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CronoDAS comments on Open thread, Apr. 01 - Apr. 05, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have a small problem. My girlfriend (that I've been with for almost a year, and hope to be with for more years to come) has something of a New Age/unscientific worldview, which I find slightly disturbing, but I don't know how to attempt to "convert" her to something, well, less wrong, without upsetting her or making her feel stupid or something like that, or even how to react to her talking about her more "unusual" experiences.
A trivial example: She once mentioned that a certain kind of stone (it may have been hematite) had "healing powers". I expressed vague skepticism but didn't press the issue any further.
More seriously, my girlfriend has told me stories about seeing and interacting with "spirits", although she's asked me not to repeat any of them, and I've had to reassure her that no, I don't think she's crazy. For example, she said that whenever she goes to a particular railroad crossing, she always sees a woman riding a bicycle along the tracks that nobody else sees, and that one side of the woman's head looks horribly injured. There's another spirit, which she says reminds her of me, that usually hangs out on the roof outside her second-story window on nights when I'm not there, and sort of stands guard. He's asked to come in, but she says that spirits can't come in if you don't let them and she's always said no, except once when she was in a hotel and he spent the night on the side of the double bed she wasn't sleeping on.
I'm not sure how to react or deal with this. She feels kind of fragile emotionally to me, so I have to tread lightly; her father died when she was seven and her mother died when she was thirteen, and she says she's always afraid people are going to leave her. She also has something of an inferiority complex and is hypersensitive to perceived slights. She worries that, because didn't do well in school, people (including me) will treat her like she's stupid. She's also fat and she thinks it makes her ugly. I, of course, think she's beautiful and sexy, but she doesn't quite believe me when I tell her that.
Any advice? ("Break up with her" will be ignored.)
Changing someone's world view that's backed up by experiences isn't easy, so it's likely not the best target. Even if you could destroying the fantasy world in which an emotionally fragile person withdraws is no good idea.
I would rather focus on making her feel safe and helping her to be emotionally stable.
But what do you do when she tells you about "unusual" experiences? I would recommend to listen and ask her questions like: "How does it make you feel that the spirit stands guard?", "How does it make you feel to tell me this story?" and "Is there something new in this experience that you didn't experience in the past?"
That can help her order her thoughts. Not focusing on the content but how she feels about the content is likely to help you to listen in a nonjudgemental way because you can be genuinely care about her emotional experience.
If she doesn't do any sports I would encourage her to do some physical activity to get more in touch with her body.
Then repeating them in this way in a public forum is quite a breach of trust.
Mostly I just listen and reassure her that I don't think she's crazy.
So, the Litany of Gendlin and Litany of Tarski seem relevant here. If she were actually 'crazy,' in that she experiences vivid hallucinations for physiological reasons, is this how you would want to respond?
To elaborate, is her true question whether or not you trust her senses, or whether she is lovable? If she thinks the two of those are related, is that a belief you can change?
I'm not sure how convincingly you can do that.
The best response is likely to lead the conversation to how she feels about those things. If you want more of a script, look up focusing.
Let it be.
This is probably what I'll end up doing...
When I was in college in small-town New England in the late '90s, one year a group of freshmen became convinced that the woods near campus were haunted by a malicious evil spirit — a wraith. This upset them greatly; they reported feeling the wraith as an oppressive and disturbing presence. Practical advice such as "there's no such thing as wraiths; you are all just working each other up into a tizzy over nothing" was ineffective to relieve their upset.
Eventually, a friend of the group got a friend of his, who was an initiated practitioner of ritual magick, to send them a spell to banish the wraith. The spell was cast, and the people who had felt the wraith's presence reported that it was no longer bothering them.
Now, one self-consistent description of these events is that wraiths literally exist, and banishing-spells literally work. Another is that when people become caught up in playing out an upsetting story, bringing that story to a close within its own rules can work to end their upset.
Other possibly relevant tales:
Why?
Does she know that you (presumably) don't believe in supernatural things? Does she know why? How do you explain (to yourself) her stories about seeing spirits. Those seem to be a lot more serious than simple beliefs in absurd things like "healing powers" (or astrology, etc). Do you really believe she's not crazy? Is she making it up? (If so, why?) Using drugs? Believes they're there but doesn't actually see them, just "senses" them or something?
Yes.
She might have a vague idea, but I've never gone over it in detail.
Mostly, they sound like hypnagogic/hypnapompic hallucinations, also called "waking dreams" - the same kind of thing that inspires "I was abducted by aliens" experiences. For example, my aunt tells a story of seeing a red traffic light over her bed one morning when she woke up: she thought "The light is red, I should stay home" and went back to sleep rather than get up and try to be on time. My girlfriend also frequently complains of insomnia and often texts me in the middle of the night.
Well, she doesn't act crazy, and I'm not qualified to give a psychiatric diagnosis.
There's a massive difference between thinking that certain stones have "healing properties" and claiming to see spirits. The first is regular New Age junk beliefs, the second is substantially more disturbing and may indicate serious mental health issues, or some form of special-snowflake syndrome. Has seen anyone for counseling?
IANAD, but from what I understand, hallucinations are symptoms of mental illness, but aren't much of a problem on their own. The part of schizophrenia that I'd be worried about is that people start making nonsensical logical leaps in a manner that seems pretty indistinguishable from explanations for new age beliefs.
That seems valid, but it may help to note that the sort of leaps in logic made by schizophrenics are generally much more personalized and confused than typical New Age explanations, whereas the NA explanations at least fall into large forms where if you recognize the broad patterns. For example, "nuclear powered rats in the sewer" is clearly schizophrenic (that's an actual paraphrase of a statement from a schizophrenic) whereas "obsidian helps centering the chakras because its black character absorbs the negativity" is pretty clear New Age. Schizophrenics also much more frequently involve things like very strange wordplay and puns in their logic. I'd point to this paper, but the paper is in German. At one point, I had a summary of the paper in English, but that was a very long time ago and I don't know where it is now. This paper seems to give similar examples in English (with no comment about the correctness of their thesis on my part since I haven't had time to look at that aspect).
Note also that schizophrenia isn't the only mental illness with hallucinatory elements.
Not in a long time - she says that she had an informal diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but the psychiatrist she saw was "obsessed" with her weight and put her on Topamax to get her to lose weight but she stopped taking it because the side effects were awful and the doctor just insisted that she take it anyway. She hasn't seen a psychiatrist in years because she works as a part-time cashier and has really awful health insurance.
And she probably wouldn't tell this to a doctor anyway...
As for weight, try getting her on aikido as it is a very "spiritual" form of exercise (not bad for self defense either) and veganism, probably she is open to the idea (not eating stuff with souls etc.) and while it is not the best diet out there it tends to keep the calorie count low. Another idea is to explain how refined sugar is an industrial product and not natural. This does not actually matter, but it may matter for her, and it is a good idea. I.e. to get her sugar from natural or dried fruits only, it can make her feel more close-to-nature at eating and actually gives a better satiety / sugar ratio and an overall calorie reduction probably.
I find it curious that this post is being down voted. While the weight issue doesn't address the new age or spiritual stuff, it does impact self esteem (which may or may not be intermingled with some of the more far out things she's confessed to experiencing). Besides, being healthy is just a generally good thing.
I feel that tailoring your approach to be more new age-y as Hollander suggested would be more effective - as in the wraith example above, it's within the rules she seems to operate by. However, I'm not sure how you would broach the subject without causing more problems. You kind of need her to want this for herself before you can do anything.
In any case, good luck Crono.
It gives bad advice. Aikido isn't particularly spiritual, it's a grappling martial art. Even things like internal styles of Chinese martial arts which pay a great deal of attention to the flow of chi are not likely to be considered "spiritual" in the American South. And I doubt that she'll actually like aikido.
Advice to go vegan is suspect, too. Vegans actually have to keep track of their nutrition to avoid deficiencies, if you just blindly stop eating anything animal you are likely to have health problems soon enough.
That really depends what branch of aikido you study and how deeply into the fluffy bits your teacher is. Ueshiba sensei changed his methodology quite a bit over his life, and students of his that studied at different points came away with very different levels of emphasis on technique vs. Shinto-derived esoterica; generally speaking, chronologically later branches tend to be softer and to have more esoteric emphasis. I've seen aikido schools that spent half or more of their mat time on lecture and meditation.
But yeah, it's probably not great advice in context. Even the most physically demanding branches of aikido probably aren't going to do much as far as controlling weight is concerned, unless she's willing to spend large chunks of her free time on them, and those also tend to be the hardest and least "spiritual".
Hmm... I was going to say that I haven't seen an aikido school that focused that much on the fluffy bits, but then I realized that it's probably the result of my own selection. I tend to be suspicious of martial arts schools that pay great attention to "esoteric" things because I think that it ends up being mostly bullshit and their students can't actually do things. At least that's how it usually works for the American suburban-mall schools -- my approach would be different in Hong Kong or Singapore. In places like NYC/LA/SF, well, my impression is that it's possible to find senseis/sifus who know what they are talking about, but the default "fluffy bits" school still isn't the place to go to.
To be fair, I haven't seen many of them. They exist, but I don't think they tend to be very successful in the West; there's a market for martial arts steeped in mystical fluff, but the Omoto-kyo Shintoism that the more esoteric aikido branches are rooted in is deeply weird even by Japanese standards, and it doesn't fit particularly well with the watered-down holism-and-wellness narrative that Western students who're so inclined tend to expect.
The branch of aikido I'm most familiar with is Yoshinkan, which is one of the earlier, harder ones.
Interesting. I looked up Omoto-kyo and it seems I have underestimated its weirdness. Zamenhof as a kami is an... unusual idea :-/
But returning full circle, it doesn't seem wise for a girl who sees spirits to start a practice the mystical bits of which involve possession by spirits...
Solving eating issues isn't just about making a person think that eating sugar is bad. The girl likely already considers sugar to be bad.
But understanding that sugar is bad for you and having the will power to avoid eating sweets are two different things.
Seeing people who aren't there sounds like schizophrenia. It's possible a traumatic childhood experience still has a great effect on her psyche even to this day, but unlikely. The desire to study new age research or alternative therapy methods isn't necessarily irrational. It simply requires much greater care, and is much, much more likely to lead to errors than traditional science. Even if some therapy she really likes is completely useless, if she believes it works, the placebo effect can still be quite powerful. Whether or not she is schizophrenic would require an independent evaluation. If she's not prepared to accept this possibility, broaching the subject is going to be very difficult.
No, it sounds like watching too many paranormal "reality" shows on TV and OH DEAR LORD THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM.
It's worse than that. She has "nonfiction" BOOKS on that stuff in her bedroom.
Convincing her to see a psychologist would be good. I'm not sure how you'd manage that. You could try asking a psychologist, but you'd want to avoid more of that breach of trust. You could just try convincing her to go based on being afraid of people leaving her and having an inferiority complex.
You can try to engage her regarding rationality through examples she is not personally invested in. That is, avoid spirits and healing stones and discuss more "neutral" applications of rationality. Discuss cognitive biases, Bayesian probabilities, mind changing techniques etc. Let her rethink her specific "new age" beliefs at a much later stage when she has tools for dealing with it.
Also, I second the thoughts of other people that seeing spirits might be a sign of a serious problem. However, pushing her into seeing a psychiatrist sounds also very risky. Maybe consult with a specialist discreetly? Specifically, I would worry whether she has a condition that will deteriorate if not treated. Otherwise, it can be ignored for a while.
Try and discuss https://xkcd.com/808/ with her.
Stone of healing powers: I think what you need to do here is not necessarily suggesting empirical testing, but more along the lines of explaining the map-terrain problem: that a medicine merely changes the body, and whether we call that change healing or harming is a map thing, a thing in the human mind, an interpretation. Nothing has healing properties as such, not even official medical treatments, they just have body-changing properties which we interpret as beneficial i.e. healing. Healing is a mental thing, and it is reducible to causal chains of changing bodies out in the terrain plus the value judgements we associate with them here in the map. Thus ascribing generic healing properties to a stone is the category mistake of putting a mental, map property to a piece of terrain. You can explain it this way: a natural disaster does not harm people and is not evil, it merely changes things around and we interpret this change as harmful and bad. Same for healing.
Anyway, a more pragmatic idea. Get her on Zen. This is vaguely in the same cultural category as New Age and similar things, she will probably not dislike the idea, but it is an excellent rationality tool as it creates precisely this kind of distance in the mind, to see the map-terrain problem, to see the difference between reality and intepretations etc. Make her read Alan Watts. He was a hippie god. He was no the best Zen teacher around, but culturally compatible with New Age stuff and then she can go to a proper Zen meditation center.
Osho is another idea, he is a huge mystic and and easy for purely-rational people to dislike, but again he is that kind of mystic who is good at explaining map-terrain problems and this really helps in such cases.
That's a debate of semantics. If the store would empirically create health benefits than it doesn't matter much whether the label of "healing powers" is semantically correct.
I would be vary of bringing a person who sees spirits to spend more time meditating. I wouldn't do anything that encourages the girl to detach from reality.
Those benefits would have to be specific instead of a general healing potency. It had to work for migraine and not work for diarrhea.
Same way how "eating vegetables is healthy" is only a broad approximation. It does certain things, that are useful in certain circumstances, those circumstances being largely general unless one has specific medical conditions when not, such as undigestible fiber cleaning out the guts (not a good idea for Chron's), such as slow digestion meaning a slow insuline release (useful in general for most modern people, not so useful for eating directly before a hard workout), and so on.
Meditation doesn't detach from reality. Where did you get this idea from? It detaches one from one's interpretations of reality. Like you meditate and hear a sound. It teaches you to not instantly go and think "hey, that is a dog barking" and thus replacing the experience of a sound with a concept, with a mental category, but simply experiencing the sound directly without attaching any label to it.
A variety of experiences.
The effects of meditation a bit more complex. I don't want to go to much in the detail here because that would mean that I would have to use words like "energy" with I don't use on LW.
Meditation is a beautiful thing, but it has effects. When it comes to a person who already sees spirits I would treat very careful.
The problem is related to the definition of "supernatural" as referring to ontologically basic mental things. "Healing" is a very high level human concept, but involves a variety of different low-level things happening under a variety of circumstances. A stone that does "healing" would be like having a type of acid that only dissolves shirts--it has no way to know whether something is helpful or harmful any more than the acid has a way to know that something is a shirt.
And since it doesn't know that something is helpful or harmful, there will be situations in which it is harmful. It's not going to "empirically create health benefits" all the time--that's impossible. Frankly, any stone that was powerful enough to "heal" is something I wouldn't trust since pretty much any singificant "healing" effect could cause really bad harm under the wrong circumstances.
Not everyone who believes that a stone is healing power believes that they are ontologically basic.
If you have an ill person telling them to get a good nights sleep, helps them heal in a fairly diverse set of circumstances. The advice isn't helpful in every case.
The question whether or not you trust the stone is irrelevant to the question of what's a useful way to check to CronoDAS girlfriend.
In practice she might tell you: "Duh, of course I check with a trustworthy spirit whether the stone is right for the particular occasion."
A quick googling for hematite suggests that it's supposed to grounding and balancing energy. Given that the girl is ungrounded to the extend that she sees spirits, from her perspective getting a stone to ground herself makes a lot of sense.
But she is actually treating healing as an ontologically basic concept, even if she doesn't understand that she is doing so. That's enough.
She thinks it's possible for a stone to heal and do nothing else. It's not possible, unless the stone contains an intelligence that can determine whether a physical change made by the stone is "healing". It's every bit as absurd as having an acid that only dissolves shirts.
Does she believe that the stone causes harm if used in a way that doesn't match the judgment of the spirit?
She likely doesn't. It's something you project into her without good reason.