= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
sixes_and_sevens comments on Leveling up... - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (10)
Also about banking.
A few years ago I shared a bank account with a financially irresponsible partner. After we (messily) broke up, I balanced the account but never got around to closing it. For years it was in the back of my mind that she might have taken it overdrawn by some tiny but cascading amount, plunging me into credit blacklists or forcing me to have to deal with her again.
Late last year I decided to put my mind to rest, so one lunchtime, I girded my loins, wandered over to a nearby branch of the bank and asked about the state of the account, which had been blissfully inactive for three years. Since then I haven't really been afraid of checking reality for what I fear is true.
On a related note, many of my personal development stories that end in "I don't worry about X any more" usually involve experiencing some sort of especially horrible example of X to which all lesser X-instances pale in comparison. We've discussed artificially inducing this at the London meetups, (referred to as "terror therapy" or "extreme CoZE"), but the idea of subjecting oneself to traumatic experiences in domains of existing discomfort doesn't seem to be a popular one.
Huh. Horrible trauma has the opposite effect on me; it makes my aversions stronger. CoZE's gradual approach has worked better for me.
This may be a case of Typical Mind Fallacy. I've been thinking recently about how my (fairly pedestrian) traumatic experiences are instrumentally useful as motivation, in spite of being billed as "unhealthy" to dwell upon. I'm starting to get the impression that my reaction is somewhat atypical.
On the plus side, this could mean I have an amazing resource for motivation inaccessible to others. On the minus side, I may have to subject myself to horrible experiences in order to make it work.
The term to google here is post-traumatic growth.
Many traditional initiation rituals, which tend to be designed to teach you a lesson you won't forget, are quite traumatic. I'd like to believe the trauma serves a purpose beyond hazing and reinforcement of hierarchy, although I do not know it does.