Hm. I think I disagree on both counts; we maybe need to operationalize the words, but while I think hatred of others can be very valuable in some cases from a game theoretic perspective, and is very natural given that, lacking it is absolutely not something I've seen consistent in "unwell people," and I've never known it to be "useful" for people who can protect themselves or others without it.

To be clear, anger is extremely valuable for self protection and boundaries, and I never claimed to not get angry. So if that's what you meant, then yes, people who can't summon anger in defense of themselves or others are often unwell or in denial of how bad their circumstances are.

But in most cases I've seen, "hatred" of people, especially people who are fundamentally not malicious or sadistic, but just fairly flawed, seems to me a much stronger sign of unwellness than wellness, particularly if the person is not subject to ongoing pain or suffering.

As for finding the childhood "not terrible," I'm reminded of the xkcd on self reporting pain ratings :P

I grew up in a relatively safe part of the Miami suburbs, but it was still Miami, and I was guest to a lot of shitty households (even before I started working as a therapist) that made me thankful for the things I did have; three meals a day most days, a mom who worked multiple jobs to afford private school for at least a few years, gifts on holidays and birthdays, a secure home that I never worried about losing (other than from the occasional hurricane) and which I knew would always be there for me if I needed a place to stay, even when I much preferred going elsewhere.

You might say this is just the result of anchoring in a different direction, but to me it just feels like having had a wide perspective. I don't not know what good families are like. I knew it from the start, because of fiction. It was always obvious what was wrong, when something was wrong, and what was right when it was right.

My basic point is just that I and many people would describe similarly mixed upbringings as not terrible, and they wouldn't be in denial about it. My family messed up in a lot of ways, but they were still, most of the time, a functional system, where people gave each other support and showed affection and took care of each other when they were hurt or sick. It was also a place where people occasionally screamed at each other, and cried. Sometimes things were broken, sometimes people were hit. These are terrible things to have happen, but they were not the dominant experience compared to the good things.

I mentioned some of the most negative things because they were relevant to point out the ways my upbringing was not obviously responsible for some positive aspects of myself, but there was plenty of positive unrelated to the things I mentioned, and I gave that disclaimer because I think most people do not actually have a wide enough sample set to accurately judge the the range from "not terrible" to "terrible," especially given (understandable) protectiveness of children's wellbeing.

I've had many conversations with many people, young and old, why the things they experienced as children were abusive or "not okay." I've also had to intervene in enough truly, actually abusive households to know what my own experience was and wasn't. I don't excuse anything my family did, which is a big part of why I left, but they tried their best. I wish I'd grown up in a happier home, but I was still luckier than many others I grew up around, and I don't hold any ill will toward people who were clearly lacking in the knowledge, resources, emotional stability, etc, to do better than they did.

I appreciate the acknowledgement against psychoanalyzing people in public, and I agree that trying to cargoculting any of this is unlikely to go well, but I'd be curious to know what specific things you think can also fall under "being very unwell?" I just reread the excerpts Chris highlighted and the only thing I can think of is the "letting go of anger" thing, which is only a sign of unwellness, imo, if it leads to being exploited/abused/etc.

I didn't pick the title, but I definitely consider it inclusive rather than exclusive or normative :)

More specifically, I think there are peaks and valleys in psychological health, and I don't think the space I occupy is necessarily one of the highest peaks. But I would say that, regarding suffering or prolonged internal conflict, these measures feel pretty useful for determining two of the axes that point directionally at "health," unless there's a convincing argument that there are points in which more suffering or more internal conflict can be better, which I have yet to find convincing (and I suspect people who believe that would operationalize them differently than I would).

And yes, the reason I described the depressive episode the way I did was to indicate that I've only felt anything close to that due to life circumstances where the feelings were fairly legible and understandable! Six months of grief (or more) after someone dies is definitely not a sign of mental unhealth.

Ah, sorry that wasn't clear! It's not meant to specifically be an example of breaking things down into smaller steps, but rather a situation where, because it's so simple, the useful step instead is positive visualization and attention on what each following step would result in.

Much appreciated! I made some quick tweaks to a couple of them, thanks :)

Glad to hear! To expand on the : your ability to engage in "non-doing" is itself a thing that you can train to predict will go better if tried.

And thanks for sharing; any extra details you'd want to add about what makes it harder would be appreciated :)

Should be fixed now, thanks!

>I think you're preaching to the choir.

Definitely, but if anyone's going to disagree in a way that might change my mind or add points I haven't thought of, I figured it would be people here.

I'm running a small rationality dojo to try to approach this issue from the rat-for-rat-sake direction in a few weeks, trying to incorporate the things I learned from my Seasons of Growth, my Executive Function research, and stuff like Logan's Naturalism sequence (not to mention years of teaching at rat camps and workshops). I plan to do a writeup after, but would also love to chat sometime about this, either before or after.

FWIW I think my main takeaway here is that if you update at all on any point of untrustworthiness of the original sources, that update should propagate toward the rest of the points.

I think most brains are bad at this, naturally, and it's just a hard thing to do without effort, which is why things like Gish gallops and character assassinations work even when debunked.

My secondary takeaway is that people should not update as hard as they do on people threatening to "retaliate" against social harm done to them unless the claims are very obviously true or the "retaliation" is very obviously false. If we don't know if they're true or not, then what the accuser feels is "retribution" will be felt by the accused as "justice," and I think that both are natural feelings most people would have, but most people have not been publicly pilloried and so cannot connect as easily with the empathy for that position.