An important factor that pushes further towards this dynamic, is that often the previous evidence gets integrated into a feeling,and the specifics are forgotten. I had this with someone once where a lot of things they did made me feel unhappy, but I brushed the individual events off as small, until at the end I was in a mental state of “I don’t like being around this person and am angry at them internally, but not sure why”, and I was frustrated at myself for having such irrational emotions. This did not seem a productive thing to bring up in a conversation with them, especially when the original reasons had been forgotten.
I observe that the things I did / have done since include:
In the particular case: Introspect until I did find examples of the problems, and then discuss those with my friends and eventually the person.
In the general case: Trust my emotions more to be guides to evidence, rather than irritating things getting in the way of my plans. For example, if I feel like I like / dislike a person, I’m likely to ask questions like “I wonder what experiences I’ve had that lead me to this conclusion” rather than “This emotion is getting in the way of my ability to think straight! I should suppress it.”
On the fundamentallevel (aka on the other end of the pipeline): be much more honest about how I feel about something. In general I have a prohibition against saying false things, and now in this sort of situation I will still try to comfort you if you feel awkward, say, but I won’t say false things like “it wasn’t a problem”. I hadn’t noticed I was saying false things, but I’ve learned to notice it more strongly, and I will lean only on true things for support.
An important factor that pushes further towards this dynamic, is that often the previous evidence gets integrated into a feeling, and the specifics are forgotten. I had this with someone once where a lot of things they did made me feel unhappy, but I brushed the individual events off as small, until at the end I was in a mental state of “I don’t like being around this person and am angry at them internally, but not sure why”, and I was frustrated at myself for having such irrational emotions. This did not seem a productive thing to bring up in a conversation with them, especially when the original reasons had been forgotten.
I observe that the things I did / have done since include:
In the particular case: Introspect until I did find examples of the problems, and then discuss those with my friends and eventually the person.
In the general case: Trust my emotions more to be guides to evidence, rather than irritating things getting in the way of my plans. For example, if I feel like I like / dislike a person, I’m likely to ask questions like “I wonder what experiences I’ve had that lead me to this conclusion” rather than “This emotion is getting in the way of my ability to think straight! I should suppress it.”
On the fundamental level (aka on the other end of the pipeline): be much more honest about how I feel about something. In general I have a prohibition against saying false things, and now in this sort of situation I will still try to comfort you if you feel awkward, say, but I won’t say false things like “it wasn’t a problem”. I hadn’t noticed I was saying false things, but I’ve learned to notice it more strongly, and I will lean only on true things for support.