All of FireItself's Comments + Replies

I'd be happy to. …though after reflecting on it and starting a few drafts of a comment here, I'm starting to wonder if I should instead spell it out in more detail in its own post. The gist of it is that every framework thinks every other framework is seriously missing the point in some way. If you can nail down X's critique of Y and Y's critique of X, and both critiques are made of Gears, you can use those critiques to emphasize a boundary between them and to intentionally switch between them. In practice, we usually want to switch between a kind of science-based frame and a new hypothetical one we want to test out. When both the science frame and the new to-be-sandboxed frame both have allergic reactions to the other, then they're never going to mix, and there's no risk of the "Aha, consciousness collapses quantum probability waves!" type error. You can then leverage each frame's critique of the other to switch between them, or to verify which one you're in. After that you can set up some TAPs to create mental warning bells whenever you enter one, or to remember to verify which one you're in if you want to double-check before doing a given kind of reasoning or making a given kind of decision. In practice I find this makes each mode more clear and internally consistent, in part by exposing and removing internal inconsistencies. E.g., in the "consciousness collapses quantum probability waves" thing, you can actually find the logical point where "consciousness first" and quantum mechanics slam into one another, at which point you need to separate them more fully. Then it becomes more obvious that the "consciousness first" paradigm doesn't allow us to start with the frame of there being an objective reality that there is subjective experience of. This lets you keep your sanity in quantum mechanics even when sometimes trying on the "consciousness first" paradigm, because the two basically can't coexist in the same effort to explain a given phenomenon. The only th

This, please.

I think it's a memetic adaptation type thing. I would claim that attempting to open up the group usage of NVC will also (in a large enough group) open up the usage of "language-that-appears-NVCish-even-if-against-the-stated-philosophy". I think that this type of language provides cover for power plays (re: the broken link to the fish selling scenario), and that using the language in a way that maintains boundaries requires the group to adapt and be skillful enough at detecting these violations. It is not enough if you do so as an individual if your group does not lend support; it may be enough if as an individual you are highly skilled at defending yourself in a way that does not lose face (and practicing NVC might raise that skill level), but it's harder than in the alternative scenario. I'm definitely not trying to object to NVC in general, but I'm worried about it as a large social group style. I think the failures of it as a large group style would mostly appear as relatively silent status transfers to the less virtuous. Also, these arguments are not super specific to NVC and Circling, so should probably be abstracted. I think any large scale group communication change has similar bad potential, and it's an object level question whether that actually happens. With NVC, I've seen some such dynamics in churches that remind me of it, hence why I raise the worry. I think I would feel queasy and like I was being attacked if someone started using NVC language at me in a public setting in front of others; I definitely feel like I've been "fish-sold" before. It's entirely possible that there exist large groups with a high enough skill level or different values so that this is not a problem at all, and my experience is just too limited.

Usually, therapist and client talk about goals early on in therapy. This depends a lot on what the therapist's expertise is and what the client sees as being the major problem. A client could come in with PTSD and say their major goal is to not have flashbacks anymore, or with social anxiety and have the goal of being able to approach new people without having a panic attack. It may not necessarily mean the end of therapy (could continue with new goals or see someone new or just stop, depending on what the client wants).

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