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Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

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Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#121

Post by hammock »

lisper wrote: post #30

Something I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up: You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a f…

I sort of get what your saying, but on the face of it, it goes against the typical advice for managing emotions, which is to separate the emotion from the action/agency. That is, turning "you made me sad" into "I felt sad."

I think ego destruction are still at the core of both your and this idea

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#122

Post by wox »

rtpg wrote: post #69
davidreiss wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it annoying? Who told you that you need to feel bad?

By having those sorts of thoughts, you are privileging that aspect of them over any other sort of accomplishments they might have. They have less opportunity to present themselves in the way they would like to. Imagine if everyone around you in your workplace would think about how you're dressed instead of what you're actually trying to talk to them about.

I suspect you're missing the point of the parent comment, and the post itself. Regardless of whether these thoughts are wrong or oppressive, is it useful to fight or deny them? Is it helpful to chastise ourselves or feel guilty for having them?

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#123

Post by lisper »

imron wrote: post #74
lisper wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own everything, everything that happens to me Really? Everything that happens to you? What if you were mugged? I think you can (and should) take responsibility for what you do (or don't do), but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

> What if you were mugged? Walking down a dark alley, alone, at night and not having a sense of situational awareness. I was nearly mugged because of that, and now have a much greater sense of situational awareness. I know, I know, blaming the victim is bad, but sometimes clearly assessing what led you to be in a certain type of situation can help you avoid those types of situations in the future.

This actually happened to me in 1991: I was a few months from defending my Ph.D. so I was already under a lot of stress. I came home from work after dark to an empty house and saw that the light we kept on a timer wasn't on (it turned out later that the bulb had burned out). I entered the house and caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I shouted, and the burglar who was on his way out the window took a pot shot at me with a 038. The bullet missed me by about a foot. I had nightmares about strangers in the house for years. None of that was my fault.

There is an epilogue to the story: after the incident I crawled to the phone and called 911. The police arrived a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that told me that they had caught the perpetrator. The put me in the back of a police car and drove me out to where they had a hispanic kid, maybe 15 years old, sitting on the curb in handcuffs. They asked me if I could identify him and I said no, it was dark, I couldn't see anything but a muzzle flash. So they let him go. I have no idea if I let an armed robber back out on to the street, but I've never lost a minute of sleep over that decision.

You own your actions, not your feelings.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#124

Post by lisper »

hammock wrote: post #121
lisper wrote: post #30

Something I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up: You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a f…

I sort of get what your saying, but on the face of it, it goes against the typical advice for managing emotions, which is to separate the emotion from the action/agency. That is, turning "you made me sad" into "I felt sad." I think ego destruction are still at the core of both your and this idea

That's actually completely consistent with what I was trying to say. I guess I just didn't phrase it very well. It's a difficult concept to render into words.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#125

Post by lisper »

stinos wrote: post #73
lisper wrote: post #30

Something I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up: You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a f…

It's something that is being done to you. It's nice if that works for you but for me it totally doesn't. I have once also tried to teach myself to think that way, but in the end figured out I'd just be lying to myself by trying to come up with an alternate formulation of a problem which makes it sounds less of a problem but in reality doesn't help as it does not find a solution. For example me being depressed is just…

> me being depressed is just me

I think you're missing a subtle but important distinction. Yes, it's you, but it's not just you. There is no "just" you. You are not a unified whole, notwithstanding that that's how you perceive yourself. That perception is an illusion. You are in fact more complicated than that. At the very least there is the conscious you and the unconscious you. There is the part of you that has agency and exercises free will (or at least has the illusion of exercising free will) and the part of you over which that first part has no control. That's the part that keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing and rolls your over in your sleep and feels pain when you break your arm or eat ghost peppers. Depression, like other forms of pain (and pleasure BTW) originates in that second part. The part of you that has agency can't decide not to feel pain. The only thing that part of you can do is to interpret the pain differently and act on it differently.

> Finding the cause of depression I wasted years of thinking on already, let alone curing it. It doesn't work. So better deal with it. Which is basically what Stoicism teaches us, btw.

I don't see how anything I said contradicts that. Just because you find the cause of a problem doesn't mean you can fix it. In this case it's the exact opposite: it's the realization that you can't fix it that helps you deal with it because you can stop beating yourself up for not fixing it. Feeling emotional pain is not a failure on your part. It's just the way part of your brain works.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#126

Post by lisper »

larkery wrote: post #93
lisper wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own everything, everything that happens to me Really? Everything that happens to you? What if you were mugged? I think you can (and should) take responsibility for what you do (or don't do), but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

In zen there is the question, who is in control of these feelings? Where is the locus of control, and what kind of a thing is it? Where is the boundary between things inside your mind and things outside of your mind? Where does control get inserted into the process of things arising and falling away? One way of thinking about this produces a realisation that nobody is in control, but nobody has been denied or robbed…

I think this is exactly right. Even the conscious part of you, the part you perceive as being "in control" isn't really. Free will is an illusion (but a very compelling one!) This realization, too, can help you make better decisions. For example: I've found it helpful in reducing my consumption of sugar. I didn't decide to love the taste of sugar. That's something that just happened to me, like depression. So it's easier for me to resist the urge to snack if I think of the cravings as an attempt by an "external" agent to control my actions, even though that agent is physically located inside my own brain.

This idea even comes with a catchy slogan: sometimes your brain has a mind of its own :-)

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#127

Post by frubar »

lisper wrote: post #68
Zyst wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually go the completely opposite way, and I'm the happiest person I know. I own everything, everything that happens to me, everything that goes wrong around me, I take my share of responsibility in it. Analyze what I can do to improve it, and do it. When I think like what you mentioned I tend to lose control of my emotions, I feel angrier, I feel sadder. When I own what happens to me, I feel peace. I know almost…

> I own everything, everything that happens to me Really? Everything that happens to you? What if you were mugged? I think you can (and should) take responsibility for what you do (or don't do), but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

>What if you were mugged?

In general, any time you point to others and say "they did this to me" you remove your own power to change the situation. You may have to be creative, but personally I never want to give others that power.

> but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

I disagree with this. I consider the mind a muscle like any other. It can be trained and taught more productive ways of thinking [1].

[1] https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf (please ignore that the author of this speech later shot himself in the head)

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#128

Post by fullshark »

lisper wrote: post #30

Something I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up: You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a f…

I feel like this sort of abstraction is hyperpersonal, and if your parents tried to share this vague idea they would use alternative language or slight shading on the idea and it wouldn't stick.

I frequently find when I try to share an idea and it's this abstract, it makes perfect sense in my head but it's clear it doesn't land at all.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#129

Post by seppin »

csydas wrote: post #83
imron wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if you were mugged? Walking down a dark alley, alone, at night and not having a sense of situational awareness. I was nearly mugged because of that, and now have a much greater sense of situational awareness. I know, I know, blaming the victim is bad, but sometimes clearly assessing what led you to be in a certain type of situation can help you avoid those types of situations in the future.

Well not really in this case. This is still trying to align sense and structure to an otherwise random event. Suppose you got mugged with your partner on a lightly populated main Street in the evening by a stranger with a gun, as happened to my partner and I; what is the takeaway there? Muggings, like many other situations we imagine, tend not to happen as we've seen it in movies and tv but more so when we least expe…

cancer ?

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#130

Post by lisper »

frubar wrote: post #127
lisper wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own everything, everything that happens to me Really? Everything that happens to you? What if you were mugged? I think you can (and should) take responsibility for what you do (or don't do), but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that.

>What if you were mugged? In general, any time you point to others and say " they did this to me" you remove your own power to change the situation. You may have to be creative, but personally I never want to give others that power. > but I don't think you can (or should) take responsibility for what you feel because you don't have control over that. I disagree with this. I consider the mind a muscle like any other.…

> I never want to give others that power.

Of course you don't. But sometimes the laws of physics leave you no choice, in which case accepting that fact can save you a lot of heartache and frustration.

> I consider the mind a muscle like any other. It can be trained and taught more productive ways of thinking [1].

Of course it can. And I submit that one of those "more productive ways of thinking" is to understand the laws of physics and the constraints they impose on your agency, because if you don't do that you will be frustrated when reality doesn't live up to your expectations.

> please ignore that the author of this speech later shot himself in the head

And why should I ignore that? It seems like a pretty salient fact in the context of this conversation.

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