values in this area. (Note: this option should not be confused with, “admit your actions are inconsistent, and whine about how pitiable and sympathy-worthy this makes you”!)
Anyway, I’m not going to ask you which of these options you’re choosing, because your subsequent actions will make it abundantly clear to everyone here which choice you’ve made.
Instead, it marks you as someone who’s not only trying to have their cake and eat it too, but who also goes onto online forums to (ostensibly) whine about the incompatibility of having and eating, while really just looking for attention and sympathy to prop up an otherwise-empty existence.
Short answer: So what?
Expanded answer: the fact that you think it’s bad that this was the resolution, indicates that you have some additional criteria in play, that you haven’t surfaced or brought into active consideration in your decisionmaking.
IOW, if it’s not an “acceptable outcome” to you now, but it “seems like an acceptable outcome” when you make the decision, then obviously there is some additional criterion for what’s “acceptable” that is not being included in the criteria you’re considering at the time. Make sense?
I’m going to pretend I didn’t write the other response I wrote, because I thought up a much better one some time after writing it. That other response was a cached thought that’s probably just something I picked up from my parents. Repeating it now would just be a form of bullshit.
The actual problem is that, when I start giving up on goals, no matter how stupid, I soon find myself running down a psychological slippery slope. I start thinking that everything I do is pointless, and end up lying in bed, miserable, and thinking about what it would be like not to exist.
I can make a good case that much of what I do is indeed pointless. Why should I try to get 100% completion in a certain video game? Because I want to have done it. Why do I want to have done it? No reason in particular. It will make absolutely no difference, except in my own mind, whether or not I get 100% completion. I only seem to want it because I have decided to want it. And if I that’s the case, then I should be able to decide not to want it. And maybe I’m getting a little bit bored or frustrated with the game, so maybe I’d be better off not wanting it, so I can go do something else. Maybe there’s a better game to play, or something. Okay, I don’t care about this particular goal any more. What should I do now?
...
::stares at shelves of unfinished and unplayed video games::
...
You know, I don’t think I care about these other games any more than I care about the one I just decided not to care about...
...
Actually, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I want to do at all. Why is it that even a bad game can hold my attention when I have some real work to avoid, but the moment I have nothing else to do, they lose a lot of their appeal?
...
The only things I can get myself to do without turning into a horrible wreck are pointless ones, like playing video games.
...
I only do pointless things; therefore my existence is pointless. And it’s worse than that, because other people expend resources on maintaining my existence, because I can’t seem to do it myself. I don’t value my life, but because I exist, other people do. So the world would have been a better place if I had not existed, but killing myself would be even worse than continuing to live a worthless life. On the other hand, maybe killing myself is actually the right thing to do?
...
Wow, it sure sucks to be thinking like this. I should stop thinking about myself. Maybe if I played a video game, I could take my mind off all the reasons I have to be miserable? That’s worked before. Let’s see, I was trying to get 100% completion in that one game...
So, yeah. If I let myself start questioning the value of what I’m doing and give up, I sometimes end up in a horrible pit of despair. (The last time this happened to me was… last night, as a matter of fact.)
(nods) I’m familiar with this state of mind. I spent rather a lot of time in it while recovering from my stroke.
It’s pretty awful. I’m sorry you’re experiencing it.
I doubt that killing yourself would improve matters by any metric worth discussing.
My own experience was that the fastest way out of it was to do something for someone else. What the thing was didn’t matter too much, as long as it represented a significant effort for me (some days, that included simply getting out of bed and checking the mail) and interacted in some way with someone other than me (e.g., my partner).
Are you receiving any professional assistance with any of this?
Every therapist I’ve gone to has done little more than waste my time. (They’ve been helpful for my mom, but not so much for me; the only thing any mental health professional has done that has helped me directly has been to prescribe medication.)
(nods) You might find it worthwhile to try and state somewhat precisely what it is about those experiences that made them worthless. Insofar as it is actions or inactions on their part, it may help you look for useful assistance in a more targeted way. Insofar as it is actions or inactions on your part, it may help you identify habits that aren’t getting you what you want. (Or, if you prefer: strategies that earn you suboptimal scores in this fully immersive multiplayer game we’re all playing.)
Eep. I have trouble with this. I don’t like it when other people rely on me to do things for them, because I frequently end up failing to do them (because I oversleep, or can’t pry myself away from the computer, or whatever). I can barely do things for myself, at times. And “doing things for someone else” also brings up memories of being yelled at by my parents to go do something not very pleasant while I’m in the middle of doing something on the computer...
Well, perhaps you’ll find a road out that works better for you. I certainly don’t claim to have any general solution to the problem of depression, merely techniques that worked for me when I needed them.
That said, there is a broad gap between doing something for someone and having them rely on you to do it. Doing someone a favor is not the same thing as becoming their employee, for example.
And there is a similarly broad gap between choosing to do something and being forced to do it. If your experiences with performing services for people are primarily the latter, you might be surprised by how different the former feels.
Obvious question: if the only reason you care about computer games is because you’ve chosen to care about it, why not choose to care about something else instead?
That could work. Any suggestions on what to pick?
I don’t know if “chosen” is quite the right word… “stumbled into caring about”, or “conditioned into caring about” might be more accurate. There wasn’t a specific moment when I consciously decided to care about completing video games, it just sort of happened on its own, as a result of some ongoing process or other...
For various reasons, video games are a rather convenient, if useless, thing to care about… If you play them, I’m sure you know what I mean. I’d rather not care about something I fail at a lot...
http://dirtsimple.org/2006/08/how-to-decide-what-you-want.html
2006 seems like a long time ago in Ebyworld, I don’t know if that still matches his current thoughts well.
I know exactly what you mean about computer games, I used to get addicted to them fairly easily and be able to play for 12-14 hours at a time. I’ve also been down that particular hole of “everything I do is pointless, I’m pointless, I’m trapped into remaining alive by the people around me”.
As to what to choose to care about, I haven’t got anything to suggest that I know will work. My instinct is to suggest that you start caring about societally-approved things like exercise or taking care of your mother because you’re more likely to get external positive feedback that’ll help get you through the uncomfortable parts and give you a sense of accomplishment. Or if you have a camera, start a 365 project. If you don’t, start some other kind of creative project like writing or programming or whatever it is that you think you might find interesting. But.. I don’t know if any of those suggestions are likely to help. You’ve been at this computer game thing for long enough that almost any other activity is going to look understimulating and difficult/uncomfortable in comparison. In my own situation I was helped along partly by a belief that I deserve to suffer, which meant that feeling uncomfortable often wasn’t a sufficient reason not to do something. I assume you don’t have that belief, which means you’ll need to find some other reason to keep going rather than thinking “oh well, failed again, time to distract myself with some more games”.
In theory, it’s bad because there supposed to be long-term consequences to things like not graduating from college, not having a job, etc. My parents have told me they won’t be able to support me forever, but I think I’ll deal with that when it actually starts to impact me...
You’re not exactly using your rationalist skills here. What do you mean by, “in theory”? Does that mean you think those consequences are imaginary? What are the actual consequences? What do you actually value?
Either there will be consequences or not. Either you care about them, or you don’t. You cannot seriously claim to be a rationalist and still adhere to the proposition that your behavior is consistent with your values, AND that this is a bad thing! That is exactly like saying, “What I’m about to say is true: what I just said is false.” Or more colloquially, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” Or, “The food is terrible here, but you can eat all you want!”
The truth you aren’t facing or admitting to here—and not just in this thread, but in ALL your whining on LW—is that either the things you’re complaining about really are acceptable/valuable to you, or they are not. Your failure to decide which thing you value more, does not grant you any special status as a victim.
Instead, it marks you as someone who’s not only trying to have their cake and eat it too, but who also goes onto online forums to (ostensibly) whine about the incompatibility of having and eating, while really just looking for attention and sympathy to prop up an otherwise-empty existence.
You are not a victim. You’re just whining about your own failure to decide what’s more important to you… and this whining behavior has been richly rewarded with attention and sympathy. So it appears from your behavior that what you actually value most, is to both fuck around and get sympathy for the fact.
Based on that, I predict that your next response will be to justify how your behavior is outside of your control, and that you deserve sympathy. This may take the form of claiming that I’m unfairly attacking you, or saying that I’m right, but you really don’t have control over your hypocrisy, etc.
But your real alternatives are as follows:
Continue on your present tack, making it clear to all of LW that attention and sympathy are higher values for you than discovering the truth (in which case, I intend to silently downvote any future whining of yours I encounter, on the grounds of your lack of logical rigor),
Decide that you don’t really care about the “theoretical” future consequences of your action, and stop fucking whining about how bad it is that you don’t care,
Decide that you do care about those “theoretical” consequences, that your current behavior is therefore not consistent with your values, and seek to self-modify accordingly (rather than simply talking about how helpless you are, whenever a self-modification discussion arises on LW), or
Admit that your actions are inconsistent, and seek actual assistance with the process of arriving at a consistent understanding of your values in this area. (Note: this option should not be confused with, “admit your actions are inconsistent, and whine about how pitiable and sympathy-worthy this makes you”!)
Anyway, I’m not going to ask you which of these options you’re choosing, because your subsequent actions will make it abundantly clear to everyone here which choice you’ve made.
I feel as though I should respond to this, but I have nothing productive to say.
I don’t know what I care about.
Guilty as charged. :(
Voted up grandparent because I would prefer that this reply not be hidden.
Agree 100%.