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Tripitaka comments on Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014 - Less Wrong
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Employing one's rational skills in extremely stressful or emotional situations, specifically extreme infatuation:
Today at the market, while waiting on the queue, I recognized an ex-lover of mine. One I had never gotten over. I dared not speak her name. I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would have absolutely no control over what I would said to her, if I didn't shut down entirely, standing there with my mouth open, my breath held, and a cacophony of conflicting thoughts and emotions on my mind.
I knew that, if, against all probability, she decided thereafter to renew contact with me, all of my priorities, all of my wants, all of my existence, would become subordinate to hers. I'd be looking forward to her texts like a drowning man looks forward to air. Her approval would bless me, her anger would damn me.
This is obviously wrong. No human being should lose judgement and freedom so absolutely to another. It's not right that all one's system of ethics, ambitions, values, priorities, wants, needs, principles and morals... it's not right that it shifts and solidifies around two supreme tenets: * Making the other (I hesitate to call them "beloved") happy. * Being with that other, as closely as possible.
What does the research say? What is the common wisdom in this community? How does one deal with this kind of extreme emotion?
The question "is heartbreak the way humans experience it right now a good thing" is one of the more complex questions about the human condition,yes. My mental modell of all that is kinda like the following:
On an neurochemical level, the way "love" stimulates the reward-centers has been likened to "cocaine".Its an extremely strong conditioning, addiction even. So of course your brain wants to satisfy that condition by all means possible. If we have a look at popular culture, its kinda expected to have extreme reactions to heartbreak: people fall into depression, start rationalizing all kinds of really crazy behaviour (stalking, death threats, lifechanging roadtrips) etc etc.
To avoid all that you have to thoroughly impress on your emotional side that its over: thats why some people do the whole "burn everything that connects me with her", others just overwrite that old emotion with new (irrational)emotions like anger, hold a symbolic funeral, repeat it to youself everyday in a mirror etc.
Unfortunately I am not aware of studies about optimal treatment of heartbreak, but common wisdom is: NO contact at all in the beginning, allow yourself to grieve, find solace with friends/familiy, and somehow redefine your sense of selfesteem- take up painting/coding/comething you have always wanted to do. If one wanted to go the rational route: research neurochemistry, find out wether its really like cocaine-addiction, do whatever helps with cocaine-withdrawal. (or the other most closely related drug-withdrawal).
Why do you label that process of researching neurochemistry rational?
Well OPs stated goal is to end the strange behaviour they have around their ex, which takes away their agency. While a common problem within humans, it appears to be solved mostly with time- eg it is unsolved. We have some (bad) data available that this is actually very similar to some kinds of addiction. And while certainly addiction is nowhere near 100% curable, (or we would have heard of that by now) my prior for "having found some better than placebo treatments for one of the major drug addiction (cocaine)" is 70-80 percent. So I do give "investigate this line of thinking, speak with experts" at least a high enough investeded-time/chance of success- ratio to be worth considering. That was my thought process for using rational, is the explanation satisfying?
I asked for researching neurochemistry not about researching cocaine treatment.
Bad data. I have not read the original research study whose findings were later likened to those of cocain, and am a bit suspicious how similar they actually are. "study the neurology" instead of "neurochemistry" would be more accurate, I guess.
I still see no valid argument for that claim, that you can get significant knowledge about the issue to judge whether or not trying one of the addition treatment exercises is likely to be helpful.
The main problem, as far as I'm concerned, isn't heartbreak itself, but the way I enter an altered state around her. To put it simply, I can't think straight. It's like being intoxicated, or in terrible pain. Getting over an ex is tough. But right now I'm more interested in getting over my feelings when around a loved one, rather than becoming paralyzed and my mind becoming blank.
Sorry I failed to make myself clear. To put it simply back: it feels as if you are in pain or intoxicated, because thats exactly what it is, http://www.pnas.org/content/108/15/6270.short for example. Your system 1 is in desperate need to get its fix OR stop the hurting, even if system 2 is fine. The obvious way to combat it and your accompanied loss of agency is to precommit in some way to stop being around them, but also to ignore their wishes in the future. The way this happens for a lot of people is rationalizing undesired qualities to their expartners, having strong peer pressure etc. Because system 1 is so strong on this front, depending on your own stability, it can actually be dangerous to fight it too much with system 2. For the whole system 1 against system 2, mindfulness meditation is useful.