I’ve found out about PJ Ebys ideas and even though I just recently managed to use them to make a substantial change, I’m pretty sure it’s the largest positive change in my entire life so far.
Really? Which idea of his helped you make that substantial change? Maybe I should take another look at his stuff. I’ve tried reading him before but found it to be a mix of obvious life insights + harmfully wrong motivational advice.
I’m a member of his group so I’ve gotten personal assistance but what I’ve done is basically first diagnose my problems by using his so called RMI technique, which I’m pretty sure he’s mentioned several times here in the comments, which basically just consists of sincerely questioning yourself about your problem and passively notice what comes to mind without trying to rationalize it away logically.
Through that technique I found out that I’ve unconsciously judged all my decisions in life for “goodness”, that is I’ve constantly feared that I’ll not be a good person if I make the wrong decisions. Unfortunately the number of rules for things which make me a bad person have been very large so I’ve basically lived a passive lonely life waiting for someone to come and tell me what to do. One particularly frustrating thing has been that I’ve felt that I’m a bad person if I actually try to take control over my life, and that includes using PJs methods, so for about six months I’ve been completely clear on what my problem is, how to solve it, believed that it would work on a rational level, but at the same time feeling completely uninterested in actually doing anything about it. The trigger for action was when my girlfriend broke up with me and I temporarily got into an emotional state where I felt that I had nothing to lose, and since I knew PJs techniques I managed to use the opportunity to break the deadlock.
The specific technique I used is his so called “rights work”, which I also think he’s mentioned here. You basically tell yourself that you have the right to feel feeling X even if condition Y is true. The big one for me was when I hit upon the phrase:
“I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do.”
Realising that instantly made me start to cry what can best be described as tears of joy mixed up with some anger and indignation. Then after a couple of minutes it was over and now I feel like a completely different person. Or rather closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be but never felt I’ve been allowed to be. For example, writing this answer has been trivial whereas I’ve previously been a chronic lurker on all forums I frequent due to worrying about what everyone will think of my writings.
The specific technique I used is his so called “rights work”, which I also think he’s mentioned here. You basically tell yourself that you have the right to feel feeling X even if condition Y is true. The big one for me was when I hit upon the phrase: “I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do.”
I think it’s important to clarify here that the “rights” in this method are not directly about morality, but rather access or ability, like an ACL in a filesystem grants you the “right” to read a file.
IOW, it’s a method used to counteract learned helplessness and restore your ability to control a portion of your mind, rather than a method of moral rationalization. ;-)
There are also four general categories of ACL: to desire, acquire, respond, and experience—the D.A.R.E. rights—and the one you described here is an E—the right to experience the feeling of being a good person.
(You of course probably realize all this already from the workshops, but I can imagine what some people here are likely to say about the small bits you’ve just mentioned, so I’d like to nip that in the bud if possible.)
Unfortunately the number of rules for things which make me a bad person have been very large so I’ve basically lived a passive lonely life waiting for someone to come and tell me what to do.
Yeah, that’s the essential insight of rights work, which is that the rules we learn for which emotions to have are not symmetrical. That is, a rule that says “X makes you a bad person” does NOT automatically imply to your (emotional/near) brain that the opposite of X makes you a good person. It only tells your brain to rescind your (access) right to feeling good when condition X occurs.
Btw, feeling like a “good person” is normally an Affiliation-category need; it’s not about judging yourself good per se, but rather, whether other people will consider you likable, lovable, and a good/worthy ally.
(Again, I know you know this, because you already mentioned it on the Guild forum, but for the benefit of others, I figure I should add the clarifications.)
Affiliation, of course, being the second of the S.A.S.S. need groups—Significance, Affiliation, Stability, and Stimulation. (Based on feedback here, and more recent personal experiences, I’ve renamed Status and Safety to better cover the true scope of those groups.)
Anyway, if you multiply DARE by SASS, you get a sixteen-element search grid within which the access rights to X can be sought for and restored (relative to a given condition Y) -- assuming you have the necessary skill at RMI.
It is not really a “system”, however, in the way that so many gurus claim their acronyms and formulations to be. That is, I do not claim DARE and SASS are natural divisions that actually exist in the world; they are only a convenient mnemonic to create a search grid that can be overlaid on the territory, without claiming that they are an accurate map of that territory.
And if you search using only that grid, then of course you will only find the things that are already within it… and the fact that I’ve tweaked the names of two of the SASS categories, already shows that there may be other things that still lie outside our current search grid. Nonetheless, having some search grid is better than none at all.
(Tony Robbins, for what it’s worth, claims that there are two additional categories that should belong on the SASS dimension of this grid; he may be right in a general sense, but I have not really found them to be useful/relevant for fixing learned helplessness.)
One last point, which again is intended for bystanders rather than you, U.N., is that merely saying the words “I have the right” has no particular consequence. It is not a magical incantation like “wingardium leviosa”!
It is merely the expression of a realization that you already have that right, the forehead-slapping epiphany that really, you were wearing the magic shoes this whole time, and could have gone back to Kansas at any moment up till now, and just didn’t notice.
And this realization cannot be faked or brought about by a mere ritual; the function of the DARE/SASS search grid is merely to help you find that within yourself that you haven’t been noticing you were even capable of. That’s why, when it works, as in U.N.’s case here, the result can often be… intense.
But it’s also why you should not be fooled by reading U.N.’s comments or mine, that this is a simple matter of following a grid and making the appropriate incantations. It is a search process, not a quick fix technique.
And the process of your search is hindered by the nature of your own blind spots: U.N. mentions his meta-akrasia here, but there are subtler forms of complexity that can arise from this basic pattern. For example, one may believe that feeling you’re a good person, makes you a bad person… and in order to fix that, you have to remove the second rule first.
(Otherwise, what happens is that your attempted right statement sort of fizzles like a mis-cast spell… you say, “I have the right to X...” and your brain goes, “Yeah right,” or, “maybe, but I’m not gonna DO that.… ’cause then I’d be bad.”)
Anyway, I won’t say, “don’t try this at home,” because really, you should. ;-)
But you should know that it is not a trivial process, and if done correctly it will bring you face to face with your own mental blind spots… by which I mean, things you do not want to know about yourself.
(For example, one thing that often happens is that, in the process of restoring a right, you realize that you are actually going to have to give up your righteous judgment of some group of people who you previously felt yourself superior to, because that judgment depends on one of the SASS rules that you are about to give up… and both the realization that you have been misjudging those people, and the realization that you still don’t really want to give up that judgment, can be painful.)
Anyway… it’s fun stuff… but not necessarily while you’re doing it, if you get my drift. ;-)
You of course probably realize all this already from the workshops, but I can imagine what some people here are likely to say about the small bits you’ve just mentioned, so I’d like to nip that in the bud if possible.
Thankyou. If someone had the gall to moralize at someone who had just broken free from the ‘goodness’ cage I would have been displeased, to put it mildly.
Thankyou. If someone had the gall to moralize at someone who had just broken free from the ‘goodness’ cage I would have been displeased, to put it mildly.
On the other hand, without further context “I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do” is a dangerous thing to internalize. In fact I suspect that rules, like “If I want to murder someone, I should feel like a bad person” exist in the brain using the same mechanism. Obviously this is one rule you shouldn’t get rid of.
This sounds very similar to the argument against atheism where the believer is afraid that he might start to do a whole bunch of horrible things if he’ll no longer fear punishment from God.
What I’ve noticed in my case is that yes, I now do think I could feel like a good person even if I do bad things to others. However, I now genuinely don’t want to hurt other people. In a way it feels like this is the first time in my life where I’m actually able to really care for and empathise with other people since I no longer have to be so preoccupied with myself.
What I’ve noticed in my case is that yes, I now do think I could feel like a good person even if I do bad things to others. However, I now genuinely don’t want to hurt other people.
Yep. Motivation is not symmetric.
What used to boggle my mind about this, is how it could be that our brains are built in such a way as to seemingly automatically believe that motivation is symmetric, even though it isn’t.
My working hypothesis is that the part of our brain that predicts other minds—i.e. our built-in Theory Of Mind—uses a symmetric model for simplicity’s sake (i.e., it’s easier to evolve, and “good enough” for most purposes), and that we use this model to try to predict our own future behavior when anticipating self-modification.
On the other hand, without further context “I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do” is a dangerous thing to internalize.
Not really. Our experiences indicate that the brain’s ACL system matches rules by specificity. A blanket rule change like this one will only remove the specific generalizations matched during the retrieval process, not any broader or narrower rules. (This is implied by memory reconsolidation theory, btw.)
In fact I suspect that rules, like “If I want to murder someone, I should feel like a bad person” exist in the brain using the same mechanism. Obviously this is one rule you shouldn’t get rid of.
Actually, funny you should mention, because that’s an ill-specified rule right there, and it’s precisely the sort I would say you ought to get rid of!
Why? Because you said “if I want to murder someone”. Merely wanting something bad doesn’t make you a bad person. Who hasn’t wanted to murder somebody, at some point in their life?
If the rule you state (“If I want to murder someone, I should feel like a bad person”) were a genuine SASS rule that you’d internalized, then every time you got mad enough at somebody, you’d suppress the anger… and keep right on feeling it. Most likely, you’d have people or situations you’d avoid because you’d feel chronically stressed around them—vaguely angry and disappointed in yourself at the same time.
Usually, though, unless you actually said you wanted to murder somebody when you were a kid, and shocked an adult into shaming you for being bad, you probably don’t have an explicit SASS rule against wanting to murder people, and don’t actually need one in order to avoid actually murdering people. ;-)
Negative SASS rules are compulsions that override reflective thinking and outcome anticipation; they hijack logical thought processes and direct them into motivated reasoning. Oddly enough, positive SASS rules don’t seem to have the same degree of power… although it occurs to me that perhaps my current model is flawed in this description of “positive” and “negative”—better words might be “surplus” and “deficit”.
(That is, if your brain thinks a desired positive SASS quality is scarce, you can be just as compulsive in acquiring it, as you can be compulsive in avoiding things with negative SASS. However, the rules themselves seem to influence what levels are perceived as surplus or deficit, so there’s a bit of recursion involved.)
Yes, it was only with pjeby’s explanation that I realised “I have the right to” in this context actually means “I am not denied the right to”—I am not barred by access control list—rather than “I am justified in”. Like “pride” meaning “not ashamed”.
I have known too many people who do in fact use it to mean “I am automatically justified in feeling great about myself, therefore you should not criticise my behaviour.” This suggests the ambiguity in wording may be problematic. (On the other hand, I suspect the process is that the conclusion is assumed and then arguments are found to justify it, so the wording may make little difference.)
There’s that, but there’s also the ability to feel pride. “I have the right to feel proud when I make a mistake” means that you can be proud that you tried.
You will notice, though, that this rights stuff tends to be very controversial, in that everybody on first encountering it will tend to start listing the exceptions they think should be made, i.e., the access rights that should never be granted.
Usually (though not always), that list of exceptions is effectively an excerpt from the list of rules that are keeping them from succeeding at whatever prompted them to seek out my help in the first place. ;-)
I must congratulate you. Trauma of some kind seems to be required for significant rapid changes to identity (and so behavior). You seem to have harnessed a negative, undesired trauma and executed positive considered change. That sort of navigation of human psychological quirks always impresses me.
And I agree in that I don’t think I could have made this change without any kind of dramatic incident; I’m pretty sure that it would never have happened on it’s own since my behaviour was stuck in a kind of stable equillibrium.
I suspect that another person could have triggered the change in me though by kind of forcing me through this process and not relenting even if I try to make them stop. I imagine that when then feeling completely exposed they could give me the basic need that I’ve always feared that I don’t have and finally support me in realizing that I can give it to myself. This probably has to be done in person though so you can’t easily get away.
The big problem is of course that if you’re the person who’s trying to help you have a huge responsibility for actually diagnosing the other persons problems correctly. Since it unavoidably is a traumatic process I can imagine how horrible it must feel if the person who forced you to completely expose yourself turned out to completely misunderstand what you actually feared.
Since it unavoidably is a traumatic process I can imagine how horrible it must feel if the person who forced you to completely expose yourself turned out to completely misunderstand what you actually feared.
Being misunderstood is annoying all right, for some more than others. I find that it mostly makes inclined to disengage—unless, of course, the misunderstander is maintaining active engagement with new information that I provide.
I’m curious how long has your newfound identity has lasted? Weeks or months? I got the ‘months’ impression.
I actually just started to get my new identity at the end of last week. And the big realization that I’m allowed to feel like a good/likeable/worthwhile person no matter the circumstances was made just about 50 hours ago.
The reason you might get the impression that I’ve had it for a longer time is that for many months I’ve been pretty clear on what my new identity would be like on a rational level. I’ve been expecting many of my new behaviours to turn out as they’ve now did for example. The big difference is that now I finally get to know what it feels like to have this new identity, and of course, that I’m able to implement it in practice. :-)
Just wanted to add that I also felt very inclined to disengage with PJ on many occasions, something which I also did for long periods. That feeling was the very thing that kept me stuck and not being able to make a change.
Now from my new vantage point I can see what was going on. The crucial part was my rule that in effect said that I should start to feel like a bad person as soon as I started thinking about taking a major initiative on my own. It made me feel uncomfortable and I unconsciously felt an urge to find some kind of authority figure whom I could check the decision with to find out if it is okay to do.
So when PJ told me to give myself these rights, my brain automatically interpreted it as being a major initiative and therefore as a demand for doing something bad. I started dragging my feet and coming up with a whole bunch of bogus rationalizations for why I couldn’t follow his request and when he didn’t buy them and simply insisted that I’d do the technique, I instead started to feel kind of resentful and angry that he wouldn’t listen to me or understand me. Sometimes I even started to feel a personal dislike towards him since my brain automatically jumped to the conclusion that since he’s insisting that I’d do something that will make me feel bad, he obviously doesn’t care about me and thinks I’m a bad person who deserves to feel bad.
Now I tried my best to constantly reflect about and rationally analyze these emotions when they came up but I can tell you that it’s extremely hard to do when you’re engulfed by them. I remember that often when I started to feel angry and frustrated I tried to ask myself something like:
“Is this feeling actually justified? Isn’t this is just what you’d expect to feel based on your understanding of this process?”
Unfortunately if I’d fallen to deep into the emotion the answer I often got back was a kind of childish answer that stopped me from going further.
“But I’m angry with him! I don’t wan’t to let him get away with a bunch of unreasonable and uncaring demands!”
Very strange, Upset_Nerd. I have been living my life more or less the same way as you have. When I read your post it sent chills down my spine. I thought I was the only one. Now we are two of a kind. :)
I guess that our situation isn’t that uncommon unfortunately. I hope you’ll also be able to improve your mind state similar to what I’ve done. I recommend reading PJ Ebys comments here on Less Wrong since he’s mentioned a large amount of his important ideas in them. You can also PM me if you’d like.
I guess that our situation isn’t that uncommon unfortunately.
It’s ridiculously common, actually. In the next Guild newsletter I’ve written about the impact of social signaling emotions on our motivation, and the unintended consequences of same in our non-evolutionary environment—where we’re all basically the tribal chieftains or feudal lords of our lives, even though we were mostly raised to be serfs.
(I’ll probably do an LW post at some point on this same topic, though with less how-to and personal stories. But first I gotta finish the training CD.. which incidentally discusses how to apply the Litanies of Gendlin and Tarski to motivational issues. Fun stuff, having a little Guild in my LW and a little LW in the Guild. ;-) )
Everything related to the “don’t use willpower” idea.
It’s the kind of advice that sounds just reasonable enough for someone desperate to try. But then when it comes time to actually develop a new habit (the way real people avoid needing willpower in the long run), they will be unable to get through the first week.
I agree that being on life-hating auto-pilot and just continuing to push is an awful way to go through life. But if you’re not there, waiting until all your internal sub-agents align with your goals is the perfect strategy for high motivation, low productivity, and no success.
I agree that being on life-hating auto-pilot and just continuing to push is an awful way to go through life.
Right. The point is, if whatever you call “willpower” isn’t working for you now, doing more of it is not likely to produce any better results. (Definition of insanity, and all that.)
But then when it comes time to actually develop a new habit (the way real people avoid needing willpower in the long run), they will be unable to get through the first week.
The problem with your hypothesis here is that there are two very different ways to build a habit that can be described as using “willpower”… but the one that actually works is really a special kind of pre-commitment, and isn’t willpower at all.
In the less-useful way, somebody simply “decides” that they’re going to build this habit, and they attempt to deal with conflicts as they come up. So, they haven’t, for example, already decided that if they don’t feel like exercising, they’re still going to do it. Instead, at the point of precommitment, they simply assume they’re still going to feel the same way about their decision all week.
And that’s what I’m referring to as using willpower: attempting to override conflicts on-the-fly by pushing through them.
The type of precommitment that works, OTOH, (and this is backed by at least one study that I know of) is to identify in advance what kinds of obstacles you’re likely to face, imagining them in experiential detail, and preparing for how to handle them.
People who take this approach more-or-less automatically (i.e. without having explicitly been taught or told to do so) are likely to still describe this as “willpower” or “gutting it out” or, “you just have to decide/make up your mind”, or any number of other descriptions that sound like they’re the same thing as using raw willpower to override conflicts as they come up.
Good answer. I don’t agree with it but it is a good answer all the same. I disagree only in as much as I would describe PJ’s suggestions somewhat differently. “Use willpower wisely” instead of as a tool for self flagellation and definitely no waiting.
I’ve found out about PJ Ebys ideas and even though I just recently managed to use them to make a substantial change, I’m pretty sure it’s the largest positive change in my entire life so far.
Really? Which idea of his helped you make that substantial change? Maybe I should take another look at his stuff. I’ve tried reading him before but found it to be a mix of obvious life insights + harmfully wrong motivational advice.
I’m a member of his group so I’ve gotten personal assistance but what I’ve done is basically first diagnose my problems by using his so called RMI technique, which I’m pretty sure he’s mentioned several times here in the comments, which basically just consists of sincerely questioning yourself about your problem and passively notice what comes to mind without trying to rationalize it away logically.
Through that technique I found out that I’ve unconsciously judged all my decisions in life for “goodness”, that is I’ve constantly feared that I’ll not be a good person if I make the wrong decisions. Unfortunately the number of rules for things which make me a bad person have been very large so I’ve basically lived a passive lonely life waiting for someone to come and tell me what to do. One particularly frustrating thing has been that I’ve felt that I’m a bad person if I actually try to take control over my life, and that includes using PJs methods, so for about six months I’ve been completely clear on what my problem is, how to solve it, believed that it would work on a rational level, but at the same time feeling completely uninterested in actually doing anything about it. The trigger for action was when my girlfriend broke up with me and I temporarily got into an emotional state where I felt that I had nothing to lose, and since I knew PJs techniques I managed to use the opportunity to break the deadlock.
The specific technique I used is his so called “rights work”, which I also think he’s mentioned here. You basically tell yourself that you have the right to feel feeling X even if condition Y is true. The big one for me was when I hit upon the phrase: “I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do.”
Realising that instantly made me start to cry what can best be described as tears of joy mixed up with some anger and indignation. Then after a couple of minutes it was over and now I feel like a completely different person. Or rather closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be but never felt I’ve been allowed to be. For example, writing this answer has been trivial whereas I’ve previously been a chronic lurker on all forums I frequent due to worrying about what everyone will think of my writings.
I think it’s important to clarify here that the “rights” in this method are not directly about morality, but rather access or ability, like an ACL in a filesystem grants you the “right” to read a file.
IOW, it’s a method used to counteract learned helplessness and restore your ability to control a portion of your mind, rather than a method of moral rationalization. ;-)
There are also four general categories of ACL: to desire, acquire, respond, and experience—the D.A.R.E. rights—and the one you described here is an E—the right to experience the feeling of being a good person.
(You of course probably realize all this already from the workshops, but I can imagine what some people here are likely to say about the small bits you’ve just mentioned, so I’d like to nip that in the bud if possible.)
Yeah, that’s the essential insight of rights work, which is that the rules we learn for which emotions to have are not symmetrical. That is, a rule that says “X makes you a bad person” does NOT automatically imply to your (emotional/near) brain that the opposite of X makes you a good person. It only tells your brain to rescind your (access) right to feeling good when condition X occurs.
Btw, feeling like a “good person” is normally an Affiliation-category need; it’s not about judging yourself good per se, but rather, whether other people will consider you likable, lovable, and a good/worthy ally.
(Again, I know you know this, because you already mentioned it on the Guild forum, but for the benefit of others, I figure I should add the clarifications.)
Affiliation, of course, being the second of the S.A.S.S. need groups—Significance, Affiliation, Stability, and Stimulation. (Based on feedback here, and more recent personal experiences, I’ve renamed Status and Safety to better cover the true scope of those groups.)
Anyway, if you multiply DARE by SASS, you get a sixteen-element search grid within which the access rights to X can be sought for and restored (relative to a given condition Y) -- assuming you have the necessary skill at RMI.
It is not really a “system”, however, in the way that so many gurus claim their acronyms and formulations to be. That is, I do not claim DARE and SASS are natural divisions that actually exist in the world; they are only a convenient mnemonic to create a search grid that can be overlaid on the territory, without claiming that they are an accurate map of that territory.
And if you search using only that grid, then of course you will only find the things that are already within it… and the fact that I’ve tweaked the names of two of the SASS categories, already shows that there may be other things that still lie outside our current search grid. Nonetheless, having some search grid is better than none at all.
(Tony Robbins, for what it’s worth, claims that there are two additional categories that should belong on the SASS dimension of this grid; he may be right in a general sense, but I have not really found them to be useful/relevant for fixing learned helplessness.)
One last point, which again is intended for bystanders rather than you, U.N., is that merely saying the words “I have the right” has no particular consequence. It is not a magical incantation like “wingardium leviosa”!
It is merely the expression of a realization that you already have that right, the forehead-slapping epiphany that really, you were wearing the magic shoes this whole time, and could have gone back to Kansas at any moment up till now, and just didn’t notice.
And this realization cannot be faked or brought about by a mere ritual; the function of the DARE/SASS search grid is merely to help you find that within yourself that you haven’t been noticing you were even capable of. That’s why, when it works, as in U.N.’s case here, the result can often be… intense.
But it’s also why you should not be fooled by reading U.N.’s comments or mine, that this is a simple matter of following a grid and making the appropriate incantations. It is a search process, not a quick fix technique.
And the process of your search is hindered by the nature of your own blind spots: U.N. mentions his meta-akrasia here, but there are subtler forms of complexity that can arise from this basic pattern. For example, one may believe that feeling you’re a good person, makes you a bad person… and in order to fix that, you have to remove the second rule first.
(Otherwise, what happens is that your attempted right statement sort of fizzles like a mis-cast spell… you say, “I have the right to X...” and your brain goes, “Yeah right,” or, “maybe, but I’m not gonna DO that.… ’cause then I’d be bad.”)
Anyway, I won’t say, “don’t try this at home,” because really, you should. ;-)
But you should know that it is not a trivial process, and if done correctly it will bring you face to face with your own mental blind spots… by which I mean, things you do not want to know about yourself.
(For example, one thing that often happens is that, in the process of restoring a right, you realize that you are actually going to have to give up your righteous judgment of some group of people who you previously felt yourself superior to, because that judgment depends on one of the SASS rules that you are about to give up… and both the realization that you have been misjudging those people, and the realization that you still don’t really want to give up that judgment, can be painful.)
Anyway… it’s fun stuff… but not necessarily while you’re doing it, if you get my drift. ;-)
Thankyou. If someone had the gall to moralize at someone who had just broken free from the ‘goodness’ cage I would have been displeased, to put it mildly.
On the other hand, without further context “I have the right to feel like a good person no matter what I do” is a dangerous thing to internalize. In fact I suspect that rules, like “If I want to murder someone, I should feel like a bad person” exist in the brain using the same mechanism. Obviously this is one rule you shouldn’t get rid of.
This sounds very similar to the argument against atheism where the believer is afraid that he might start to do a whole bunch of horrible things if he’ll no longer fear punishment from God.
What I’ve noticed in my case is that yes, I now do think I could feel like a good person even if I do bad things to others. However, I now genuinely don’t want to hurt other people. In a way it feels like this is the first time in my life where I’m actually able to really care for and empathise with other people since I no longer have to be so preoccupied with myself.
Yep. Motivation is not symmetric.
What used to boggle my mind about this, is how it could be that our brains are built in such a way as to seemingly automatically believe that motivation is symmetric, even though it isn’t.
My working hypothesis is that the part of our brain that predicts other minds—i.e. our built-in Theory Of Mind—uses a symmetric model for simplicity’s sake (i.e., it’s easier to evolve, and “good enough” for most purposes), and that we use this model to try to predict our own future behavior when anticipating self-modification.
Not really. Our experiences indicate that the brain’s ACL system matches rules by specificity. A blanket rule change like this one will only remove the specific generalizations matched during the retrieval process, not any broader or narrower rules. (This is implied by memory reconsolidation theory, btw.)
Actually, funny you should mention, because that’s an ill-specified rule right there, and it’s precisely the sort I would say you ought to get rid of!
Why? Because you said “if I want to murder someone”. Merely wanting something bad doesn’t make you a bad person. Who hasn’t wanted to murder somebody, at some point in their life?
If the rule you state (“If I want to murder someone, I should feel like a bad person”) were a genuine SASS rule that you’d internalized, then every time you got mad enough at somebody, you’d suppress the anger… and keep right on feeling it. Most likely, you’d have people or situations you’d avoid because you’d feel chronically stressed around them—vaguely angry and disappointed in yourself at the same time.
Usually, though, unless you actually said you wanted to murder somebody when you were a kid, and shocked an adult into shaming you for being bad, you probably don’t have an explicit SASS rule against wanting to murder people, and don’t actually need one in order to avoid actually murdering people. ;-)
Negative SASS rules are compulsions that override reflective thinking and outcome anticipation; they hijack logical thought processes and direct them into motivated reasoning. Oddly enough, positive SASS rules don’t seem to have the same degree of power… although it occurs to me that perhaps my current model is flawed in this description of “positive” and “negative”—better words might be “surplus” and “deficit”.
(That is, if your brain thinks a desired positive SASS quality is scarce, you can be just as compulsive in acquiring it, as you can be compulsive in avoiding things with negative SASS. However, the rules themselves seem to influence what levels are perceived as surplus or deficit, so there’s a bit of recursion involved.)
Yes, it was only with pjeby’s explanation that I realised “I have the right to” in this context actually means “I am not denied the right to”—I am not barred by access control list—rather than “I am justified in”. Like “pride” meaning “not ashamed”.
I have known too many people who do in fact use it to mean “I am automatically justified in feeling great about myself, therefore you should not criticise my behaviour.” This suggests the ambiguity in wording may be problematic. (On the other hand, I suspect the process is that the conclusion is assumed and then arguments are found to justify it, so the wording may make little difference.)
There’s that, but there’s also the ability to feel pride. “I have the right to feel proud when I make a mistake” means that you can be proud that you tried.
You will notice, though, that this rights stuff tends to be very controversial, in that everybody on first encountering it will tend to start listing the exceptions they think should be made, i.e., the access rights that should never be granted.
Usually (though not always), that list of exceptions is effectively an excerpt from the list of rules that are keeping them from succeeding at whatever prompted them to seek out my help in the first place. ;-)
You may control another’s behaviour but you never have the right to control another person’s feelings.
I must congratulate you. Trauma of some kind seems to be required for significant rapid changes to identity (and so behavior). You seem to have harnessed a negative, undesired trauma and executed positive considered change. That sort of navigation of human psychological quirks always impresses me.
Thanks :-)
And I agree in that I don’t think I could have made this change without any kind of dramatic incident; I’m pretty sure that it would never have happened on it’s own since my behaviour was stuck in a kind of stable equillibrium.
I suspect that another person could have triggered the change in me though by kind of forcing me through this process and not relenting even if I try to make them stop. I imagine that when then feeling completely exposed they could give me the basic need that I’ve always feared that I don’t have and finally support me in realizing that I can give it to myself. This probably has to be done in person though so you can’t easily get away.
The big problem is of course that if you’re the person who’s trying to help you have a huge responsibility for actually diagnosing the other persons problems correctly. Since it unavoidably is a traumatic process I can imagine how horrible it must feel if the person who forced you to completely expose yourself turned out to completely misunderstand what you actually feared.
Being misunderstood is annoying all right, for some more than others. I find that it mostly makes inclined to disengage—unless, of course, the misunderstander is maintaining active engagement with new information that I provide.
I’m curious how long has your newfound identity has lasted? Weeks or months? I got the ‘months’ impression.
I actually just started to get my new identity at the end of last week. And the big realization that I’m allowed to feel like a good/likeable/worthwhile person no matter the circumstances was made just about 50 hours ago.
The reason you might get the impression that I’ve had it for a longer time is that for many months I’ve been pretty clear on what my new identity would be like on a rational level. I’ve been expecting many of my new behaviours to turn out as they’ve now did for example. The big difference is that now I finally get to know what it feels like to have this new identity, and of course, that I’m able to implement it in practice. :-)
Just wanted to add that I also felt very inclined to disengage with PJ on many occasions, something which I also did for long periods. That feeling was the very thing that kept me stuck and not being able to make a change.
Now from my new vantage point I can see what was going on. The crucial part was my rule that in effect said that I should start to feel like a bad person as soon as I started thinking about taking a major initiative on my own. It made me feel uncomfortable and I unconsciously felt an urge to find some kind of authority figure whom I could check the decision with to find out if it is okay to do.
So when PJ told me to give myself these rights, my brain automatically interpreted it as being a major initiative and therefore as a demand for doing something bad. I started dragging my feet and coming up with a whole bunch of bogus rationalizations for why I couldn’t follow his request and when he didn’t buy them and simply insisted that I’d do the technique, I instead started to feel kind of resentful and angry that he wouldn’t listen to me or understand me. Sometimes I even started to feel a personal dislike towards him since my brain automatically jumped to the conclusion that since he’s insisting that I’d do something that will make me feel bad, he obviously doesn’t care about me and thinks I’m a bad person who deserves to feel bad.
Now I tried my best to constantly reflect about and rationally analyze these emotions when they came up but I can tell you that it’s extremely hard to do when you’re engulfed by them. I remember that often when I started to feel angry and frustrated I tried to ask myself something like: “Is this feeling actually justified? Isn’t this is just what you’d expect to feel based on your understanding of this process?”
Unfortunately if I’d fallen to deep into the emotion the answer I often got back was a kind of childish answer that stopped me from going further. “But I’m angry with him! I don’t wan’t to let him get away with a bunch of unreasonable and uncaring demands!”
Btw, it’d be awesome if you shared this comment on the Guild forum as well, and I would like to be able to use it in future training materials.
I mean, sure, I tell people that this kind of thing is going to happen, but it’s easier to absorb hearing it from somebody else.
I’ve disengaged with PJ from time to time but never when he’s been giving advice. I suspect it is a different scenario. :P
Very strange, Upset_Nerd. I have been living my life more or less the same way as you have. When I read your post it sent chills down my spine. I thought I was the only one. Now we are two of a kind. :)
I guess that our situation isn’t that uncommon unfortunately. I hope you’ll also be able to improve your mind state similar to what I’ve done. I recommend reading PJ Ebys comments here on Less Wrong since he’s mentioned a large amount of his important ideas in them. You can also PM me if you’d like.
It’s ridiculously common, actually. In the next Guild newsletter I’ve written about the impact of social signaling emotions on our motivation, and the unintended consequences of same in our non-evolutionary environment—where we’re all basically the tribal chieftains or feudal lords of our lives, even though we were mostly raised to be serfs.
(I’ll probably do an LW post at some point on this same topic, though with less how-to and personal stories. But first I gotta finish the training CD.. which incidentally discusses how to apply the Litanies of Gendlin and Tarski to motivational issues. Fun stuff, having a little Guild in my LW and a little LW in the Guild. ;-) )
Just out of curiosity, which motivational advice did you consider wrong, and why?
Everything related to the “don’t use willpower” idea.
It’s the kind of advice that sounds just reasonable enough for someone desperate to try. But then when it comes time to actually develop a new habit (the way real people avoid needing willpower in the long run), they will be unable to get through the first week.
I agree that being on life-hating auto-pilot and just continuing to push is an awful way to go through life. But if you’re not there, waiting until all your internal sub-agents align with your goals is the perfect strategy for high motivation, low productivity, and no success.
Right. The point is, if whatever you call “willpower” isn’t working for you now, doing more of it is not likely to produce any better results. (Definition of insanity, and all that.)
The problem with your hypothesis here is that there are two very different ways to build a habit that can be described as using “willpower”… but the one that actually works is really a special kind of pre-commitment, and isn’t willpower at all.
In the less-useful way, somebody simply “decides” that they’re going to build this habit, and they attempt to deal with conflicts as they come up. So, they haven’t, for example, already decided that if they don’t feel like exercising, they’re still going to do it. Instead, at the point of precommitment, they simply assume they’re still going to feel the same way about their decision all week.
And that’s what I’m referring to as using willpower: attempting to override conflicts on-the-fly by pushing through them.
The type of precommitment that works, OTOH, (and this is backed by at least one study that I know of) is to identify in advance what kinds of obstacles you’re likely to face, imagining them in experiential detail, and preparing for how to handle them.
People who take this approach more-or-less automatically (i.e. without having explicitly been taught or told to do so) are likely to still describe this as “willpower” or “gutting it out” or, “you just have to decide/make up your mind”, or any number of other descriptions that sound like they’re the same thing as using raw willpower to override conflicts as they come up.
Good answer. I don’t agree with it but it is a good answer all the same. I disagree only in as much as I would describe PJ’s suggestions somewhat differently. “Use willpower wisely” instead of as a tool for self flagellation and definitely no waiting.
I’m curious too. Harmfully wrong motivational advice seems rather drastic.