Grossman shows that we cannot control the autonomous nervious system (directly) and that there are only two aspects of it that can easily be controlled: Blink and Breath.
The fact that he can’t doesn’t mean “we” can’t.
The one time somebody grabbed me after midnight and said: “Give me 5 Euro or I kill you” I still had control over my state and switched into a more relaxed one.
It was very much a trained automatic response.
It’s likely easier to train breathing techniques, but it’s not the only option.
Innoculate yourself against stress by training some authentically dangerous situations. A very good idea is to play paintball as that is a very competitive situation that is behaviorally comparable to a deadly force encounter.
Paintball seems to be a good simulation for soldier going to war. On the other hand most of us face different potential challenges and I don’t think paintball generalizes well to them.
Train dialing 911 (or whatever your emergency number is; make sure to set-up your phone suitably) and give accurate reports.
Dialing 911 without an emergency is illegal in many cases. Is there a good way to setup a sandbox to train the skill?
It’s likely easier to train breathing techniques, but it’s not the only option.
Agreed. But it could be that the other techniques are also all indirect.
On the other hand most of us face different potential challenges and I don’t think paintball generalizes well to them.
I found the paintball setting quite general. Could you give examples of other challenges you have in mind?
Dialing 911 without an emergency is illegal in many cases. Is there a good way to setup a sandbox to train the skill?
I just plugged out the VOIP router so you still had at leasts a dial tone. Some routers allow setting specific routes for specific call numbers. You have to experiment.
Agreed. But it could be that the other techniques are also all indirect.
Whether you call something direct or indirect doesn’t matter that much but what I’m doing feels more direct than breath control or blinking. Especially quite formalized breathing as described in the combat breathing.
While I haven’t done biofeedback myself it’s my understanding that it’s practitioners can change a variable like the heart beat quite directly.
I found the paintball setting quite general. Could you give examples of other challenges you have in mind?
I personally think what had the most impact for myself was dealing with stronger emotions in personal development contexts. Facing real fears that actually matter in my life had the most impact.
If you haven’t yet have the experience, jump out of a plane with a parachute. I would estimate that it brings you much more in contact with the fear of dying then a paintball game does.
There are probably diminishing returns from doing it multiple times but it raises strong emotions.
Tony Robbins let people walk over hot coals in his seminar. It’s likely not something you want to do at home (Tony Robbins has medical staff standing by at his seminars) but it’s the kind of activity that raises strong emotions.
I personally think what had the most impact for myself was dealing with stronger emotions in personal development contexts. Facing real fears that actually matter in my life had the most impact.
That adds a very relevant aspect to this. For me strong emotions where almost never an issue. Even in the two incidents I mentioned I wasn’t hindered by emotions. The first just went too fast (I have little memory of the situation itself and none of fears) and the second involved no fear or anger either, only an immensely powerful urge to protect. And the latter didn’t feel like emotion. I have difficulties to explain this partly because I have so little experience with strong emotions.
I have no fear of hight nor falling nor constriction nor darkness nor aloneness nor animals that I know of. I’d think I’d enjoy parachuting (I think it would be an interesting aerodynamics experience a great view) and can’t imagine fear (it may be not comparable but I don’t feel fear when falling during climbing or in a roller coaster either). But I agree that training to deal with strong emotions e.g. in these cases has also many benefits and falls into the same category of stress innoculation.
But independent of the fear and emotions in these situations there is still the training effect. In stressful situations do higher cognitive functions decline and you fall back to the level of your training. One can observe this even during heavy physical exercise: Just try to answer complex mathematical queries during it.
I have no fear of hight nor falling nor constriction nor darkness nor aloneness nor animals that I know of.
A lot of people on LW aren’t exactly neurotypical ;) While we did interact shortly in person it wasn’t long enough for me to know how you tick. If I remember right your reaction to hugging was pretty normal.
How about social fears? Fear of rejection by woman? Fear when getting hit on by a homosexual dude?
Fear of negotiating?
Even in the two incidents I mentioned I wasn’t hindered by emotions. The first just went too fast (I have little memory of the situation itself and none of fears)
In your description above you mentioned that you were covered in fear.
There are multiple kinds of fear. There’s fight, flight and freeze. To me it sounds like you did freeze.
I do fear physical violence and harm for me. I hate violent behavior in general esp. if I can’t understand it.
How about social fears? Fear of rejection by woman? Fear when getting hit on by a homosexual dude? Fear of negotiating?
No fear of rejection. I do not understand the concept well. If it doesn’t match that’s how it is. I won’t manipulate anyone to like me in the short run as I’m interested only in the long run. The main reasons I do not approach anybody are not fear but a) too little motivation on my side, b) too much expected effort per hedons, c) too few that are attractive to begin with.
when getting hit on by a homosexual dude?
Didn’t happen yet. If there is no risk of violence I can’t see how it is different from any other social situation.
Fear of negotiating?
I don’t understand where there can be any fear as long as no existential risks are involved.
But considering I see that I do have a social fear: Presenting in front of a large audience. I don’t fear it beforehand but I know that I have trouble speaking until I get into flow. 30 people is enough. You may have noiced it during the LW Europe Berlin presentation.
The common pattern for strong reactionsis far reaching consequences I do not have under control.
To me it sounds like you did freeze.
I did cover. As I said I have no clear recollection of it. It was no planned ducking or active in any way. Passive self-covering as far as I can tell. I did write fear but considering it it was more how I’d interpret it from an outside view, not how I knew it felt. As I said above I surely felt fear. I know emotions—only the situation has to escalate quite a bit to raise the emotions to a level that it controls my actions—and not just giving inklings as to what might be appropriate.
Fight fear feels different than flight fear with feels different then freeze fear.
Could you elaborate as to how these differ except obviously for the reaction they cause?
How do you do when it comes to feeling positive emotions? Do you have them in your life?
I feel a lot of happiness resulting from interaction with my children, their actions or just from observicing them be. This reminds me of a negative emotion that is triggered by my children too: Anger when they hurt or are cruel to each other. That causes a dissonance I can’t resolve easily and sometimes hinders efficient action.
I enjoy some sports and physical entertainment.
I take calm delight from the merry parties at my home.
I am happy when a project or plan is a success. And if not even small successes come in for a longer time I can get slightly depressed (out of which I usually get quickly by phone calls with supportive relatives).
My dominant emotion if you can call it that is flow. The immersion into a subject. It is not happyness nor satisfaction (these may come afterwards). It is a feeling of agency. I fall easily into flow if a subject engages me and there are many. I’d call flow a positive emotion.
In very difficult situations (personally, socially, involving others) where after exhausting all my actions and all my reasons the situation still looks bleak I feel desperation and tearfulness. It happens seldom and in all the few cases except one it led to support by others so I see this as an adaptive emotion the actually did help me despite it feeling—well—bad. To illustrate it I once was resonsible for a larger group of children that failed to respond positively to all my positively intended actions and nothing I did helped against the unrest and meanness among them. Finally after some days (we were a group of caregivers) I broke down and cried and was relieved and comforted by others of our team.
Reconsidering all this it looks as if emotions result from situation I can’t control. As I control most situations very well by a) avoiding trouble, b) long-term planning, c) training, it may just be that I just don’t get into emotional situations sufficient often to learn to feel and deal with them.
ADDED: I notice that I’m revealing lots of personal detail which may appear strange. I feel no risk from that (thus no fear). I do not expect reciprocation.
it’s my understanding that it’s practitioners can change a variable like the heart beat quite directly.
And Zen monks being able to change body temperaure quite selectively, yes.
But I wonder how direct this actually is. To make it measurable I imagine directness as something like the number of neural layers between the conscious parts of the brain and the actual physiological circuitry. The more layers there are and the more precise the physiological processes you have to trigger the more training is needed (though more layers that are capable of learning—as in deep learning algorithms—may make it easier). That it ‘feels’ direct once you have acquired the skill is an illusion in so far as any acquired skill appear easy once one has mastered it.
And Zen monks being able to change body temperaure quite selectively, yes.
Most of the reports I read about that isn’t about direct intervention the way biofeedback is. Imaging a fire in a certain parts of the body would be an example.
I don’t think it’s as direct as biofeedback.
That it ‘feels’ direct once you have acquired the skill is an illusion in so far as any acquired skill appear easy
once one has mastered it.
I don’t think directness and easiness are the same thing.
I don’t think so. The NLP technique anchor is to have an imagined symbol produce a conditioned emotional response. If you work well when creating an anchor you can basically do this to create any kind of emotional response.
It’s still possible to do this in a second but visualizing a symbol still isn’t doesn’t feel as direct.
Sorry. I don’t clearly understand your explanation. Is biofeedback more direct or not? I don’t get the NLP anchor thing (I have no NLP background). Maybe giving a link to an NLP site would help.
NLP anchors are basically about using a conditioned response.
Pavlovs dogs salviate in response to the bell. The bell produces a bodily reaction.
If you want to control your own state, then carrying a bell around with you is impractical. Visualized symbols are more practical because you can trigger them without needing to do anything externally.
Going through the intermediate step of the bell or a visualized symbol would be an indirect way to change bodily sensations.
Biofeedback allows a practitioner to learn to have more direct control over a variable.
In NLP the creation of an anchor is usually done with a coach leading the process for another person. It’s not something that’s as easily done when you are alone. On the other hand once the anchor is there you can use it whenever you want. But you actually have to remember to use it which people often fail to do in high stress situations. I’m not sure whether it’s useful to link you to some online description.
I’m not sure whether it’s useful to link you to some online description.
I’m autodidact amd learn most things my reading and trying out. I admit that some things don’t really work that way but I’d appreciate the link nonetheless.
The fact that he can’t doesn’t mean “we” can’t.
The one time somebody grabbed me after midnight and said: “Give me 5 Euro or I kill you” I still had control over my state and switched into a more relaxed one. It was very much a trained automatic response.
It’s likely easier to train breathing techniques, but it’s not the only option.
Paintball seems to be a good simulation for soldier going to war. On the other hand most of us face different potential challenges and I don’t think paintball generalizes well to them.
Dialing 911 without an emergency is illegal in many cases. Is there a good way to setup a sandbox to train the skill?
Agreed. But it could be that the other techniques are also all indirect.
I found the paintball setting quite general. Could you give examples of other challenges you have in mind?
I just plugged out the VOIP router so you still had at leasts a dial tone. Some routers allow setting specific routes for specific call numbers. You have to experiment.
Whether you call something direct or indirect doesn’t matter that much but what I’m doing feels more direct than breath control or blinking. Especially quite formalized breathing as described in the combat breathing.
While I haven’t done biofeedback myself it’s my understanding that it’s practitioners can change a variable like the heart beat quite directly.
I personally think what had the most impact for myself was dealing with stronger emotions in personal development contexts. Facing real fears that actually matter in my life had the most impact.
If you haven’t yet have the experience, jump out of a plane with a parachute. I would estimate that it brings you much more in contact with the fear of dying then a paintball game does. There are probably diminishing returns from doing it multiple times but it raises strong emotions.
Tony Robbins let people walk over hot coals in his seminar. It’s likely not something you want to do at home (Tony Robbins has medical staff standing by at his seminars) but it’s the kind of activity that raises strong emotions.
That adds a very relevant aspect to this. For me strong emotions where almost never an issue. Even in the two incidents I mentioned I wasn’t hindered by emotions. The first just went too fast (I have little memory of the situation itself and none of fears) and the second involved no fear or anger either, only an immensely powerful urge to protect. And the latter didn’t feel like emotion. I have difficulties to explain this partly because I have so little experience with strong emotions.
I have no fear of hight nor falling nor constriction nor darkness nor aloneness nor animals that I know of. I’d think I’d enjoy parachuting (I think it would be an interesting aerodynamics experience a great view) and can’t imagine fear (it may be not comparable but I don’t feel fear when falling during climbing or in a roller coaster either). But I agree that training to deal with strong emotions e.g. in these cases has also many benefits and falls into the same category of stress innoculation.
But independent of the fear and emotions in these situations there is still the training effect. In stressful situations do higher cognitive functions decline and you fall back to the level of your training. One can observe this even during heavy physical exercise: Just try to answer complex mathematical queries during it.
A lot of people on LW aren’t exactly neurotypical ;) While we did interact shortly in person it wasn’t long enough for me to know how you tick. If I remember right your reaction to hugging was pretty normal.
How about social fears? Fear of rejection by woman? Fear when getting hit on by a homosexual dude? Fear of negotiating?
In your description above you mentioned that you were covered in fear. There are multiple kinds of fear. There’s fight, flight and freeze. To me it sounds like you did freeze.
I do fear physical violence and harm for me. I hate violent behavior in general esp. if I can’t understand it.
No fear of rejection. I do not understand the concept well. If it doesn’t match that’s how it is. I won’t manipulate anyone to like me in the short run as I’m interested only in the long run. The main reasons I do not approach anybody are not fear but a) too little motivation on my side, b) too much expected effort per hedons, c) too few that are attractive to begin with.
Didn’t happen yet. If there is no risk of violence I can’t see how it is different from any other social situation.
I don’t understand where there can be any fear as long as no existential risks are involved.
But considering I see that I do have a social fear: Presenting in front of a large audience. I don’t fear it beforehand but I know that I have trouble speaking until I get into flow. 30 people is enough. You may have noiced it during the LW Europe Berlin presentation.
The common pattern for strong reactionsis far reaching consequences I do not have under control.
I did cover. As I said I have no clear recollection of it. It was no planned ducking or active in any way. Passive self-covering as far as I can tell. I did write fear but considering it it was more how I’d interpret it from an outside view, not how I knew it felt. As I said above I surely felt fear. I know emotions—only the situation has to escalate quite a bit to raise the emotions to a level that it controls my actions—and not just giving inklings as to what might be appropriate.
For most heterosexual dudes there a fear that can be triggered. but it might very well not be the case for you.
Fight fear feels different than flight fear with feels different then freeze fear.
How do you do when it comes to feeling positive emotions? Do you have them in your life?
Could you elaborate as to how these differ except obviously for the reaction they cause?
I feel a lot of happiness resulting from interaction with my children, their actions or just from observicing them be. This reminds me of a negative emotion that is triggered by my children too: Anger when they hurt or are cruel to each other. That causes a dissonance I can’t resolve easily and sometimes hinders efficient action.
I enjoy some sports and physical entertainment.
I take calm delight from the merry parties at my home.
I am happy when a project or plan is a success. And if not even small successes come in for a longer time I can get slightly depressed (out of which I usually get quickly by phone calls with supportive relatives).
My dominant emotion if you can call it that is flow. The immersion into a subject. It is not happyness nor satisfaction (these may come afterwards). It is a feeling of agency. I fall easily into flow if a subject engages me and there are many. I’d call flow a positive emotion.
In very difficult situations (personally, socially, involving others) where after exhausting all my actions and all my reasons the situation still looks bleak I feel desperation and tearfulness. It happens seldom and in all the few cases except one it led to support by others so I see this as an adaptive emotion the actually did help me despite it feeling—well—bad. To illustrate it I once was resonsible for a larger group of children that failed to respond positively to all my positively intended actions and nothing I did helped against the unrest and meanness among them. Finally after some days (we were a group of caregivers) I broke down and cried and was relieved and comforted by others of our team.
Reconsidering all this it looks as if emotions result from situation I can’t control. As I control most situations very well by a) avoiding trouble, b) long-term planning, c) training, it may just be that I just don’t get into emotional situations sufficient often to learn to feel and deal with them.
ADDED: I notice that I’m revealing lots of personal detail which may appear strange. I feel no risk from that (thus no fear). I do not expect reciprocation.
That sounds all healthy. I’m not sure if it’s worth focusing your energies in changing something about this issue.
Training automatic responses to a few crisis situations might still be valuable.
Thank you for your external view. I got the same impression. I’m somewhat unusual—but who isn’t in some aspect.
And Zen monks being able to change body temperaure quite selectively, yes. But I wonder how direct this actually is. To make it measurable I imagine directness as something like the number of neural layers between the conscious parts of the brain and the actual physiological circuitry. The more layers there are and the more precise the physiological processes you have to trigger the more training is needed (though more layers that are capable of learning—as in deep learning algorithms—may make it easier). That it ‘feels’ direct once you have acquired the skill is an illusion in so far as any acquired skill appear easy once one has mastered it.
Most of the reports I read about that isn’t about direct intervention the way biofeedback is. Imaging a fire in a certain parts of the body would be an example.
I don’t think it’s as direct as biofeedback.
I don’t think directness and easiness are the same thing.
I don’t think so. The NLP technique anchor is to have an imagined symbol produce a conditioned emotional response. If you work well when creating an anchor you can basically do this to create any kind of emotional response.
It’s still possible to do this in a second but visualizing a symbol still isn’t doesn’t feel as direct.
Sorry. I don’t clearly understand your explanation. Is biofeedback more direct or not? I don’t get the NLP anchor thing (I have no NLP background). Maybe giving a link to an NLP site would help.
NLP anchors are basically about using a conditioned response.
Pavlovs dogs salviate in response to the bell. The bell produces a bodily reaction. If you want to control your own state, then carrying a bell around with you is impractical. Visualized symbols are more practical because you can trigger them without needing to do anything externally.
Going through the intermediate step of the bell or a visualized symbol would be an indirect way to change bodily sensations. Biofeedback allows a practitioner to learn to have more direct control over a variable.
In NLP the creation of an anchor is usually done with a coach leading the process for another person. It’s not something that’s as easily done when you are alone. On the other hand once the anchor is there you can use it whenever you want. But you actually have to remember to use it which people often fail to do in high stress situations. I’m not sure whether it’s useful to link you to some online description.
I’m autodidact amd learn most things my reading and trying out. I admit that some things don’t really work that way but I’d appreciate the link nonetheless.
Chris Mulzer from whom I learned NLP has written in German 7 articles about anchoring (German: Ankern) under https://www.kikidan.com/bibliothek/nlp-grundlagen-techniken .