A prediction of failure. As if the brain asks: “what is the likely result of this?” and the memory answers: “feeling bad”.
So can it be unlearned?
Yes, by creating situations which your brain can classify as belonging to the same reference class, and the result is not feeling bad. The problem is, how to design such situations, if mere memory of feeling bad yesterday can make you feel bad today.
Here CBT has some strategies; for example creating so weakened variant of the situation that your brain does not put it in the same reference class, and you hopefully succeed; and then very slowly increasing the intensity, so that your brain still pattern-matches it to the previous weakened version, instead of the full version.
It’s an inconsistency of brain. Imagine that when some variable x = 10, you feel bad, and if x = 0 you feel good. If you ask “what happens if x = 8?”, your brain will predict feeling bad, because it’s closer to 10 than to 0. -- But if instead you ask “what happens if x = 1?”, your brain predicts feeling good; and then you ask “and if x = 2?” etc. and when you come to “and if x = 8?”, the brain will predict feeling good; especially if each step is then confirmed experimentally. And then when you come to x = 9, the memory will return: “there are multiple matches: we have good feeling for x = 8 and bad feeling for x = 10”… and then you apply some cognitive pressure and say something like: “but you know, the x = 8 data is fresh, and the x = 10 data is obsolete” and the brain gets convinced that the correct prediction is feeling good. And then you use the same trick even for x = 10, and you win.
In some situations this can happen “naturally”, but that depends on luck. In a specific situation your brain may say: “well, the old memory is not relevant here, because… something important has changed”. Or you can be tricked into doing the task first without having time to make a negative prediction.
If a big part of the fear is not just the pain of rejection but also fear of expressing the pain, then expressing the pain in a supportive environment will extinguish the fear of expressing the pain.
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
Maybe the brain processes those additional 10 units in a different way than the original 1 unit (for example because when the 1 unit is over, you know it is over; but you never know in advance when those people get tired of mocking you, it could in theory go to infinity), but this additional hypothesis is not necessary to explain why the pain in a hostile environment is worse than in a supportive environment. (By which I am not saying it is false.)
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
I am suggesting that it may work a lot like this but a little bit differently. The main difference is that I’m suggesting that there is something uniquely painful and harmful about, not the mocking that follows the expression per se, but the inhibited expression of the pain that happens because of the mocking (the inhibited expression of the pain of the original insult but I suppose expression of the additional pain caused by the mocking itself will also be inhibited). Our emotions are functional. We do not have them just to make us miserable or to make us happy. They serve an evolutionary function ( is there any other kind of function in living things?). So my idea here is that when a person, (or animal for that matter) is prevented from expressing an emotion it is uniquely damaging, much more so than whatever damage the event would do if they could express it.
I heard a guest on a psychology podcast that I listen to (shrinkrapradio.com #321) describe how a facial tic that he’d had all his life went away after re-experiencing a car accident that he’d been in when he was a child. He hadn’t connected the tic to the car accident but after re-experiencing it he understood it as a continual triggering of his initial attempt at a defensive reaction. The tic was on the same side of his face from which the other car had hit the car he was in. He believes that once he was allowed to complete his natural defensive reaction the tic went away. The reaction had been triggered over and over and over in his life but had never been allowed to complete. In one session, where he allowed it to run its course, it was gone forever and he hasn’t had it since. So what is happening there? He hasn’t gone out in a buch of car rides to desensitize himself. In fact in his life since the accident he’d probably ridden and/or driven cars thousands of times and it had no effect on the tic. Simple behavioral learning theory doesn’t explain this. There is more going here. Something about not completing the natural reaction to the situation created a recurring problem.
I’m not exactly sure what is going on in a case like this but I’d be curious to hear anyone’s theories.
I want to add that I think, and this may be obvious, that this also applies to entirely emotional reactions. I don’t see any reason why emotional reactions would be subject to different rules than physical protective reactions.
A prediction of failure. As if the brain asks: “what is the likely result of this?” and the memory answers: “feeling bad”.
Yes, by creating situations which your brain can classify as belonging to the same reference class, and the result is not feeling bad. The problem is, how to design such situations, if mere memory of feeling bad yesterday can make you feel bad today.
Here CBT has some strategies; for example creating so weakened variant of the situation that your brain does not put it in the same reference class, and you hopefully succeed; and then very slowly increasing the intensity, so that your brain still pattern-matches it to the previous weakened version, instead of the full version.
It’s an inconsistency of brain. Imagine that when some variable x = 10, you feel bad, and if x = 0 you feel good. If you ask “what happens if x = 8?”, your brain will predict feeling bad, because it’s closer to 10 than to 0. -- But if instead you ask “what happens if x = 1?”, your brain predicts feeling good; and then you ask “and if x = 2?” etc. and when you come to “and if x = 8?”, the brain will predict feeling good; especially if each step is then confirmed experimentally. And then when you come to x = 9, the memory will return: “there are multiple matches: we have good feeling for x = 8 and bad feeling for x = 10”… and then you apply some cognitive pressure and say something like: “but you know, the x = 8 data is fresh, and the x = 10 data is obsolete” and the brain gets convinced that the correct prediction is feeling good. And then you use the same trick even for x = 10, and you win.
In some situations this can happen “naturally”, but that depends on luck. In a specific situation your brain may say: “well, the old memory is not relevant here, because… something important has changed”. Or you can be tricked into doing the task first without having time to make a negative prediction.
A hostile environment can increase the pain, which makes the fear reaction stronger. You get 1 unit of pain from the rejection, and perhaps 10 units of pain from people who keep mocking you for weeks. So your memory associates the event with 11 units of pain, instead of 1. This alone is enough to explain why the situation is worse.
Maybe the brain processes those additional 10 units in a different way than the original 1 unit (for example because when the 1 unit is over, you know it is over; but you never know in advance when those people get tired of mocking you, it could in theory go to infinity), but this additional hypothesis is not necessary to explain why the pain in a hostile environment is worse than in a supportive environment. (By which I am not saying it is false.)
I like this :
I am suggesting that it may work a lot like this but a little bit differently. The main difference is that I’m suggesting that there is something uniquely painful and harmful about, not the mocking that follows the expression per se, but the inhibited expression of the pain that happens because of the mocking (the inhibited expression of the pain of the original insult but I suppose expression of the additional pain caused by the mocking itself will also be inhibited). Our emotions are functional. We do not have them just to make us miserable or to make us happy. They serve an evolutionary function ( is there any other kind of function in living things?). So my idea here is that when a person, (or animal for that matter) is prevented from expressing an emotion it is uniquely damaging, much more so than whatever damage the event would do if they could express it.
I heard a guest on a psychology podcast that I listen to (shrinkrapradio.com #321) describe how a facial tic that he’d had all his life went away after re-experiencing a car accident that he’d been in when he was a child. He hadn’t connected the tic to the car accident but after re-experiencing it he understood it as a continual triggering of his initial attempt at a defensive reaction. The tic was on the same side of his face from which the other car had hit the car he was in. He believes that once he was allowed to complete his natural defensive reaction the tic went away. The reaction had been triggered over and over and over in his life but had never been allowed to complete. In one session, where he allowed it to run its course, it was gone forever and he hasn’t had it since. So what is happening there? He hasn’t gone out in a buch of car rides to desensitize himself. In fact in his life since the accident he’d probably ridden and/or driven cars thousands of times and it had no effect on the tic. Simple behavioral learning theory doesn’t explain this. There is more going here. Something about not completing the natural reaction to the situation created a recurring problem.
I’m not exactly sure what is going on in a case like this but I’d be curious to hear anyone’s theories.
I want to add that I think, and this may be obvious, that this also applies to entirely emotional reactions. I don’t see any reason why emotional reactions would be subject to different rules than physical protective reactions.