Read on Twitter
OK. Lets do a little thread about this.
So, to start with, I'm not actually super into non-coercion. Mostly because I think I'm already mostly OK at it - my life has for years been almost entirely free of negative self talk, and I tend to pursue my whims and interest freely. https://twitter.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1323821247847911425
So, to start with, I'm not actually super into non-coercion. Mostly because I think I'm already mostly OK at it - my life has for years been almost entirely free of negative self talk, and I tend to pursue my whims and interest freely. https://twitter.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1323821247847911425
I can't claim that I'm particularly good at being happy and productive while being non-coercive, but I mostly don't force myself into things, so it feels like the default rather than something to get really excited about.
I'd previously been framing this as "Hmm everyone else seems to have this bad habit that I don't. Go me?" and around the events of https://twitter.com/GeniesLoki/status/1314510734727024641 decided that huh maybe that was inaccurate and I was missing something useful.
Rule of thumb: If you find yourself studiously avoiding a state, it's probably because you experience that state as unsafe.
Negative self-talk feels unsafe because negative talk (mockery, judgement, etc) feels unsafe and because when you are doing it to yourself you can't get away from it.
But... do you need to be able to get away from it? This is a thing you're choosing to do to yourself. You can just stop.
Negative self-talk is basically unsafe if and only if you cannot be relied upon to stop when it feels too bad.
Negative self-talk is basically unsafe if and only if you cannot be relied upon to stop when it feels too bad.
Unsure of exact generalisable process, but I think this requires at least three things. You have to:
1. Get good at being cruel to people you love.
2. Arrange your life so you mostly don't *need* this.
3. Get comfortable with a certain level of negative emotion.
1. Get good at being cruel to people you love.
2. Arrange your life so you mostly don't *need* this.
3. Get comfortable with a certain level of negative emotion.
Without (1) and (2) you are not going to be safe to engage in negative self-talk because you can't be relied on to do it well enough for it to be a net positive.
Without (3) the level of negative self-talk you can handle is zero so it doesn't matter how good you are at others.
Without (3) the level of negative self-talk you can handle is zero so it doesn't matter how good you are at others.
In order:
"Being cruel to people you love" sounds bad, right? It's not, it's good.
Examples:
* Teasing
* Telling someone harsh truths
* Not letting someone take the easy route
* Domming someone
Cruelty lets you knock someone out of a comfortable and easy equilibrium solution.
"Being cruel to people you love" sounds bad, right? It's not, it's good.
Examples:
* Teasing
* Telling someone harsh truths
* Not letting someone take the easy route
* Domming someone
Cruelty lets you knock someone out of a comfortable and easy equilibrium solution.
People in non-coercion Twitter like to talk about how "laziness isn't real", but laziness is totally real it's just that most things we label laziness (e.g. procrastination) are better looked at as something else. Laziness is the tendency to settle into comfortable local optima.
Being cruel to someone you love (with their consent) is how you help them overcome laziness. It's a shove out of a local optimum for their own good, because you love them and they trust you to have their best interests fundamentally at heart.
It's also a lot of fun. I *love* causing people cognitive dissonance. The look of irritation as I can see their thoughts reshaping. Mmm, yes please, that's the sort of personal growth I'm 100% here for.
But, and this is important, you can't do this all the time, or to an unbounded degree. Sometimes you'll go too far, and you need to be sensitive to that, and they need to be able to trust you that when that happens you will stop and help them recover.
The goal is to make someone uncomfortable, not to hurt them, and they need to be able to trust you to understand and respect the difference.
You also need to be able to trust yourself in this way if you're to have productive negative self-talk.
You also need to be able to trust yourself in this way if you're to have productive negative self-talk.
2. See non-coercion Twitter for details but TLDR if you're constantly relying on negative self-talk for productivity that's bad and you're going to burn out. This should be a thing you use for one-off tasks and the occasional nudge to get you out of bad equilibria.
3. This is a general principle: If a particular emotion is always terrible and bad, that's not a problem with that emotion it's a sign that you are emotionally dysregulated over it. All emotions have a useful function, and if you cannot handle a particular emotion you lose that.
I don't currently have *great* advice on that front, but basically I think what you need to do is very cautiously approach the emotion, possibly in the presence of a trusted friend you can talk things out for, and figure out why it's so bad.
CBT and the like get a lot of hate around here, but my impression is that CBT is actually quite useful for this process (I haven't tried it myself because I don't really have problems with the sort of thought processes that CBT is designed to solve).
The reason I think CBT is helpful is that it helps create a certain degree of safety: You know you *can* break these thought loops as they come up, which allows you to safely approach them and gradually defuse them.
This process of defusing is of course going to be at least a bit uncomfortable, because it requires you constantly going just outside your comfort zone.
How do you get yourself to do that?
Well... take everything I said above and apply it to itself. Mostly use noncoercion (this is exciting! I am excited to see what is in there!) and occasionally give yourself a kick up the arse (stop being lazy and eat your shadow!)
Well... take everything I said above and apply it to itself. Mostly use noncoercion (this is exciting! I am excited to see what is in there!) and occasionally give yourself a kick up the arse (stop being lazy and eat your shadow!)
As Monk puts it https://twitter.com/mechanicalmonk1/status/1318661944363147274
In this thread I've tried to articulate what the correct amount might look like: Not so much an internal task master, but a little internal trickster god needling you out of your comfort zone, or a kind parent gently telling you that yes it's unfair but we gotta.
A certain level of gentle cruelty is useful and very fun, and there are all sorts of ways to get that with others. It's a shame to deny yourself that too.
