SarahC comments on On Enjoying Disagreeable Company - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Alicorn 26 May 2010 01:47AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 27 May 2010 01:02:37AM *  6 points [-]

I'm the same way, in fact.

Sometimes I've deliberately amplified my dislike of people just so I can assert values of my own. I do that by noticing small irritations and internally vocalizing them -- "Man, I hate how Billy Bob takes so long to get moving. He's always double-checking every little thing. I prefer to be a little less anal-retentive." You start by noticing that you're irritably tapping your foot, and then you work it up into a whole worldview.

I do this intentionally because I've often found myself unhappy in some people's company, even when I think I like them, and the unhappiness becomes much more tolerable if I think of it as a reasonable response to irritating behavior, as opposed to a nameless flaw in myself. (Example: my parents often got under my skin. Complaining about them to friends, and believing myself justifiably irritated, made it a lot more bearable.) Irritation is actually a "high" emotion -- irritation, as well as elation, is a symptom of mania -- and in fact I've found that irritation is almost an opposite of unhappiness. It's also a cognitive emotion of a sort. Irritation is expressing your own opinions in contrast to other people's, which is something we high-Agreableness folks need to encourage in ourselves, to avoid being wimps and pushovers.

So, I'd expect, if you wanted to go the opposite direction, you'd do what I do by default -- don't vocalize the irritation. Don't regard yourself as being entitled to irritation; it's a mosquito bite, which will stop itching if you don't think about it. Billy Bob must be so slow and careful because he has a good reason for it.

Make yourself "small." That's the best metaphor I can find for it. (Actually a Pirkei Avot metaphor, as I recall.) If you're "big" then you perceive other people constantly bumping into you and intruding on your personal space, but if you're "small" then nothing anybody can do is a personal insult or irritation, any more than a bird can bump into a fly. (I'm actually trying to make myself "big," because smallness, aka humility, has its disadvantages.)