Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

bellmar.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 97 posts

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#51

Post by flylikeabanana »

Showed this to my partner, who I find pretty intelligent but struggles with a lot of the symptoms the author presents in this piece due to dealing with a variety of medical trauma in her youth. The relation to anxiety rings especially true, in that she's perceiving herself to be failing at a simple task but in reality she's working with a model she can't trust - inherently very difficult! To her it just adds fuel to the anxiety and the problem gets worse and her performance suffers more, etc.

I agree with the author that tackling the cycle at the anxiety - being able to self soothe - seems to be the ticket to not only finding a card in her purse or whatever minor task a sensory processing disorder makes tougher but also to success in general. Being able to name our demons is helpful for contextualizing our experience. This is not a country that keeps people sane, so having alternative explanations beyond "I guess it's ADHD, try some speed" is great.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#53

Post by hinkley »

I've met some pieces of work in my time. One class that stands out is the people who, on purpose or subconsciously, will hammer on someone, manipulating there sense of rightness (and often lack of self-soothing skills) to extract... I don't know what. Overtime? Self-esteem/aggrandization? Something else?

I have a vivid recollection of a moment where I was explaining how we were actually going to fix a deep problem while in the corner of my vision I watched the face of the person who brought it up fall like a rock. He was clearly expecting a dodge, and I pulled some sort of 5 Why's judo move on him with a, "yes, and...".

Incidentally, one of the superpowers of being someone that people can have a frank and potentially confidential conversation with is that people will bring you 'maybe problems' that sometimes turn out to be nothing (teach them how to do it themselves next time) or a potentially very bad situation. Having even a half hour head start on people to start thinking about a big problem makes you look a hell of a lot smarter in the OMGWTF meeting that follows. If you save people from looking or feeling stupid in front of others, they will pay you huge dividends, including Right of First Refusal on all sorts of things.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#54

Post by wintermutestwin »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #37
dwaltrip wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to. Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meant…

Not OP, but I would hope the original comment was intended to imply that emotions should be _responded_ to (as you noted) and not _reacted_ to. Responding involves understanding, "naming your enemy," and contextual consideration. Reacting is thoughtless, immediate, animalistic.

Great answer! I'll post some notes I have on responding vs reacting:

Reactions limit choices. Responses give choices.

Reactions are unconscious, automatic, and based on negative emotions which stem from unmet needs. Responses are conscious, considered, and based upon the actual needs underlying the negative emotions.

Reactions often move us further away from getting our needs met. Responses usually move us towards getting our needs met.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#56

Post by loceng »

flylikeabanana wrote: post #51

Showed this to my partner, who I find pretty intelligent but struggles with a lot of the symptoms the author presents in this piece due to dealing with a variety of medical trauma in her youth. The relation to anxiety rings especially true, in that she's perceiving herself to be failing at a simple task but in reality she's working with a model she can't trust - inherently very difficult! To her it just adds fuel to…

It's complex, can be multiple differing sources/causes individually or compounding, and what most of the world does is to follow a protocol of experimentation and practices for people to go through on their own to see what alleviates different dis-ease states - or where at least there is a net benefit found/experienced. The "solution" of psychiatry to deal with mental health IMHO is pure regulatory capture, a cheap, lazy solution requiring little to no skill or deeper understanding or experience by the administrator - and providing a recurring revenue model that seems to most often cause dependance.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#58

Post by torginus »

For the sake of the argument, I'm going to take the authors appraisal of her own impressive intellect at face value, however I'd like to add that I have met a few 150IQish individuals who had a far more modest view of their mental abilities.

My interpretation is that she was a genuine genius who, for whatever reason, had some learning disabilities/behavioural problems that prevented her from taking advantage of her own gifts. While I congratulate her for overcoming these challenges, I can't help but feel that an intellectually more average person, who also doesn't share her difficulties, would get far less out of the methods she describes in the article, or someone else who also has the same learning difficulties as her wouldn't get to join the intellectual elite just by following in her footsteps.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#59

Post by stkdump »

torginus wrote: post #58

For the sake of the argument, I'm going to take the authors appraisal of her own impressive intellect at face value, however I'd like to add that I have met a few 150IQish individuals who had a far more modest view of their mental abilities. My interpretation is that she was a genuine genius who, for whatever reason, had some learning disabilities/behavioural problems that prevented her from taking advantage of her o…

I can't say I know that you can improve your own intelligence. But it does seem to help better understand the world when you try to be open to the idea that you might be wrong in your opinions, if just for the fact that you haven't (yet) experienced what others have. And I think the personality trait openness (which to me seems to be connected) has a relatively strong correlation with intelligence.

Re: To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

#60

Post by sdwr »

dasyatidprime wrote: post #49
cartoonworld wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress) You got it, but then you missed it. Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessne…

To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on? In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some…

Great point about of the value of mentorship, legacy, chain of knowledge. The emotional landscape can be complicated, scary, and full of conflicting information. Having a trusted example of something working is a huge advantage.

Take Donald Trump as a (not entirely positive) case study. Without the example of his father, he would never have had the confidence to be so scummy and provocative, or to desecrate the role of president.

I'm sure there are plenty of nice examples out there too. That's just where my head jumped to off the bat.

Post reply on HN