It is very much validation seeking. The point I'm trying to make is that the validation I get in response needs, itself, to be valid or it won't do anything for me, because I am very, very good at seeing reasons why comforting words might be said in order to comfort me even if they are false. The truth, however, is entangled with reality. There should be evidence to support it. I would rather be given reassurance that includes references to the evidence. A lot of the time, I'm freaking out partly because I have temporarily forgotten about th...
There is a degree to which this is absolutely the case. You read me as an anxious person, to irritating degrees, and it's quite true. This is a monkey that's been on my back since I was a toddler and I've been wrestling with it for many years. Recently, I seem to be winning much more often, I am grateful to report.
There's a weird fine line in the middle of the whole idea of caring about what other people think, and it kind of bothers me that to the best of my knowledge we don't have two seperate words for the different sides.
On the...
Yes. Those are very good examples of the sort of thing that would, in most cases, bring some comfort to my brain and an awkward, self-conscious smile to my face, because I had been being 'silly'. They give me a look into someone else's perspective that sounds believable and real to me in a way that "no, everything's fine" doesn't.
Oh, absolutely. That's why I work so hard to try to reward those people I can trust to tell me the truth. To mitigate all the messages of high-stress that I can't help but put out when I encounter something unexpected and distressing as well as I know how; asking for a moment to decompress, using distractions to calm down until I can deal with it more directly, and all-importantly remembering to thank and affirm the behaviour even when it's stressing me out, and afterwards at other times when it isn't. I say things like "it's ...
It turns out, the question of what I will believe now came up much sooner than anticipated, and I have a long written follow-up to report. If it seems that this would stand better as its own post, tell me.
After school today, I stopped at home briefly to empty my backpack and then head out to the grocery store in order to pick up some drinks, and in order to take the time to walk and think. My friend had confessed to me that they were caught in an anxiety spiral, fearing that they might be a burden on me by tending to approach me when they were in need of h...
I would also like to thank Eneasz Brodski, without whose wonderful podcast project of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and other selected works, I don't think I would have come across "The Sword of Good".
Thank you for this.
I think I've had a Pat Modesto on my back pretty much my entire life, and it's very frustrating and also self-defeating. I do already know this, but you've given me another lens through which to see it, and a language in which other people who care about this kind of thing and want to make use of my potential even though it's largely unproven so far can tell me...
You're listening to Pat Modesto (in your head). Knock it off.
In fact, that's literally what brought me here. I came to read the article so I could understand what they were talking about. And now I do.
I would usually pay attention to the actual lesson unless it was review over what we'd already been assigned to read or otherwise not new information. At that point, and otherwise when question and answer or assignment writing was going on and I was finished the assignment, I would mostly tune out the teacher and spend my time drawing on the backs and margins of my worksheets. I never in any other period of my life did as much artwork as I did while bored or distracted in high school, and I think it's because for many reasons I don't bother with well enoug...
Also I'd like to comment that the "Do I look fat in this" question is an example I quite like. It's a fantastic example of the sort of question that has a stereotypical negative response so strong that many people will just assume, even the first time, that you don't ever say yes to that question.
And also, I had an ex boyfriend that I got to participate with me in an exercise to help me get over my own fat shame. I asked him outright to call me fat, and to do it with a smile so that I could practice associating "fat" with... (read more)