If your problem happens to be some trauma, fix the trauma. If it is lack of tools, buy the right tools. If it is wasting time on social networks, install a web blocker. And if it’s just than you never prioritize doing X, but in retrospective always wish you had, precommit to spend some time doing X.
Of course, it could be more of those things together; maybe you have a trauma and also lack the right tools. Then you must solve both. Maybe one is more visible, and you only realize the other after fixing the first one.
The idea that everything is caused by internal conflicts, and if we only could resolve all the internal conflicts (which might take a few years of hard work, if you want to do it thoroughly) we would become amazing supermen (so all those years spent on therapy would still be totally worth it), originates from Freud.
It is my long-term source of amusement, that if you mention Freud of psychoanalysis in the rationalist community, you reliably get “pseudoscience”, “it’s completely debunked”, et cetera… but if you rephrase the same ideas using modern language, without mentioning the source, they become accepted rationalist wisdom.
Generally, you have to solve the problem you have. (Related: Anna Karenina principle.)
If your problem happens to be some trauma, fix the trauma. If it is lack of tools, buy the right tools. If it is wasting time on social networks, install a web blocker. And if it’s just than you never prioritize doing X, but in retrospective always wish you had, precommit to spend some time doing X.
Of course, it could be more of those things together; maybe you have a trauma and also lack the right tools. Then you must solve both. Maybe one is more visible, and you only realize the other after fixing the first one.
This is basically my perspective but seems contrary to the perspective in which most problems are caused by internal blockages, right?
Yep.
The idea that everything is caused by internal conflicts, and if we only could resolve all the internal conflicts (which might take a few years of hard work, if you want to do it thoroughly) we would become amazing supermen (so all those years spent on therapy would still be totally worth it), originates from Freud.
It is my long-term source of amusement, that if you mention Freud of psychoanalysis in the rationalist community, you reliably get “pseudoscience”, “it’s completely debunked”, et cetera… but if you rephrase the same ideas using modern language, without mentioning the source, they become accepted rationalist wisdom.