All of John_Spickes's Comments + Replies

Point well taken! However, this still seems like a potentially useful skill to have when you must interact with someone but wish to defend yourself emotionally.

Another managed to learn to detach himself emotionally from whatever is going on at the meetings, by treating his family as low-level NPCs . . .

Do you know where I might find information about implementing this technique? It sounds really useful. Did your friend follow some methodology for accomplishing this?

3Shmi
I don't know of any sources he used. This is one of those hard self-modifications that require highly developed emotional intelligence and introspection skills. I know that when I tried to do something like that (not getting annoyed at a person for constantly bringing up the same settled point over and over for years), I failed. Basically, the feeling of annoyance flares up before I have a chance to consciously deconstruct it. I managed to quell it quicker, but not prevent it from happening. I tried preparing myself for the situation in advance, but that only made it worse, as I would get annoyed and upset during the simulation, as well. Actually alieving that a person close to you is basically a moist robot is hard.
4Lumifer
Keep in mind that the definition of a sociopath is more or less "one who treats other people as low-level NPCs".

My wife has similar-sounding pain. She was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (which, as far as I can tell so far, appears to be in many cases a diagnosis of exclusion - we don't know what causes this, so we'll put it in the Fibromyalgia bucket) and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which makes her connective tissues weaker than normal.

We have tried quite a few things with varying degrees of success.

  • Trigger Point Therapy - A type of massage therapy that focuses on treating a muscular phenomenon named (poorly, in my opinion) "trigger points". In brief, these a
... (read more)

May I suggest "zooming in" on one or more of your goals?

Take, for example, being a good father. There's quite a lot of uncertainty in the broader community about exactly what that entails. One could spend a lot of time just figuring out what "be a good father" means. You may decide, as I have for myself, that being a good father means embarking on significant self-improvement efforts.

Hi LWers!

I'm a 37 year old male. I work from home as an engineer, primarily focusing on FPGA digital logic work and related C++, with a smattering of other things. I'm a father to two young children, and I live with my little family on a small farm in central Delaware. I've always been a cerebral sort of guy.

I can't remember exactly how I came to LW - I may have heard it mentioned in a YouTube video - but finding it felt somehow like coming home. The core sequences have become some of my favorite reading material. LW was my first exposure to many of t... (read more)