Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all

We didn't need to be perfect to get to this point. Just good enough to beat the environment and the other meat sacks.

Predictiveness of a mental model is the the closest we can get to understanding reality.

If you would be interested in providing feedback on early versions of the project, drop me an email. Likewise, if you pursue a project like that, I'd love to hear about it. No pressure though, and it will probably be two months before I am able to resume the project and start deploying prototypes.

"I feel annoyed that this person is doing this thing. But if I say something, they may feel angry, so I won't say something... And then will fight against myself instead."

1. Examine the feeling - Pay attention to the thoughts causing the anxiety. What exactly about it is disturbing? What outcomes are you afraid is going to happen. Think about it like an interesting topic you are hearing about. What questions would you ask?

2. Explore the feeling - Articulate how it makes you feel. Where in your body are you experiencing this feeling? Is your mind racing, your chest tightening, stomach churning? Notice each feeling and where it is happening.

3. Exaggerate the feeling - Take the anxiety causing thought and turn it up to 11. If you are feeling anxious about your job, imagine you not only get fired but the company takes out an ad in the NY times letting everyone in the industry know not to hire you again. If you're anxious about not saving enough, imagine you go bankrupt and have to live in a cardboard box by the street. Don't just imagine the worst case scenario, imagine the nuclear + ebola scenario.

After making a habit of this, I found that my reaction to these thoughts is not as emotionally severe. I don't know exactly why it works but my guess is that when your mental response to stress is disproportionate to the stimuli, the process of examining the thoughts acts as a way of desensitizing the mind to the stimulus whilst keeping some emotional distance from them. The act of exaggeration adds some comic relief to the process and, I find, actually makes me (slightly) look forward to the anxious thoughts ("Ooh, I wonder what crazy scenario I am going to come up with for this one") and replaces the negative feeling (fear, churning) with a positive one (curiosity, excitement).

First, they defined self-deception as "you have two contradictory beliefs, and you hold them at the same time, and you allow one of them into consciousness that you have a motivation for allowing one of them into consciousness."

I don't know if that's so much self-deception, maybe more just trying to resolve an internal conflict and not having certainty over which one is objectively true, because for so many things I believe it's really hard to hold certainty over them being objectively true.

For example, if I believe I'm good at programming and believe I'm bad at programming, which one is objectively true? I could be better at programming than my dad and worse at programming than my friend who is an Apple engineer.

I think they were mostly measuring whether, in uncertainty about one's (or other's) goodness (intentions, abilities, etc.), did they believe they were good or bad?

For example, in the embarrassing questions survey, if people answered yes to they thought about wanting to rape someone, I imagine they probably don't think they have good intentions. And then if someone doesn't think they have good intentions, I imagine they probably feel worse than someone who believes they do have good intentions.

Eight years ago I created a class called Emotional Self-Defense. An ex had sent me an email that said, "Every time I was about to leave, you did something nice so I wouldn't go." And I immediately felt angry, "This girl thinks I manipulated her." Then a few minutes later I felt sad, "Was I manipulating her? I thought I was in love." The next day, after getting a scalp massage, I relaxed on the chair and thought, "I wasn't doing those nice things so she wouldn't go, I was doing them to savor the moment. I wasn't doing those nice things so she wouldn't leave, I was doing them because I thought she'd enjoy receiving them and I'd enjoy giving them." Then I thought, "If I can't trust my own good intentions, who the hell will?"

So I tell people I choose to believe I have good intentions and that others have good intentions because I feel better when I do. Do I know for certain that they or I do? No, and I don't know if I ever will.

The other experiment was about cheating and how a woman can simultaneously think a man is cheating and not cheating. In the podcast, the assumption was, to everyone else, the man was obviously cheating and yet the woman lied to herself because she believed he wasn't. But the opposite can also be true, where, to everyone else, the man is obviously not cheating and yet the woman believes that he is. This has happened to me, where the woman was convinced I was having sex with someone else when that wasn't the case at all.

Lastly, the swimming example seemed to talk more about whether people believed in themselves, as much of the statements seemed like positive affirmations. "We believe we're invincible. Because if we go int here with any other thought there's no chance of us accomplishing our goal." And "It's like I have the ability to catch this person. It's going to happen."

So for me, I don't think it's so much about self-deception and more about self-belief (and other-belief), as I'd argue that people who believe in themselves and others are happier and more successful.

Lastly, they say "that depressed people lie less." But then go on to say, "They see all the pain in the world. How horrible people are with each other and they tell you everything about themselves. What their weaknesses are, what terrible things they've done to other people and the problem is they're right. Maybe it's the way we help people that help them be wrong."

I see a lot of pain in the world but don't think that people are horrible, I think most of us react out of our own pain and want others to join us in the pain. Almost a yearning to not be alone. And therefore I choose to believe that pain and sadness are OK, as they help me feel even closer to other people and to myself. "And the problem is they're right." By what objective measure are people terrible?

I appreciate you continuing with me on this and reinforcing that I listen to the podcast because for many years now I've talked about being honest with oneself and emotional honesty and such, and I think I want to focus more on loving oneself and others. In such conflicts, choosing to believe in our good intentions, our good abilities, our overall goodness instead of choosing to believe in the opposite. So thank you for helping me see this more clearly today.