No, because I’m currently not good at keeping a job, and equally not good at navigating the bureaucracies necessary to suckle on the government’s teat. “Getting to a place where I’m not self-harming” is a nice pipe dream, but as it is, we optimise for those goals which we can actually stand a reasonable chance of accomplishing.
Put another way, if P(n)-sub-t is my probability of getting into therapy after expending n units of resource on getting into therapy, and U(n)-sub-t is the utility of getting therapy after spending n units of resource on getting into therapy, and P(n)-sub-r is the probability of becoming more rational after spending n units trying to become rational, and U(n)-sub-r is the utility of becoming more rational after spending n units becoming rational, and I only have n resource units available, then if P(n)-sub-t U(n)-sub-t < P(n)-sub-r U(n)-sub-r, then I know what to spend those n resource units on, no matter how much P(n+delta)-sub-t U(n+delta)-sub-t > P(n+delta)-sub-r U(n+delta)-sub-r, because I don’t have that extra delta worth of resource units.
Sometimes poor people make what looks like bad choices from the outside because it’s the best choice they have.
I’m not much for suckling on the government’s teat either. How much of a chance do you think you’d have of keeping a job if you put your mind to it?
There could be other options aside from therapy. A lot of people that I respect have recommend Nathaniel Branden’s books. I have heard some about Internal Family Systems (IFS) as well, which as far as I know can be done by yourself. I’m by no means an expert, but maybe these can act as leads for you to get started on your own (presuming you haven’t already looked into them).
How much of a chance do you think you’d have of keeping a job if you put your mind to it?
Empirically, a very poor one. Or rather, more accurately: I either have a very poor chance of keeping a job if I put my mind to it, OR I have a very poor chance of putting my mind to it. I’m not sure how to tell which is actually the case, right now, but maybe I could tell if I actually put my mind to it (heh).
Unfortunately, since “putting my mind to things” is a big part of what’s actually broken, I’m not sure where to proceed—or even whether I should proceed. Often times, my strongest impulse leans towards slapping a big “DEFECTIVE” label on my forehead and tossing myself in the recycle bin.
I urge you to strongly consider the possibility that your mind is telling you that you don’t like this kind of work. At best, defective is a circular label, not an analytical result of your personality.
That may not be the most useful information, economically speaking. But it may help you avoid generalizing your experiences at the current job on to future jobs. In short, you aren’t lazy, you just haven’t found situations that put you in a position to succeed (by ensuring sufficient appropriate motivation).
I used to think that way. The frustrating thing is, I used to LOVE work of all kind. What I hated was people with arbitrary power over me deliberately sabotaging my work, mostly (it seemed) because they were angry that I enjoyed it so much. One of the most powerful lessons I ever learned was that people at my socioeconomic level don’t GET to “enjoy” their work. Even by accident.
I never really learned diplomacy and power politics, primarily due to being taught a form of “learned helplessness” about it when I was very young (I was not in a socioeconomic class where it was appropriate to display the amount of enthusiasm, talent and intelligence that I had, and I didn’t know how to hide it).
Unfortunately, this led to making a lot of really, really bad political mistakes, each of which slowly eroded my enthusiasm at doing… well, at this point, at doing anything.
After a few years of being out of practice, I now find that I can’t even bring myself to get out of bed in the morning and work on something interesting, because “what’s the point?”
To me, there is NO difference between “lazy” and “haven’t found situations that put you in a position to succeed”. They are IDENTICAL. If society doesn’t put you in positions to succeed, it has decided that you are lazy, and that means you ARE lazy. Agency has nothing to do with culpability, only blame.
Your rules seemed designed to sabotage you by making you feel miserable. The impulse to create scripts of how interactions are supposed to go is a good one, but the point of these scripts is to prepare you to succeed.
You need a new social environment. If none of the people you hang out with is really your friend, stop spending time with them. Particularly if they aren’t emotionally safe.
We talked about boardgaming as one possible new environment. What about charitable volunteering. If you find the right charity, the organizations are desperate for your help.
Regardless of what specific thing you do, find something to succeed at. Don’t set the bar ridiculously high—if what you can do is show up, then find something where showing up is success. You are absolutely worth it. Your negative feelings are a habit that you can break.
Where do you live? Maybe I can help? (Private message if you prefer).
This post is being made while repressing a massive array of scripted responses, so if it bounces around or seems incoherent, it’s because only a VERY small portion of my brainpower is currently available for rational analysis.
I tend to sabotage friendships, due to being inherently distrustful / untrustworthy (my cynical disposition has led me to believe that these are ultimately the same thing). Thus, your offer to help personally is admirable, but I have a very high threshold to pass before I can trust it as actually helpful. Does this make sense?
I’ve performed actions of charitable volunteering, but over the past few years I’ve had very little energy for anything. I tend to have less than half an hour’s worth of useful energy per day for anything that involves leaving my little hovel, and by the end of that half an hour I tend to start socially self-destructing.
It’s not as much a problem that friends aren’t emotionally safe for me, as that I am not emotionally safe for me. Actual friends tend to actually empathize, which means that they quickly become freaked out and leave when they realize how helpless they are to do anything but watch me self-harm. This provides a filter that ensures that when I DO absolutely need emotional interaction with other human beings, the only ones who are left are the ones who don’t care as much about the waves of misery I’m exuding.
Thus, your offer to help personally is admirable, but I have a very high threshold to pass before I can trust it as actually helpful. Does this make sense?
Makes sense. Whether you believe it or not, I’m not doing this for my benefit. I care about you, and so does everyone else who is offering you advice.
This post is being made while repressing a massive array of scripted responses.
Do you think these scripts make you happier? Are there changes to the scripts that you can imagine that would cause them to make you happier?
More generally, is there any change you could make in your life that you think you would really make that would lead to any increased happiness? If there are reasons to not make that change, do you think the reasons are realistic in likelihood and it magnitude?
My experience with anxiety is that the feelings never went away, I just got better at doing what I thought needed doing, even with the anxious feelings.
No, but I have spent almost 30 years doing script-modification, and I be sore tired.
Are there changes to the scripts that you can imagine that would cause them to make you happier?
Possibly, but the effort involved in doing more script-modification is no longer something I have the energy for.
My experience with anxiety is that the feelings never went away, I just got better at doing what I thought needed doing, even with the anxious feelings.
Absolutely. That’s how I describe most of what people call my “super-powers”. I tend to be amazingly competent in crisis situations, simply because I don’t panic, I immediately assess the best plan of action, I identify everyone who is panicking, and I immediately give them short commands that are clearly identifiable as helping the situation, so they feel like they can actually do something about whatever’s terrifying them. People have asked me how I manage to be completely unafraid of life-or-death situations, and I’ve simply explained “of course I’m completely terrified. I just do it anyways.” (and then I usually go throw up, because if the situation has calmed enough that people can ask me how I pulled it off, then the situation has calmed enough that I can go throw up).
More generally, is there any change you could make in your life that you think you would really make that would lead to any increased happiness? If there are reasons to not make that change, do you think the reasons are realistic in likelihood and it magnitude?
The problem is, I’ve already tried to solve this problem by editing out “personal happiness” as a goal to seek. I spent about 5 years on this, and in the process have managed to edit out a good amount of personal identity, self-preservation, and so on. It turns out there are biological safeguards in place that keep me from going all the way with it, so what I’ve got is a collection of extraordinarily buggy and non-adaptive scripts, usually running in direct competition with each other and tying up all my system resources without actually accomplishing anything whatsoever.
Of course, since they’re using up all my system resources, I no longer have enough free processor or swap space to further modify my scripts. I’m kinda stuck without outside resources, and I’m no longer capable of generating those.
But ultimately, neurological and biological systems are incredibly complex, and they all (so far as we know) break down eventually. I don’t think this breakdown process is particularly extraordinary or noteworthy, compared to any other possible way that I could degrade into non-functionality.
The problem is, I’ve already tried to solve this problem by editing out “personal happiness” as a goal to seek.
Do you think that removing personal happiness as one of your goals has helped you be more productive? What could you take to add some amount of personal happiness as one of your goals? Would that be worthwhile?
Do you think it is likely that you would take those steps? If there are reasons to not make that change, do you think the reasons are realistic in likelihood and it magnitude?
(I’m asking questions because I hope this will help more than other types of interactions. There’s no reason that you should feel obligated to be emotionally vulnerable towards me. Without emotional vulnerability—from taking apart your personality—specific suggestions / instructions about what to change can easily be taken the wrong way. But if questions like this are coming off as passive-aggressive, I want to stop.)
Actually, yes! Two years ago. I spent about 2 years beforehand getting into the best shape I had ever been in in my life—took Capoeira, spent an hour a day in the gym, ran 3 miles every morning—I set a goal that as soon as I broke 150 lbs (starting from 110), I’d go in and apply.
Heh. Believe it or not, that’s not as much of a problem. I’ve lived with constant suicidal ideation for almost 27 years now, since I was 12. I’ve become almost completely inured to it, and I’ve performed enough unsuccessful attempts that my mid-brain has learned verywell not to bother. It’s amusing to think that learned helplessness can be turned into a tool to combat suicidal ideation, but there it is. (I imagine this is why so many anti-depressants increase the risk of suicide—the learned helplessness is a tighter cycle, so it gets lifted faster, at which point the ideation hasn’t faded yet and suddenly you imagine the possibility of something actually working, and it all finally being over for real.)
No, because I’m currently not good at keeping a job, and equally not good at navigating the bureaucracies necessary to suckle on the government’s teat. “Getting to a place where I’m not self-harming” is a nice pipe dream, but as it is, we optimise for those goals which we can actually stand a reasonable chance of accomplishing.
Put another way, if P(n)-sub-t is my probability of getting into therapy after expending n units of resource on getting into therapy, and U(n)-sub-t is the utility of getting therapy after spending n units of resource on getting into therapy, and P(n)-sub-r is the probability of becoming more rational after spending n units trying to become rational, and U(n)-sub-r is the utility of becoming more rational after spending n units becoming rational, and I only have n resource units available, then if P(n)-sub-t U(n)-sub-t < P(n)-sub-r U(n)-sub-r, then I know what to spend those n resource units on, no matter how much P(n+delta)-sub-t U(n+delta)-sub-t > P(n+delta)-sub-r U(n+delta)-sub-r, because I don’t have that extra delta worth of resource units.
Sometimes poor people make what looks like bad choices from the outside because it’s the best choice they have.
I’m not much for suckling on the government’s teat either. How much of a chance do you think you’d have of keeping a job if you put your mind to it?
There could be other options aside from therapy. A lot of people that I respect have recommend Nathaniel Branden’s books. I have heard some about Internal Family Systems (IFS) as well, which as far as I know can be done by yourself. I’m by no means an expert, but maybe these can act as leads for you to get started on your own (presuming you haven’t already looked into them).
Empirically, a very poor one. Or rather, more accurately: I either have a very poor chance of keeping a job if I put my mind to it, OR I have a very poor chance of putting my mind to it. I’m not sure how to tell which is actually the case, right now, but maybe I could tell if I actually put my mind to it (heh).
Unfortunately, since “putting my mind to things” is a big part of what’s actually broken, I’m not sure where to proceed—or even whether I should proceed. Often times, my strongest impulse leans towards slapping a big “DEFECTIVE” label on my forehead and tossing myself in the recycle bin.
I urge you to strongly consider the possibility that your mind is telling you that you don’t like this kind of work. At best, defective is a circular label, not an analytical result of your personality.
That may not be the most useful information, economically speaking. But it may help you avoid generalizing your experiences at the current job on to future jobs. In short, you aren’t lazy, you just haven’t found situations that put you in a position to succeed (by ensuring sufficient appropriate motivation).
I used to think that way. The frustrating thing is, I used to LOVE work of all kind. What I hated was people with arbitrary power over me deliberately sabotaging my work, mostly (it seemed) because they were angry that I enjoyed it so much. One of the most powerful lessons I ever learned was that people at my socioeconomic level don’t GET to “enjoy” their work. Even by accident.
I never really learned diplomacy and power politics, primarily due to being taught a form of “learned helplessness” about it when I was very young (I was not in a socioeconomic class where it was appropriate to display the amount of enthusiasm, talent and intelligence that I had, and I didn’t know how to hide it).
Unfortunately, this led to making a lot of really, really bad political mistakes, each of which slowly eroded my enthusiasm at doing… well, at this point, at doing anything.
After a few years of being out of practice, I now find that I can’t even bring myself to get out of bed in the morning and work on something interesting, because “what’s the point?”
To me, there is NO difference between “lazy” and “haven’t found situations that put you in a position to succeed”. They are IDENTICAL. If society doesn’t put you in positions to succeed, it has decided that you are lazy, and that means you ARE lazy. Agency has nothing to do with culpability, only blame.
Your rules seemed designed to sabotage you by making you feel miserable. The impulse to create scripts of how interactions are supposed to go is a good one, but the point of these scripts is to prepare you to succeed.
You need a new social environment. If none of the people you hang out with is really your friend, stop spending time with them. Particularly if they aren’t emotionally safe.
We talked about boardgaming as one possible new environment. What about charitable volunteering. If you find the right charity, the organizations are desperate for your help.
Regardless of what specific thing you do, find something to succeed at. Don’t set the bar ridiculously high—if what you can do is show up, then find something where showing up is success. You are absolutely worth it. Your negative feelings are a habit that you can break.
Where do you live? Maybe I can help? (Private message if you prefer).
This post is being made while repressing a massive array of scripted responses, so if it bounces around or seems incoherent, it’s because only a VERY small portion of my brainpower is currently available for rational analysis.
I tend to sabotage friendships, due to being inherently distrustful / untrustworthy (my cynical disposition has led me to believe that these are ultimately the same thing). Thus, your offer to help personally is admirable, but I have a very high threshold to pass before I can trust it as actually helpful. Does this make sense?
I’ve performed actions of charitable volunteering, but over the past few years I’ve had very little energy for anything. I tend to have less than half an hour’s worth of useful energy per day for anything that involves leaving my little hovel, and by the end of that half an hour I tend to start socially self-destructing.
It’s not as much a problem that friends aren’t emotionally safe for me, as that I am not emotionally safe for me. Actual friends tend to actually empathize, which means that they quickly become freaked out and leave when they realize how helpless they are to do anything but watch me self-harm. This provides a filter that ensures that when I DO absolutely need emotional interaction with other human beings, the only ones who are left are the ones who don’t care as much about the waves of misery I’m exuding.
Makes sense. Whether you believe it or not, I’m not doing this for my benefit. I care about you, and so does everyone else who is offering you advice.
Do you think these scripts make you happier? Are there changes to the scripts that you can imagine that would cause them to make you happier?
More generally, is there any change you could make in your life that you think you would really make that would lead to any increased happiness? If there are reasons to not make that change, do you think the reasons are realistic in likelihood and it magnitude?
My experience with anxiety is that the feelings never went away, I just got better at doing what I thought needed doing, even with the anxious feelings.
No, but I have spent almost 30 years doing script-modification, and I be sore tired.
Possibly, but the effort involved in doing more script-modification is no longer something I have the energy for.
Absolutely. That’s how I describe most of what people call my “super-powers”. I tend to be amazingly competent in crisis situations, simply because I don’t panic, I immediately assess the best plan of action, I identify everyone who is panicking, and I immediately give them short commands that are clearly identifiable as helping the situation, so they feel like they can actually do something about whatever’s terrifying them. People have asked me how I manage to be completely unafraid of life-or-death situations, and I’ve simply explained “of course I’m completely terrified. I just do it anyways.” (and then I usually go throw up, because if the situation has calmed enough that people can ask me how I pulled it off, then the situation has calmed enough that I can go throw up).
The problem is, I’ve already tried to solve this problem by editing out “personal happiness” as a goal to seek. I spent about 5 years on this, and in the process have managed to edit out a good amount of personal identity, self-preservation, and so on. It turns out there are biological safeguards in place that keep me from going all the way with it, so what I’ve got is a collection of extraordinarily buggy and non-adaptive scripts, usually running in direct competition with each other and tying up all my system resources without actually accomplishing anything whatsoever.
Of course, since they’re using up all my system resources, I no longer have enough free processor or swap space to further modify my scripts. I’m kinda stuck without outside resources, and I’m no longer capable of generating those.
But ultimately, neurological and biological systems are incredibly complex, and they all (so far as we know) break down eventually. I don’t think this breakdown process is particularly extraordinary or noteworthy, compared to any other possible way that I could degrade into non-functionality.
Do you think that removing personal happiness as one of your goals has helped you be more productive? What could you take to add some amount of personal happiness as one of your goals? Would that be worthwhile?
Do you think it is likely that you would take those steps? If there are reasons to not make that change, do you think the reasons are realistic in likelihood and it magnitude?
(I’m asking questions because I hope this will help more than other types of interactions. There’s no reason that you should feel obligated to be emotionally vulnerable towards me. Without emotional vulnerability—from taking apart your personality—specific suggestions / instructions about what to change can easily be taken the wrong way. But if questions like this are coming off as passive-aggressive, I want to stop.)
Have you tried being a volunteer firefighter?
Actually, yes! Two years ago. I spent about 2 years beforehand getting into the best shape I had ever been in in my life—took Capoeira, spent an hour a day in the gym, ran 3 miles every morning—I set a goal that as soon as I broke 150 lbs (starting from 110), I’d go in and apply.
Still didn’t pass the physical.
Also, this (warning, quite emotionally raw).
Heh. Believe it or not, that’s not as much of a problem. I’ve lived with constant suicidal ideation for almost 27 years now, since I was 12. I’ve become almost completely inured to it, and I’ve performed enough unsuccessful attempts that my mid-brain has learned very well not to bother. It’s amusing to think that learned helplessness can be turned into a tool to combat suicidal ideation, but there it is. (I imagine this is why so many anti-depressants increase the risk of suicide—the learned helplessness is a tighter cycle, so it gets lifted faster, at which point the ideation hasn’t faded yet and suddenly you imagine the possibility of something actually working, and it all finally being over for real.)