Back in my old "cognitiveengineer" blogspot blog, I think I talked about a case in which I was able to help a kid with his pain-induced-suffering in about thirty seconds of conversational hypnosis. Like, "How cool is that? You can't get faster than that!".
In Beneath Psychology, I talked about how this turned out to be an order of magnitude slower than it could have been, and how approaching the problem with "I have no idea what to do here" resulted in a solution after only a single word. Okay, that is the one I'm not gonna be able to beat.
This case I'm exploring in this case was even faster. My friend had been struggling with Raynaud's syndrome ("cold feet" due to vasoconstriction), and so when I showed up she was gonna ask me for help. It took a total of zero words, and her feet were warm again before I had even realized she saw me. I learned my lesson though, and this time I realized that something is wrong if it took this long to fix. I've been doing something wrong.
Okay, so how fast should it have been, why, and what does this suggest I had been doing wrong?
A bit of back story first.
The whole point of Beneath Psychology is that actually genuinely knowing the truth is enough. If you're as justified as you think you are, you can just communicate the right answer and watch people — physiology and all — update on your rightness. For example, we can constrict and dilate our blood vessels. The existence of Raynaud's is proof, for one. The idea that "oh, but that's not conscious" is mostly just a bullshit red herring. Or, to be precise, it's an impostor fulfilling prophecy — the idea that one "can't" makes it hard to try, and when people don't try they tend not to succeed. Then, through a conflation of "I wasn't able to try" and "I wasn't able to succeed conditional on trying", the appearance of a self fulfilling prophecy is created. The belief in inability leads to what looks like inability, but the reality that was realized is not the belief itself — it's an impostor. The loop is closed through ignorance of a subtle but important distinction, and until people see the distinction they remain trapped in the appearance of a loop. In reality though, as the head hackers would say, you can stop imagining that any time you like.
For example, on our honeymoon, my wife's hands got all cold and vasoconstricted while hiking despite having plenty of core warmth. When she told me about it, I replied "So send more blood to them?" and she said "Okay :)" and her hands very quickly got very warm. This was her first time intentionally vasodilating, but she did have one previous experience intentionally vasoconstricting with a little bit more guidance, as described in the Beneath Psychology post on attention. I basically spent thirty seconds reminding my wife what it feels like to have her hands get really cold because it's cold out and her circulation starts shunting to preserve core temp, and told her to do that now.
This friend knew that story, and had her own experience with hearing me say "Apparently we can just decide to not swell injuries", and finding that to hold true for her. But with respect to the vasoconstriction in her feet, "I have tried to just not do this so many times."
Then one day when she's going through it bad, I walk into the room:
And you'd walked in by that point and I thought well fuck maybe he can help.....but that'll be embarrassing because you'll just tell me not to do it and then I won't and then I'll feel dumb.
So she knows what I'm going to tell her. She knows that when I tell her that thing, she's going to agree, and she's going to be vindicated in that agreement. So might as well skip ahead and just do it. Which is exactly what she did.
And within about thirty seconds my feet were fine again.
The part that's frustrating to me about it, is that if imaginary Jimmy saying it is enough, and real Jimmy doesn't even know that she's been struggling with Raynaud's or that she even noticed him walk into the room... why the heck does he have to walk into the room? That obviously shouldn't be required, and it was required, so odds are good that I screwed something up somewhere along the line.
So what the heck is going on?
I didn't for a minute buy "I just didn't think of it!" as explaining why she didn't notice what I'd say and get the results earlier, and the first obvious thing to check is whether it might be motivated. "Oh shucks... looks like I can't get Jimmy's help. Nope, he's totally unreacha— ah, fuck. Here's here. Okay, I'll stop being a bitch and open my blood vessels"
So I asked her if she could find a felt sense of not wanting to have to face whatever it'd take. She couldn't.
The felt sense is more "heh Jimmy being in the room is magic"
It doesn't feel like ah fuck. It felt like relief.....maybe I have a better option than sitting here feeling pain
And then when it worked it was more....humerous feeling. Again more like Jimmy's magic being in the room fixed it lol
Followed by also I'm a dumbass because magic isn't real.
Which is really fucking annoying to me. I work pretty damn hard at demystifying this stuff rather than running around like a dork with a cape and spiral. And she knows that, and that I'm gonna be annoyed by the answer, and yet... that's the sense of it still.
Trying to put myself in those shoes, it's like... truth doesn't automatically cause correct beliefs. There needs to be a mechanism through which a truth forms a matching belief. Even if the box contains a diamond, you won't believe that the box contains a diamond until you open it and see, or hear someone tell you, or something. And this particular belief is sticky enough that it needs the mechanism of me looking at her like this insane belief that she can just dilate her blood vessels the most obvious thing in the world, while also not being someone she can laugh off or want to run away from. There's going to be that social pressure to look at the truth, and no outlet until she does, and so her hand will be forced and a new belief formed. And then, as soon as she can see that she will be forced to update, she can do it preemptively because it's not like she has the perception of choice anymore.
But this has the obvious problem in that it frames updating on truth as a bad thing, which she must be forced through. This is a problem not just for ideological "Truth is good, duh" reasons, which have the caveat of "if you can handle the truth", but also that she could handle the truth, and seemed to know it because she was actively seeking it out. She was glad that I showed up to help, not dreading being forced to update.
So I guess my question is...
How is it that she can want to update on what she can predict all on her own she will recognize to be true, and yet still need to be forced?
Why does it require the threat of real conversation with me in order to correctly anticipate that her blood vessels can dilate, and form that intention? Why is there not a realization that the power is not of "me" but of truth itself, and that it doesn't need a physical avatar once she can anticipate what she will anticipate? Why has this not resulted in a "tulpa of truth" on her shoulder, at all times, looking at herself as if she's retarded for feeling like she can't just dilate her blood vessels at will?
Still in those shoes, the obvious answer is "Because she doesn't respect her own assertions that it's possible, because it still seems crazy to her". But if she can back up those assertions with her imaginary Jimmy voice... then why doesn't she back up those assertions with her imaginary Jimmy voice before I walk into the room? "Just send more blood to your feet, dummy!" "Hah, if only it were that easy.." "Do I need to get Jimmy?" "Okay okay, you win"
Except, now that I write that out... "You win" definitely isn't the right answer. That doesn't fit. The answer that does fit is "Yes, go get Jimmy", duh. Are you kidding? You can't just decide to not have Raynaud's, right? Right??? These things demand answers.
And this also implies that simply warming her feet up when I showed up was the wrong answer. Relieving, maybe. But wrong.
And when I wonder why she might have gotten to the wrong answer there... it's kinda obvious, actually.
but that'll be embarrassing because you'll just tell me not to do it and then I won't and then I'll feel dumb.
Okay, so that does it.
I wasn't giving sufficient room for her to notice "Hey man, I want a better fucking answer here" as something worth respecting given that she can definitely just do it. I had a habit of leaning on "You can do it, and you know this, so you don't actually have to spend the time" — not so much to save the time in any particular case just to highlight the really interesting and important fact that she really doesn't have to understand "why", just that.
That doesn't mean she has to skip the understanding of why, and I definitely didn't pressure her to. I'm perfectly happy to answer as many questions as she wants, and even let her hold as many dumb object level beliefs as she wants. Legitimately, without judgement, because I understand why this isn't actually a dumb meta strategy, necessarily (It's better to tolerate some perception of one's own irrationality than to make sure you don't perceive it).
At the same time... "The idea that you 'can't' is dumb, and you don't have to understand why it's dumb so long as you understand that it's dumb, which you do" doesn't sound that far from "Dude, shut up and do it okay?". She's plenty capable of saying "Hold on, lemme ask a dumb question" without being held back by "Oh no, that would sound dumb", but in her case this is much more a skill of overruling known-dumb concerns than it is of not having known-dumb concerns. And therefore if she doesn't recognize the reason she didn't go through the motions of "What would Jimmy say?" and find herself vasodilating before I show up — doesn't realize that she wants to feel like she understands things rather than is just accepting some bizarre and out of place fact about her own psychology/physiology interface — then she won't know to ask, won't feel like asking because that feels dumb and who wants to feel dumb, and won't ask.
And therefore will need me to show up, and allow her to subtly conflate my message into one that bowls over her unnoticed desires for understanding when I emphasize a different aspect of what can be done, and only then will her blood vessels dilate.
Okay, cool. I'm fairly happy with that explanation of why my presence was both sufficient and necessary.
Now...
What to do about it?
Be ever more careful to manage people's slight discomforts for them? I'm kinda reluctant to take this as an answer because there's way more mutual trust than needed to support her decision to look stupid in front of me if that's what she recognizes as helpful. It's still an option, and probably a good one to do in general and definitely was an object level mistake of mine that I'd do differently in the future — even with her, probably, with whatever comes up next.
But...
Maybe I could convey an understanding of these dynamics so that it becomes salient to her and she can find the felt sense herself next time? Or maybe just going back and giving proper validation to "Yes, this really does feel crazy, right? It really does contradict a lot of what we've learned to believe, and the implications are wide reaching."? "What implications do you notice, now?"
Maybe I'll give that last one a shot, and see what happens.
Oh! Shit, there's more to the story!
There's a reason she wants a better understanding, rather than just leaning on "But Jimmy says so, and he's always right about this stuff".
I mention that telling her that it's possible to just decide to not swelling injuries led to her actually making that decision and achieving the result. What I didn't mention is that this worked all the way up to the point where she mentioned it off hand to someone else, without thinking about how fucking insane that sounds, lol.
He responded as if she had said something else entirely, apparently unable to process what she had actually said, like the mental autocorrect where your brain just says "Nah, no way there's a 'the' at the end of the line and at the beginning of the next. We're gonna tell our consciousness it's just a normal sentence with one 'the'".
Her response, was to feel embarrassed that she had just said something so silly... and that's when her injury swelled up. Until I gave her a call and explained that she doesn't have to believe "it will work", just to not tell herself that it won't when she absolutely doesn't know that. Just like.. find out. Since then, she's been good on the swelling thing, but it still points out the bit where it's like... "I do not feel comfortable owning this, and if people ask 'why did your feet get warm all of a sudden', I don't wanna lie and I can't really stand by my answer to this, and I have no idea wtf to do about it... so I'm just gonna not go there".
Okay, so again, what does this imply we could do differently next time? "We" meaning you and me, reader. You're in this with me dammit.
One option is the one I already covered, where it's like "Here are some bricks, and here's where to put them. Now you have a stable foundation with which to resist the push of social pressure from others".
Another, which I find much more appropriate and scalable, is to help her become more clear about what her current justification is, and how sturdy it is. Like, okay sure, you can't actually explain it and have it "make sense" relative to the normal models you and your peers operate on. And yet... you're still convinced. Why are you convinced? Should you be? What does it feel like standing up to social pressure resting on those to back you up?
Which is actually pretty funny, since she's comfortable with that kind of thing in other situations. "Thanks for recommending me those witch pills, they seem to work" "It's not witchcraft, it's science!" "Nah, that science is crap. They're witch pills. But they seem to work, so thanks!"
Only in this case, it's... what? "I'm a witch"? "Because I can use my brain to control my body"? Like a witch?
I really feel like this approach is just gonna circle back to "Jimmy is magic, lol", which really isn't helping anything. Like, she could probably say that... but that just gets me off the hook when someone asks her why her feet got warm all of a sudden. Which wasn't really the problem and only gets me off the hook if I'm willing to respond "Oh no, I'm not magic she's just a crazy person" — which does have a humor about it which feels right because when you're not flinching it feels like playing... but still doesn't solve the problem of "I have to be there". Unless I do a joke ritual and cast a spell that formally imbues her with the magic too or something. I have done that kind of thing before, which was both funny and effective, so I guess I'll toss out that idea when I see her next too. "I can help you actually understand, or you can shrug and say 'I don't know anything, I just don't pretend to not know and that seems to be enough', or, if you really insist on believing I'm magic then I guess I can admit that I'm magic and cast a spell on you that gives you the power too".
Should be a fun conversation.
With your definition of fun Im not sure if I should be worried here haha.
I'm not magic, and if you don't believe me I'm going to use my magic on you :P
Okay, had the conversation. Without consulting my notes first, and while distracted by children, but we made progress.
The first interesting part was that she seemed to be missing the object/meta level distinction in that when I asked her what was gonna happen next time she basically told me that she could take a guess but it wouldn't mean anything. And the way she said it implied that she was talking about looking at what she might do from the third person, rather than looking from within the first person.
So I tried to explain a bit about what a "hypnotic suggestion" is. About how "Will you please pass the salt" is a hypnotic suggestion embedded in polite language, but it's a direct bid for her to have a certain experience. In this hypothetical, the experience of passing the salt. I contrasted this to "Here's the words you should use to describe your beliefs"/"You're overthinking"/etc. A hypnotic suggestion is uncomfortable to reject. It's meaningful and points at experience.
And then I explained that while she couldn't know for sure that her response in this moment would match what happens next time she has Raynaud's issue (if it happens again) because any prediction can be wrong, but she can at least know it won't be predictably wrong. Because it involves actually predicting what will happen. Simulate what will happen, and address the things you know will come up, including all the things that have come up to stop you in the past.
The reason I didn't do this earlier is that I didn't understand that it'd do anything useful.
After that, I attacked the problem more directly.
"Tell me to my face that you've tried. See what happens"
"I think that I have tried"... she says, not making eye contact. Saying it like she means it... not noticing the obvious problem with this statement..
"Oh? Yeah? What do I think about that statement? :P"
She laughed, and continued
"And I know you disagree. And you're right. And I understand that these don't work together, and yet I really don't think I haven't tried".
She felt stuck. Like she had no options. She knew her beliefs were incompatible and crazy, and she could see no option for reconciliation.
"...Do you need a hug?"
"Haha, no"
"Do you understand why I ask?"
"To poke and make fun of me?"
"Well, yeah, that too, because I know your answer is going to be 'Haha, no' and you aren't about to cry or anything... but no, you're telling me right now that you need a hug. Like there's an emotional block and that you're not going to take the next step until you get some comfort and feeling that it's okay, and you haven't given it to yourself".
I explained a bit more that while the emotion behind it might not be strong, and that she's perfectly capable of deciding otherwise if she can see what's going on, until she sees it she can't know to. So like, yeah man, you're hung up because you feel like you need a hug.
Okay, let's try this again.
"Tell me to my face that you've tried. See what happens"
"I haven't tried." — this is a shift. "I haven't tried. I really think I have though"
"And you haven't?"
"No. I haven't".
This was interesting because I could see that it was now real to her — despite still holding onto that "I feel like I've tried" (not sure her exact wording here). There was a touch of sadness visible on her face. Mourning the loss of "I've tried" as true. As thing with which she can reassure herself. Now it's just a thought. A false thought, at that. And she still has no better answers, she just knows she hasn't fucking tried. Somehow.
She noticed the sadness herself, and I pointed out that this is what was keeping her from just doing it without my help, and that not seeing this was what had kept her from deciding to actually ask for a better explanation.
Back to "What is going to happen next time?", and she flinched to the meta level again. So probably not all done. It was time to return home for dinner, but I noted that this was a meta flinch again, which she seemed to recognize once I pointed out. "This is the thread to pull".
So what's left unresolved? What did I learn?
She's still not super clear on the object/meta level distinction. My post on the subject (the map of the map is not the map) must be missing something important. Probably should have explained the hypnotic suggestion piece for her ontology better before.
She still told me that she think she tried without laughing at herself. I had to poke to get her to acknowledge that it was dumb and laugh at herself with me. Between this and the other bit, she didn't seem to notice that she was refraining from following the available paths out of emotional aversion. There was no "Lol, yeah I know I don't need you here to poke that out. Sorry, got distracted". It was just... "I think I've tried" feeling compelling and arresting her there full stop. No awareness of the fact that it was arresting her, let alone recognizing this as a problem to get curious about. Even though it was held in the qualification of "I think" so as to preempt pressure from me asking her to own that statement as true about reality.
I don't really get why. I get the stopping there. That makes sense.
I don't get the not noticing of "Oh. I'm stuck here. Why is that?"/"What threads would I be pulling here if I were not being dumb, and why am I not pulling them??"
Original thing was on Jan 12, and on May 12 I got the four month update.
Oh....
That's been better the few times it's started to happen this gone.
Getting serious about my allergies and making that more purposeful and regular seems to have been the answer to fixing the raynauds
And I'm down to maybe a Claritin once or twice a week tops....which is down from two a day.
Meaning like, practicing this skill on allergies made it easier to feel what needed to be done with Raynauds
The allergies is the result of another off hand "I think this kind of thing can be done with allergies too, to some degree at least". No further instruction, and she's gotten quite a bit of use out of that.
Okay, so how have my thoughts changed......
I think I've been underestimating the degree to which people are unable to notice the generating stance/insight that drive what I do.
Like, sure, "some combination of actually listening. Long pauses. It's disruptive to patterns". But I'm not trying to disrupt patterns by pausing long. Or even trying to listen, really.
It's more like... I listen because I'm genuinely interested, when I'm genuinely interested. I pause for a long time, because I need time to think. Because they need time to think, and I track that sometimes.
At the same time, I track the tension they feel during the long pauses. And the tension that I feel. Whether the impulses to fill the silence are seeking to fill the silence, as a flinch, or actually offering something that is anticipated to be helpful. I track the effects of this tension, but do not attempt to intervene on this level. I'm not trying to create tension. Just noticing when running from it would be a mistake. And not making mistakes that are predictable to me.
The actual thing is way upstream of that. I actually believe the thesis of Beneath Psychology. When I say "genuinely knowing the truth is enough. If you're as justified as you think you are, you can just communicate the right answer and watch people — physiology and all — update on your rightness", I don't mean it as a "maxim to try to live by", or a thing to declare to be true.
I mean it at face value. Truth is enough. When I'm not getting the results, I'm haunted by the knowing that it's my fault. That if I were to see what I'm missing, I wouldn't do this shit, and I would get results I'm more pleased with. I don't have that out, and I see myself not having this out.
And so there's this structure that actually implements the truth → shared belief thing, and it routes through willingness to listen and to pause and all that.
She really can just stop, I'm pretty sure. She sure knows enough to justify doubting the "I can't" that stops her from trying, and finding out.
(Pauses don't come through in pre-written text very well, but there's a long one here, as I process this.)
I guess my question now is, how the fuck do people think truth works?
I think there's a disconnect there.