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@DRMacIver | |||||
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The biggest problem though is that this gets harder and harder to deal with over time because these lessons keep accumulating. You learn not just that a situation will be bad, but also that your mind will react badly to it, and everything just kinda snowballs.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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Tentative hypothesis about how a lot of trauma and trauma-like things work: Accumulation of mental resources that we don't want to deal with.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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You pick up a small lesson that a situation is bad. The next time something similar happens, your brain goes "Hey, remember the thing?" and you feel anxious / attacked / etc.
This isn't a big deal and is the system working as intended, BUT...
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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Because we haven't learned to healthily deal with "negative" emotions we go "argh no bad wrong" and try to suppress the whole thing, shoving it down.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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This has problems:
1. You cannot modify the lesson when it's inactive, so shoving it down makes it go away but it'll just come back the next time.
2. More and more of these keep accumulating, so you end up playing a sort of mental whack-a-mole with your negative emotions.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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On top of that, because now when bad things happen you end up in a snowstorm of distinct negative responses, you can't really deal with any of them because they're so intertangled.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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In the system working as intended you can unlearn the lesson by working with it and going "OK, that didn't work" when it didn't. But when your brain is just full of negative static it's not even clear what the lesson you're trying to address is.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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In order to start to undo this you have to resist the initial urge to suppress. Sometimes you will feel bad, and sometimes that will be the appropriate response to the situation. If it's not the appropriate response, you can use the situation to start to unlearn the bad feeling.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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A lot of therapeutic techniques (but most centrally coherence therapy) are essentially there to help you isolate out a single lesson that you've learned, so that you can activate it on its own without the storm of negative emotions, and start to address it.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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I don't know if this model is true, but it seems potentially useful.
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David R. MacIver
@DRMacIver
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2. velj |
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If nothing else, it supports my biases that the cult of positive thinking can get in the sea.
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