Are you a baby? A litmus test
haleynahman.substack.com
haleynahman.substack.com
Invariably when I choose to behave like an adult I feel empowered and ultimately at peace with myself and others in the end. If I choose avoidance, resentment builds, and further avoidance follows.
The idea that avoidance behaviors can be selfish or agreeable cuts through much self-deception. This can be helpful when I tell myself "I'm just being nice" because it adds the proviso: "yeah, but I'm not being an adult." Which I could see being a really helpful inner monologue in those situations.
This is also intimately connected to the concept of "taking responsibility", which begins with not avoiding something which "someone else" might deal with so you don't have to.
There has never been a time in my life where I was better off because I ignored my feelings. Literally never.
There are times that we should avoid acting on some of our feelings. But to do that well, and without further self-harm, requires that you know what they are, and what those feelings are influencing you to do.
It is absolutely not impossible to confront all of your feelings. Difficult, yes. Exhausting, yes. Impossible? Absolutely not. And I really think it’s doing yourself a disservice to ever believe that you have depths that you yourself are incapable of facing.
I think it's almost always useful to acknowledge emotions, but it doesn't mean you have to reactively give in to them. It's sometimes better to view them as a car on a railroad track that will soon be out of sight than to hop on that car and see where it takes you.
I've struggled with anxiety a lot throughout my life, especially in the lead up to something like a public speaking engagement. For a time, I always tried to reason through it. Why was I feeling anxious? Was it feelings of inadequacy? Perfectionism? Not wanting to disappoint my peers? Any attempt to interrogate those feelings and confront them usually had the opposite effect: I'd feel even more anxious.
On one particular occasion I was scheduled to present to a client at a new job, and the feelings of anxiety started bubbling again. But, this time, I’d had enough. None of my past strategies had ever worked, so I decided I wasn't going to do them. I thought, if my brain is going to flood my body with stress hormones, then it can go right ahead. If I was anxious, then I'd deliver the presentation anxious. I sat in the lobby and allowed the feelings to envelope me. To my surprise, the anxiety began to lift.
What I eventually realized is that my anxiety in those situations was caused by a fight or flight response. My body was trying to spur me to action, and by pausing to think about those anxious feelings — where they were coming from, how I might address them, etc. — I wasn’t doing anything to address the response itself. When I instead choose to ignore the feeling and do the action regardless, it sends a signal to my brain: I’ve chosen to fight. The stress response is no longer necessary, and the feeling goes away.
You still engaged with what you felt. You named what you were feeling, and decided to act on it. In the past, you acted in accord with it; in the instance you cite, you acted in defiance of it, and then on further after-the-fact examination identified what was going on inside of you and determined that acting in defiance of it served you better.
I believe the parent was not using 'ignore' in the sense of "don't act in defiance to how your emotions would incline you to behave", but in the sense of, literally, to pay no attention to it. If you were not paying attention to how you felt, you would still have avoided; your emotions ensured that was the 'easy' and 'natural' choice. It was only by recognizing the feeling, and how your past responses to it didn't serve you, that you were able to decide to act differently.
I think many psychologists would say you did the opposite of ignoring the feeling of anxiety.
> I thought, if my brain is going to flood my body with stress hormones, then it can go right ahead. If I was anxious, then I'd deliver the presentation anxious.
This is exactly what processing and acknowledging a feeling is like.
Avoiding it can take the form of distracting yourself—literally trying not to think about—but it can just as often take the form of arguing with it or "confronting". It's less about avoiding the existence of the feeling and more about avoiding experiencing the feeling. Not avoiding it means acknowledging it, letting it flow through you, and then letting it pass.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.And while our feelings may be vast and bottomless, they are usually finite in type. Almost any unpleasant feeling can be traced back to our fear for survival.
Ask yourself these two questions:
1. What do I hope to gain from this interaction?
2. Given #1, what course of action is most likely to achieve your desired result?
Confrontation is almost never the best answer for #2.
Helpful? True? right Time? right Place?
If any of those is a No, then confrontation will likely not be helpful.
"It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will"
There is a distinction between being 'nice' and kind. e.g., avoiding giving feedback because it's hard to do vs actually giving constructive feedback
This is as much a test of whether you are surrounded by adults.
In many situations, asserting yourself can lead to disaster socially. In these cases avoidance is in fact the adult thing.
When I moved back to rural California, people thought I'd become a jerk. Took me a while to shift back.
I went through a phase of tongue-in-cheek "quantum planning", wherin I would give my friends a percentage on any plan I was invited to. So if I was asked to dinner I might just say "60%". Needless to say this didn't go down very well with people.
There is a value to your word, and yes, it is more prevalent in closer-knit communities than in bigger cities, but I think that's because the cost of ditching a "friend" in a big city is much lower - after all there a plenty more potential friends to be had. But in my opinion someone who habitually breaks plans is giving a clear indication that they don't value their word and don't value the person they break plans with.
Looking back, if I had to diagnose it, I’d say it had to do with a compulsion to stay busy coupled with overcommitting to the point of social burnout. Kinda like how children get cranky when they don’t get their nap but don’t believe they’re tired until they fall over.
"Hey, would you like to come to a dinner party at my house on Saturday. There's a 50/50 chance that I'll turn you away at the door."
Don't make your indecisiveness other people's burden.
"I've got a pretty busy day that day and am not sure I can make it" - transparent
"I don't know if I'll be up to going to that that day" - transparent.
"Hey, maybe; if I find nothing better to do" - transparent.
"50/50 chance I'll be there" - all the charm of the last of those, without the transparency.This is hilarious. I do think it's generally a good idea to communicate hesitation or any degree of unwillingness, I'm just laughing at how you convey it with this approach.
now i just ignore the text for a day or so until I've made my decision and stick with it
e.g. I had someone cancel plans made weeks ahead to meet up with me and my family at the last minute because they got invited to go skiing (this is in an area near many ski resorts, it was not a once in a lifetime opportunity). I just lost interest in meeting up with that person again.
I similarly dislike dealing with people who "keep their options open" by refusing to commit to plans until the last minute (e.g. RSVP-ing to a birthday party invite the night before).
E.g. if the friend bailed on a coffee break instead of a weeks-in-advance-vacation-plan it would be much less of a big deal (maybe not even worth nuking the friendship over?). Either way, situations like that do call for evaluating how important that person is in your life and (down)ranking them accordingly. Everyone has some fair-weather friends.
I have moved the fair weather friends to group invites, and they either come or don't. They torpedo so many plans, it's not worth making the changes anymore.
Nah. They're assholes.
I don't think the fact that lots of people do it makes it OK in any way whatsoever. If the culture is to be rude and flakey, you don't have to conform to that, and you don't have to accept that from others. I'm friends with some people in LA and we all know that flaking on plans is a no-no regardless of what city we're in / from.
In this case the right people are those who don't think "plan" and "current best option" are synonyms.
In NYC people might show up late, but generally I find New Yorkers to be good at keeping plans and the city lends itself to spontaneity. In LA if the restaurant in the strip mall you tried to go to is full, it means driving to another strip mall and interrupting the flow of the night. In the city you can just walk down the block and change your plans on the fly. In LA I've had friends cancel plans to later find out they got an invite to some famous person's house. In New York, you'll likely end up getting invited along because who cares if you were in a movie.
1) No, it's just LA flakiness. It's all about being seen dontcha know.
My weird story about this. I was at a Little Barrie concert. Of course, there is a band before and a band after. We're there up front listening to the first band--Auditorium (Spencer Berger, his brother, and someone else) who were really good. There's the two of us at a bar table like 4 feet from the band, and something like 4 other people. 6 people total. We talk to the band (awesome dudes) afterward.
And, then, suddenly, it's like a hipster sea flows in. Skinny corduroy jeans everywhere. Snaps and flashes everywhere. I had words with the corduroy boys who thought they were going to be annoying as fuck in front of us. Uh, no, we understand that you're going to get a little riled up but you're NOT going to have your phone flash in my face the entire concert (I love the fact that Johnny Marr (separate concert) will call these douchebags out in the middle of a concert and chuck them out if they don't stop.). That can fuck right off--fortunately, I'm huge and make a very nice wall so they can get a nice picture of my back or they can move.
Little Barrie takes the stage about 5 minutes later--awesome super high energy show. And, then, suddenly, the hipster sea flows out.
And there's 6 people in the bar again for the band afterward. We felt so sorry for them. It's one thing to be the opening band and not have people but its another thing to be the closing band and watch everybody leave before you even hit the stage.
That's LA.
2) However, part of it is LA traffic. Your median appearance time is -20 minutes. Your variance is +15 to -Infinity.
If there is an accident between me and you that's going to make me 2 hours late, I'm not coming. I'll text you and tell you why, but I'm not coming unless you are a very close friend.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1018633,-118.3056169,3a,75y,...
Common experience for me, rural stores closing 15 to 30mins early (so from my pov as a customer, flaky, by not being where they said they'd be)
Traffic. It's because of traffic and sprawl.
LA is massive[1]. If you lived in Manhattan and made plans with people living in Queens or Brooklyn or East Rutherford, you would expect them to flake just as much as people living in LA. If I only make plans with people in Santa Monica and I live in Santa Monica, they will probably show up.
The reality is that in LA you do not have subways that go everywhere. You also do not walk. So you interact with people that mostly got to that location via freeway and probably live at least 30 minutes away. Plans sound nice and people like to be agreeable, so they will say "sure, I might make it." And usually you do not get a strong yes. It's always a maybe. Because when the event rolls around, you're stuck deciding whether you feel like getting into the car and driving a good hour in heavy traffic or not. It's not because people are dicks, like everyone is claiming. It's because the city wears on you. Distance is measured in time, not miles in LA.
Also, parking. If you live in WeHo, KTown, DTLA, or Santa Monica and you're asking people to find parking, be prepared for lots of canceled plans. No one likes circling the streets for 20 minutes to find parking.
I really don’t see why you would do that if you already know it’s an hour’s drive away, and you think that’s too much.
Saying yes in that situation sets you both up for disappointment.
Why does logistics make your attendance unreliable? I live in Cambridge (UK) and regularly have social things in London. The transport usually goes: cycle to station (20 minutes), train to London (1 hour), Underground to destination (10-40 minutes). I know that's the transport when I agree to do something - if I don't want to do it, don't accept the invitation. If I change my mind in the intervening period then that's me being shitty for not thinking it through in the first place or for not bothering to put in the effort.
If anything the longer the transport the less likely I would be to flake due to the larger mental commitment I've made.
Would be better to find like minded friends instead.
If somebody is getting hung up on something as nit-picky as that, they're not going to see the forest for the trees in an article like this.
Ironically, playing nit-picky semantics games like this is the kind of avoidant attitude that lead people astray from personal growth.
* someone reacting strongly to this slight difference is "acting like a baby", at least colloquially, but I'm not sure if it meets the author's definition of "active".
* the author using the term "acting like a baby" might get through to people who are sensitive to the difference
If somebody's anxiety prevents them from connecting to the article because the author refers to themselves as "a baby" instead of "like a baby", that person may benefit from talk therapy.
I guess it is polite discourse these days to distance a person's actions from some intangible person-ness, but it feels very mushy.
Are you acting obnoxious or are you obnoxious?
I think what you're saying is that you should be careful telling someone that they 'are a baby' or 'are dumb', because they might believe you.
I would also be careful of telling someone they are 'acting like a baby' or 'acting dumb', because most people won't appreciate the semantic difference.
In the context of this article, though, I'm not too bothered since the article is about how one can change their baby-like habits. But it is always a good reminder.
> “It was a long day, we were playing live, and he was really calm and patient with me. He helped me to make sure that I told the story the right way. Less was more for him. I’m dramatic, so I have the urge to go over the top.
> “I was taking liberties, and he didn’t like that. He had to make a long walk from the control room to come down and put me right a few times.” When Bublé sang the line “I’m waiting on a sign”, McCartney called a halt and arrived in the booth.
> “Can you explain to me what you’re waiting on?” he asked. “Yes. I’m waiting on a sign,” trilled Bublé enthusiastically. “So are you actually on the sign, waiting?” asked McCartney, “or are you waiting for a sign?”
> Recounting the tale, Bublé hangs his head like a defeated schoolboy. “I’m waiting for a sign, Sir Paul.” He laughs. Bublé’s revived love for his craft is endearing.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220404134753/https://www.teleg...
Get over it, walrus.
“Are you being a baby?” - Are you temporarily being a bit of a baby, like, at the moment? Could you maybe be a teeny bit braver to get through this current bit of anxiety you're feeling, and then we'll worry about the next bit tomorrow eh?
“Are you a baby?” - Is it possible you have always been a baby? Is it time to grow up, ie, make a real, permanent change to how you think? To start taking responsibility for managing your own emotional responses to the all the inevitable sources of potential anxiety that life will continue to throw at you forever? To break the cycle of weak/passive/burdensome social behaviour once and for all?
My advice to 20-somethings is to be gentle with themselves. The "boot-strapping, we-can-do-hard-things motivational speaker" talk isn't so much wrong as it is ascetic. As it turns out, you can be a responsible, virtuous and respectable adult without being so damn hard on yourself. In fact, I think I became an adult the moment I recognized that the child in me needed some care, and that I alone could provide it.
EDIT: on second thought, my wife provides a fair bit of that too, and I for her.
Advice falls on a spectrum, and whether to follow it or not rests much on your present circumstances versus the advice giver’s.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any...
It's in this sense that I think hardlining oneself is counter-productive. Worse, I think it's even more counterproductive for coddled youth. The way to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps is gently, or at least, compassionately.
People sometimes seem to imply that if we could just select the most appropriate types of language, and only express our true, heartfelt feelings, then our language will never cause pain.
But that's just not true. Sometimes your friend may also secretly want to cancel, but other times your friend will be hurt by knowing you want to cancel the plans you made together that they have, for whatever reason, been really looking forward to. And sometimes there doesn't exist a way to communicate your true feelings without potentially causing pain. Being mature and communicating truthfully cannot solve this problem. Often times the solution is to suck it up and stick to the plans -- but that has nothing to do with communication.
That's because it's not a problem.
The point of the article is that it's babyish to be so fragile that a friend cancelling plans causes you great pain, or so guilt-ridden that you can't bring yourself to cancel. In both cases the solution is not to avoid the feelings, but to become stronger.
My reading of the scenario is not that the person is too "guilt-ridden" to bring themselves to cancel - it's that they only mildly want to cancel, for frivolous reasons. They want to find out if the other person also mildly wants to cancel. The point is, in many relationships it is simply not possible to find this information out, because asking "how much do you want to keep our plans" in and of itself reveals that you want to cancel.
You can't measure how much the other person truly wants to cancel, because attempting to take the measurement will alter the outcome.
I get it. Again, the point is, so what? Take the measurement and alter the outcome. Or decide you're the one being the baby and keep the plans.
But in general, aren't there some cases where we want to moderate our communication based on how it will be received? Honesty is the right default, but not universally correct.
The classic example is that it might be preferable to tell someone that a dress they just bought looks good on them.
I think as children we tend to be too honest, and then overshoot as teens or young adults by worrying too much about social acceptance. And we have to find a middle ground.
There are 101 ways to addresses this. "How are you feeling about the plans" is simple enough if two people are being honest with each other.
Yes there is a slight risk that that action will put a damper on the other person's interest, but it's not a huge deal to recover from— either by amping yourself up to assure them that you really are excited for the thing they're excited about, or taking the initiative the next time to make a thing happen that you know you can be excited about and follow through on.
I've definitely also triggered the damper reaction accidentally in the past when just trying to make an innocent inquiry about a start time or something, so even if you rarely do it for real, it's good to understand these dynamics and how to navigate them.
If you are on the fence and not excited, that.. is reality and you can own it. You dont have to hide it, but it may have some consequences.
I think people would be happier if they spent less time hiding behind deceptions, and more time managing the consequences.
So it's not just a matter of me being deceptive, it's also the internal conflict between my lizard brain ("stay home and do nothing, so great") and my thoughtful brain ("you enjoyed this the last time, give it a chance, ya dummy"). The not-being-a-baby for me is having the executive function to go do a thing that I know I'm probably going to end up being glad I did, while not wanting to be a wet blanket for everyone else by letting them all know upfront that I'm not there yet.
EG:
Person 1: Do you still want to do X?
Person 2: Yes, why?
Person 1: I just wanted to check in. I usually get (anxious, lazy, scared) before this kinda thing. I know I'm going to end up being glad I did.
This is a normal conversation and builds healthy relationships, but for some reason people are often hesitant to say how they feel and want to put on a facade. It is a lot easier to be candid than internalizing it and lying.
Some of the decisions you make in life will run counter to other people’s expectations. The strength you get, and demonstrate to them as well, from communicating your intentions is in acknowledging you can’t “protect their feelings” and aren’t trying, and that you have the respect for them as well to manage and regulate their own feelings.
Good people will understand and forgive minor infractions. This isn’t license to freely commit any infraction. It’s just an acknowledgment of everyone’s fallibility.
You are not describing failure there. You are describing the "I made plans I feel like cancelling and don't care about other person".
Them reacting negatively is healthy self presentation instinct. Because if this is your strategy, you will cancel regularly and they are better off finding more reliable friends.
I'm saying:
* People are fallible. They will sometimes commit minor infractions, either accidentally or with sincere remorse.
* Good people will forgive minor infractions.
* This is not a license to commit infractions with abandon or remorselessness, or of any major size, and expect forgiveness.
Yes it's going to hurt to find out someone doesn't want to go through with plans. It's going to hurt even more to find out they really don't enjoy your company as much as you thought they did, or as much as you do theirs. But how is keeping your head buried in the sand going to be more beneficial in the long run?
This is the crux of the issue. There are many people who often feel like cancelling on plans, but it is absolutely not because they don't enjoy their friends' company. It might be because they have a mood disorder, or chronic fatigue, or social anxiety, etc etc. The whole reason someone might want an app that lets you cancel on plans, but only if the other person also wants to cancel, is because it's almost impossible to express this feeling to someone without that person drawing the conclusion, to some degree, that you enjoy their company less than they thought.
If you genuinely don't enjoy spending time with someone, that's a much easier problem to solve.
Not only is it not "almost impossible" -- it's easy. Especially if you have a reputation for being honest.
"Listen, I am feeling like shit right now, and won't have fun if we go out. It's got nothing to do with you. Can we reschedule?"
The solution isn't for the trustworthy to stop honestly describing their products. It's to gain a reputation for honesty.
Also, you'll the know the truth from the context of your overall relationship, or, if that is thin, when they do actually reschedule.
I know this is HN where we are probably all biased towards creating software solutions, but do you really think software is the right lever to this problem?
The root cause is that people don't feel psychologically safe enough to voice their wish to cancel. I don't know that an app really helps that, it just provides an escape hatch. I'd much rather a person say to me, "Look, it's nothing about you, but I struggle with social anxiety and it's getting the best of me right now and need to cancel." Not only would that give me greater compassion for what they're going through, it would also help tailor future outings to alleviate that. Just having a "cancel matching" app won't do anything to foster that kind of growth.
To me this feels like one of those distinctions between "can" and "should" in tech.
I'm not sure how you got that impression from that sentence, especially because the word "want" was emphasized.
Likewise an app that allows you easily bail on social engagements guilt-free through minimized interactions is probably not a good idea because those interactions are exactly how you build the trust that's the root cause of the guilt in the first place.
Maybe we're miscommunicating. I'm not implying the software solution exists, just that that desire for such an app may be misplaced.
The interactions of possibly cancelling things? I don't know about that. And expecially the interactions of cancelling things both people want to cancel? That doesn't seem notably trust-buildy to me.
> Maybe we're miscommunicating. I'm not implying the software solution exists, just that that desire for such an app may be misplaced.
And I'm saying the desire isn't specifically for an app, and shouldn't have given you that impression that the poster thought software was "the right lever" in the first place.
Yes. Precisely because it causes one to actively communicate why. That’s what builds trust. As other commenters have noted, just agreeing to cancel still leaves one wondering why. Is it because they have social anxiety and I invited them to a black tie dinner? Or is it because they think I’m pompous because I enjoy formal gatherings? Did I agree because I think they are socially inept or because I think the party would be lame? You’ll never know and that uncertainty breeds distrust. Trust and certainty are intertwined when it comes to human social interactions.
>the desire isn’t specifically for an app
I mean, the OP literally said there was a want for an app. Now maybe they really meant there is a “want for reduced friction in canceling social interactions” but I’m saying psychological trust is a better way of reducing that friction, not off-loading it to faceless technology. To my original point, there are some things tech is great for. I’m not sure managing social interactions that have evolved over eons and are one of a few species-defining traits is one of them.
Imagine a different scenario like communicating what projects you want to lead at work. One organization just matches your requests with your bosses through an intermediary. When you don’t get the projects you want, you’re left wondering…is it because the boss thinks you’re not competent? Is it because someone else has a unique skill set to lead instead? Is it nepotism? Bribery? The other org institutes an open dialogue where your boss explains the exact rationale behind each assignment. Which do you think is managing their relationships more effectively?
This is a babies excuse. If you're an adult, you should be actively dealing with this. However, it has become fashionable to wear a psychological condition on your sleeve. People who use this as an excuse have likely never been diagnosed and probably aren't even trying to deal with it. Either way, those are their battles, and if it means they are flaky, we just won't be friends. I've done the hard work to get myself out of a social anxiety disorder and can easily tell who actually has similar issues and those who are just lazy flakes.
It's OK to "hurt" someone - that is, if you are communicating the truth, your boundaries, your needs, you may hurt someone.
It's not OK to "harm" someone - that is, you do intentional/lasting damage to them through your actions. (My wording is not nearly as on point as the original author, but I hope you get the gist.)
Here's a snippet:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/654449-there-is-a-big-diffe...
This just sounds like insulting people for having feelings and hoping that since you called it "babyish", they will be insecure enough to not argue with you.
Life happens. Sometimes some people cancel. But if you're one of those people always canceling plans, be prepared to find your invites become less frequent, and people not planning things around what you say.
I've come to the point where if I don't know whether I want to do something I say "I'm not sure yet I'll let you know" and then always actually fess up and let them know one way or another, or say "yes" or "no" and follow through no matter how I feel. And I expect the same of people, people who get to know me who are used to peer pressure find themselves initially worried about saying no, but then I find, pleasantly refreshed when I just say "OK." People that flake a lot though get annoyed with me, because I hold them to what they say and give them a hard time if they don't follow through.
sucking it up quietly is the wrong answer.
sometimes there may be a situation where canceling causes problems for the other person, but you only find out by talking about it and if you end up going anyways after you tell them, they will appreciate it even more that your friendship is worth so much that you are willing to be uncomfortable for their sake.
The social pressure to "suck it up" can actually be an awesome motivator for healthy behaviors, e.g. committing to a rec sports team. So there is definitely variation here. You need to know not just how important the event is to your friend, but also yourself.
an alternative example would be after that draining work week cancelling an activity because i know i'll be tired the next morning and i really need more rest to be fit the next day.
Yes, as adults, we are bound to "cause some pain" as you put it in some mundane situations, such as cancelling a plan that someone else has been looking forward to.
But her point is that what matters is expressing and discussing with your friends in that scenario:
- Tell them you don't feel like going out after all, maybe you're drained by work and need some time to cool off
- They could answer that it's fine, they don't mind going out alone
- Or maybe they'll propose to just stay in at your place for a quick dinner, just to catch up for a bit and let you rest
- Or they could let you know that they really need to go out with you, as they are going through a rough patch
- At that point you have a better idea of what different options you both have, and you can make an informed decision either way, deciding between your needs and your friend's needs.
- etc...
Obviously if that friend is important to you and you've already cancelled 3 times then maybe suck it up a bit. It's all a matter of context.
The point is that you should start by not avoiding that interaction with your friend for silly reasons, and relying on tech/tricks is not going to help for long.
Accepting the inevitability and utility of pain is part of being an adult. Childhood should teach us how to handle pain and mitigate the pain we cause, but not to avoid it unnecessarily.
I don't think that's the _only_ solution the author is suggesting. She also goes on to mention "...self-knowledge: Will you be in the mood next week?". In other words, don't make plans if you're not confident you won't break them. Similar to the idea of "hell yes or no" as a response to social requests. If you don't have a strong sense for stuff you like/don't like doing and how you'll feel about social situations in the future that's going to be tough.
For the dinner party, it’s perfectly okay to be late if the lateness is communicated ahead of time to the host and the reason is a valid one. “Afraid to meet you on my own” is not a valid reason.
Canceling or ghosting is not a valid reason period.
Why is that not a valid reason?
If it's just anxiety, then it's valid to feel but is not a valid reason for doing much of anything.
If the fear is more legitimate, you shouldn't go at all.
If the fear is less legitimate, you should ignore it.
If a person has the same physiological reaction, they often can’t tell one from the other. You can’t “just ignore it” if it provides the same subjective experience without having the skill set to acknowledge the distinction. A person public speaking and a person standing on the ledge of a cliff may have the same physiological response, despite one being anxiety and the other being fear. The problem is our decisions may be rooted in our lower brain faculties which can't tell the difference. It doesn’t justify reacting to anxiety (which seems to be what you're hung up on), but helps explain why it happens and why it’s so hard to change.
I wasn't trying to justify the decision. I was just trying to add context. The poster kept using the word "reason". I.e., it isn't a rational choice to be late. I agree with that.
All I was trying to do is add nuance that reason is a higher-order faculty of the mind. Many of these decisions take root at lower levels, where rationality isn't present. Because your body and subconscious struggle to differentiate between the two, it may take a lot introspection and training to arrive at the right conclusion. None of that is in disagreement with the comment I was replying to, it just adds context as to why it's easier said than done and how it may take some specific skills to implement.
You still don't seem to understand my point. When you say things like "You can’t “just ignore it” if it provides the same subjective experience without having the skill set to acknowledge the distinction." that has nothing to do with my argument.
What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter which one it is. You don't need to reason about fear vs. anxiety at all. If you reach the right conclusion, you don't show up late. If you reach the wrong conclusion, you also don't show up late!
I never said it was easy to distinguish between the two. The key is that making an assumption works just fine too. If you assume it's one or the other, then you won't show up late.
Fear doesn't shut your brain off. If you can't tell whether a snake is venomous or not, you decide whether you're going to give it a wide berth based on a combination of emotion and/or logic. What you don't do is decide "it'll probably stop being venomous after a few minutes".
> The problem is our decisions may be rooted in our lower brain faculties which can't tell the difference. It doesn’t justify reacting to anxiety (which seems to be what you're hung up on), but helps explain why it happens and why it’s so hard to change.
That's not what I'm hung up on at all. What I'm hung up on is the idea that it would make you late. If the anxiety feels like real danger, and you're treating it as real danger, then don't show up at all. It's not a "dinner party" if you're scared for your safety.
Have you ever known someone who procrastinates on an important task even though they know it's important? They rationally know it's in their best interest and needs to get done. They know it's not fear, because there's no real threat of bodily harm. Yet they can't get the initiative to begin the task. Maybe they eventually get around to doing it because they can rationalize themselves into action, but why was there a delay at all?
I'm saying it's because the parts of our brain that help initiate decisions are affected by fight-or-flight stress. In the case above, the stress may be caused by the anxiety of an overwhelming task. Delayed action is a form of coping. It's not "fear", but there is still a delayed decision because anxiety initiates a similar response. Is it rational? Not at all. It still governed by the same mechanisms, but can be overridden even when it takes some time. Just like in a real fear scenario when people can't think straight enough to act. If you can understand that "being late" is, at times, a coping mechanism for that stress, then you can understand the relevance of my point.
Being bad at handling anxiety is a very different thing from not knowing if it's just anxiety.
If you know it's anxiety then you know it's a bad reason to show up late. It's forgivable but that doesn't change it.
To underscore the point ad nauseum, "they" do not know, other than "they" feel the pangs of anxiety that lead to to the inability to act. There is a disconnect between their rationality and their mechanisms to make a decision. It's possible "their" rational faculties understand while "their" lower systems do not. There's no mental gymnastics necessary to see how the two can coexist. As I said, it takes a whole lot of introspection for some people to override that. The mind is not a single all-seeing rational "decider", unfortunately, and that's why things like cognitive dissonance are difficult to overcome.
All I can conclude from this discourse is we have very different ideas about the way the mind works. Yours does not seem consistent with the cognitive psychology of the last 30 or so years, particularly since fMRI studies became popular.
There is a scenario where they know it's anxiety, and a scenario where they don't.
I have completely different arguments for each scenario. But you keep mixing up which of my arguments goes to which scenario, and then refuting it in a way that doesn't make sense.
I mean, look at this part specifically:
you: They know it's not fear
me: If they know it's just anxiety
you: To underscore the point ad nauseum, "they" do not know
What the hell, how am I supposed to reply to this?
And when I say "know" I mean at a rational level. I'm not demanding emotions be rational, and I'm not demanding they not be paralyzed by emotions. I'm saying that IF they make a choice, that choice should not be "show up late". And IF they don't make a choice, because emotions are overriding decision-making entirely, then that's understandable but it's not a good reason. But those are two different scenarios. If If If.
Ok, I'll try one last time to explain.
Neuroscientists generally divide the brain into 3 crude regions based on function and evolutionary development.
Region 1: the primitive "reptilian". This handles things like breathing and fight-or-flight response.
Region 2: the limbic system, "old mammalian", or "unconscious" system. This concerns things like social emotions and how you can intuit someone's intentions based on things like body language, tone of voice, etc.
Region 3: the neocortex or "new mammalian" system. This handles the rational processing of things like mathematics and logic.
Usually when people are talking about the "brain" they mean region 3, but they all work in concert with each other. My point of "they" is that there isn't a single monolith; there are times when the systems are incongruent.
So the rational brain may say "it's just a dinner party". To the rational brain there's no good reason to not go. But there's all kinds of reasons why Regions 1/2 may be screaming "don't go! It's dangerous!" It may not be rational, but those systems don't operate rationally. For example, one theory about the very common fear of public speaking is that it causes our limbic system to freak out because, from an evolutionary point of view, if you were speaking alone, in front of your tribe, it may be because you were at risk of being cast out. To a paleolithic human, that is a life-or-death risk. Unfortunately, that same functionality carries over to our current Region 2, and it doesn't know that it's just a powerpoint presentation without the same consequence.
So what does all that have to do with your point? When the different systems don't align, it causes wonky, irrational behavior, like indecisiveness. Like showing up late. You seem to be saying "Region 3, the rational brain, has made a conscious decision to be late. That's a bad choice." I agree, except it may not be the result of a conscious choice. It's possible their neocortex knows it's not fear while their limbic system does not. Research shows many of the choices we think are rational are actually rooted in our limbic system, which makes the reasonable choice more difficult for many people than you seem to assume.
We aren't in disagreement and it's interesting to me how you keep framing it as if we are. I agree being late isn't a good reason, as I've said previously. All I'm saying is that your advice to "just ignore it" requires a decent amount of introspection because of the way we're wired. Maybe you keep thinking we're in disagreement because it's on a forum and not face-to-face where your limbic system would be able to take in all the extra non-verbal/non-text information :-)
Because you keep saying things like: [You seem to be saying "Region 3, the rational brain, has made a conscious decision to be late. That's a bad choice." I agree, except it may not be the result of a conscious choice.] and [your advice to "just ignore it"]
Because no, I'm not saying either of those things.
It might not be strictly "disagreement" but you're not understanding my argument at all.
Let me try one last time too.
There are two scenarios:
A) If region 1/2 is making the decision then it's understandable but irrational to show up late. We seem to agree on this.
B) Region 3 is making the decision. This is where we're having difficulty communicating.
Early on you said "it often takes a lot of training and experience to truly know the difference when both both fear and anxiety feel the same physiologically."
That's region 3 decision-making, right? Region 3 is trying to interpret region 1/2 and decide if there is real danger. Then region 3 plots a course of action.
So my direct reply, saying you "should" either "not go at all" or "ignore it" was specifically talking about scenario B, where region 3 is making decisions. Because region 3 is the part that's trying to interpret a gut feeling.
But then you saw the words "ignore it" and thought I was criticizing scenario A. I wasn't.
If region 1/2 causes someone to be late, I'm not calling them a bad decision maker.
If region 3 causes someone to be late, then I am calling them a bad decision maker. And I think I'm justified in this.
Since then it's been a huge mess of talking past each other. I can only hope that by wording it this way we can finally reach understanding.
At no point am I telling the theoretical chooser that they're expected to just suck it up and ignore regions 1/2. I'm very sympathetic if they fall victim to regions 1/2. I do say it's a bad reason to be late, but I don't blame them.
But if region 3 is in charge, I expect a semi-rational decision. And while I totally agree that it can be hard to distinguish between fear and anxiety, that quandry is not an excuse for showing up late. Because that quandry only has two answers, and neither answer is "show up late". Even if you don't know which answer is correct, you should know the answer is not "show up late". Again, this paragraph is only if region 3 is in charge.
>where region 3 is making decisions
>If region 3 causes someone to be late
>if region 3 is in charge
As you state, "this paragraph is only if region 3 is in charge." Central to my point is that Region 3 is not in charge like we generally think. Your perspective that the rational brain is in charge is common, but it's an error in understanding the way we make decisions. There's interesting research on this, but unfortunately not a lot of it because (for ethical reasons) it was previously required to find someone for damage to a specific portion of their brain. (Now they have other techniques). There are instances of people who have damage to their limbic system and literally take hours to make a decision with something as simple as where to get lunch. That should be a fairly easy decision if the rational Region 3 was in charge, right? But it's not; most of our decisions get initiated in Region 2 and then our Region 3 rationalizes an explanation. So someone will be late because Region 1/2 is scared and Region 3 comes up with a reason to justify their behavior like "I was afraid to meet you on my own."
Is it a good reason? No, but I was just laying context as to why it happens. To your point, we can learn to override it but often that is what results in a delayed decision because it takes time to reduce the cognitive dissonance. Hence being late.
You're not navigating a map or writing a comment with regions 1 and 2 doing everything.
If it goes scared -> hide, then I don't blame region 3 for screwing up.
If it goes scared -> make plans -> pick a plan, then I will blame region 3 if it makes bad plans. Is it wrong for me to say region 3 is "in charge" here? Okay, maybe that's too simple of a way of looking at it. But region 3 has a lot of power and responsibility when it comes to planning. So if it's the logical planning step that fails, not because it was disrupted by fear but because it went "oh I can't tell if the fear is real, better get stuck on that and not explore the two whole possibilities", then that's a non-emotional screwup and I expect better.
The error in your mental model here is that you equate Region 3 with being the "plan maker". As I said previously, an awful lot of the time Region 2 is actually the decider and Region 3 just rationalizes it. You can see this with the priming research. The way it often goes is
Region 1/2 gets a response -> Region 2 makes a decision on a course of action -> Region 3 rationalizes that course of action.
A researcher may bring in a subject and ask them to describe their idea of a good vacation. Maybe around the room there are influences like pictures of a beach and oranges and the subject talks about planning a vacation to Florida. Meanwhile, with other subjects they use pictures of mountains and there is a higher likelihood the person describes a vacation in Colorado. It's not that their Region 3 was influenced by Region 2; it's literally that Region 2 made the decision without Region 3 even being cognizant of it. You can even see this on an fMRI where the limbic system makes decisions even before the person is consciously aware a decision was made. And then Region 3 comes up with all kinds of elaborate reasons why like "I've always wanted to go to Disney World" or "I grew up skiing and want to try it again."
There's other classic examples of people thinking they are being rational but really just being subject to Region 2's decisions. The 1960 presidential election is a famous example. Different groups were selected (years after the election so the weren't politically biased); one watched the televised debate and the other listened to the radio broadcast. Time and again, each came up with different winners of the debate. The TV group thought Kennedy won, while the radio group thought Nixon did. Why? Because each group's Region 2 got different information. The TV group saw a young, vibrant, tan Kennedy with great hair and saw a pale, sick, Nixon without any makeup. The radio group heard a Nixon with an authoritative deep gravely voice and a Kennedy with a harsh, nasally Boston accent. Yet when pressed, each group was great at rationalizing their choice that had nothing to do with any of that; both based it on the same debate words. If a rational Region 3 made the plans to vote, it would only be based on the content of their words. The fact that it's not, just like the fact that the man with the damaged limbic system couldn't make simple plans like what to have for lunch, points to the fact that many of our decisions are actually rooted in Region 2.
The common perception is that Region 3 gets influenced by the other parts of the brain but ultimately makes it's own decisions as if it's some ultimate judge who weighs all the evidence. We like to think we're rational and consciously in charge. That's understandable but not congruent with much of the research.
What you're essentially doing is blaming Region 3 for Region 2's irrationality.
Why do you keep removing the word if and telling me I'm assuming things?
Sometimes people rationalize things, and they're wrong about why they did something.
But there are logical planning things that only region 3 is capable of.
> The error in your mental model here is that you equate Region 3 with being the "plan maker". As I said previously, an awful lot of the time Region 2 is actually the decider and Region 3 just rationalizes it.
I don't understand this criticism, unless you're treating plan maker and plan decider as the same thing? I was already leaving it open for region 2 to be the decider.
If region 2 is completely on its own then it's not making much of a plan, is it?
Not only was acknowledging your "if" statement, I was quoting you directly in previous replies. The issue is that you're whole argument hinges on a conditional that, if anything, is the exception rather than the rule.
If you heard a politician propose a policy that said "We can abolish the [insert arbitrary govt oversight organization here] because it isn't needed if people are rational, ethical actors", what would your reaction be? While that statement may still be true, the underlying assumption is flawed: people cannot be counted on to be rational or ethical in many circumstances. Likewise, your underlying assumption that decisions are made with our rational brain is not the general rule. Despite what we'd like to think, Region 2 governs our decisions and plans. Again, if your assumption was true, there would be no problem with a person making lunch plans if they had a damaged limbic system. Research shows otherwise, so either the research is flawed or your underlying assumption is flawed.
>unless you're treating plan maker and plan decider as the same thing? I was already leaving it open for region 2 to be the decider
Yes, I meant them to be the same, sorry if my terminology caused confusion. My point is the the plan decision/making is not initiated by our rational mind as a general rule. It's not that Region 2 "decides" and then Region 3 weighs that decision to figure out how to execute it. It's that Region 2 "decides" and Region 3 makes up a story so that the decision is congruent with our mental models. My Region 2 decides it wants a doughnut and my Region 3 says "Yeah, you've worked out hard this morning so the doughnut isn't necessarily unhealthy." Region 3 has ensured my decision is congruent with my mental model that I'm a hard worker who deserves a reward. That's easier than confronting a mental model where I'm a fatty who lacks willpower. Region 3 is our logic center so it will jump through hoops to make sure our mental models and decisions are logically consistent.
Your "if" statement can be true, while also being largely inconsequential because the underlying conditional is not the general rule. This creates some irony in you underscoring that my point is irrelevant if your statement is about real world application.
Except I'm trying to cover rational and irrational cases in separate halves of the "if".
I know in many circumstances people aren't going to be rational. Those are covered by a separate argument entirely.
> Likewise, your underlying assumption that decisions are made with our rational brain is not the general rule. Despite what we'd like to think, Region 2 governs our decisions and plans. Again, if your assumption was true, there would be no problem with a person making lunch plans if they had a damaged limbic system.
How do you think I'm saying this!? I'm not saying this!
All I'm saying is that region 3 is sometimes involved, and sometimes necessary to comprehend the options. If region 2 always makes the actual decision, that's fine. It doesn't undermine my argument.
> My point is the the plan decision/making is not initiated by our rational mind as a general rule. It's not that Region 2 "decides" and then Region 3 weighs that decision to figure out how to execute it. It's that Region 2 "decides" and Region 3 makes up a story so that the decision is congruent with our mental models.
Sometimes. Sometimes!!!
> Your "if" statement can be true, while also being largely inconsequential because the underlying conditional is not the general rule. This creates some irony in you underscoring that my point is irrelevant if your statement is about real world application.
It's irrelevant because you're talking about the ratio of people in the different if-statements, but all the if-statements have the same conclusion about showing up late.
Your worldview is still to rigid to understand what I'm saying and maybe it's because I'm being too diplomatic. I'm not willing to say in absolute terms that Region 2 makes all decisions because science is never absolute; I'm trying to be generous in my wording and you're reading too much into it to fit your own aims. That's a perfect example of Region 3 rationalizing your mental model.
You're essentially saying "It's perfectly safe to stare at the sun." and when presented with different evidence, you retort "Aha! What about during an eclipse! See!? I told you I was right!" It's superficially true, sure, but such a minority circumstance that it's not only of little value, but it fails to understand the actual principles that guide the counterargument.
>All I'm saying is that region 3 is sometimes involved
Nobody is denying region 3 is involved, the key part is if it's making a the decision or just rationalizing it to make us feel good. Do you actually know what the "ratio of people" is to make your statement true, or is that just a useful mechanism for avoiding backpedaling on the claim? If we were talking about performing long division rather than a social function, we'd probably have a different discussion, but Region 2 is what governs our social interactions.
Look. Even the people at the forefront of cognitive psychology admit they can't overcome their Region 2 biases. These are Nobel laureates who've studied this stuff for decades and even they admit they are unable to make unbiased, rational decisions in real time. If they can't overcome it, the ratio of people who can is probably vanishingly small.
If you were to say from the onset that you acknowledge that people don't make such decisions with their rational mind, but if they were to, it would be a bad decision, that's perfectly sensible. You'd have acknowledged you understand both the mechanisms underpinning human cognition and the fact that you're hypothetical scenario is limited to a theoretical thought experiment. But that's not what you did, you made a claim and kept rules-lawyering around it when presented with counterclaims.
A thoughtful and curious person would say, "Huh. I guess I didn't realize that's the way the mind works." and then update their mental model accordingly. Those that aren't will dig their heels in to avoid the cognitive dissonance that occurs when their mental model is incorrect.
Sure it is. Maybe you're about to meet an ex who used to beat you.
From the host’s perspective, you are still attending until you cancel. Of course people do the social calculus all the time and can choose to bail without notice. It’s been done for centuries, but is considered poor form in most circumstances except emergencies. In almost all cases a “sorry, I am unable to make it tonight,” is usually sufficient.
Of course if the host never officially invited you in the first place and you were simply tagging along, there is no social obligation and you are free to do as you please.
I've found that it helps to ask if the thing that I'm avoiding is something that is reasonable for me to accomplish and something that will help me grow, such that perhaps if I encounter it again I can handle it better. If so, I should take action instead of avoiding it.
In the case of the mosh pit example, staying in the pit even if you didn't want to didn't really give you any growth opportunities, unless you were really eager to "learn" how to mosh.
Going to the party when you didn't want to, although possibly awkward, was such a growth opportunity. It afforded a chance to flex social skills, and the downside was likely overstated. In the future, should such a scenario arise, the author can now deal with it much more easily.
I think we have deep feeling of "I didn't do what I should've" (and a sense of personal failure) when we choose to avoid action and we recognize that we've denied ourselves a growth opportunity. Our analytical brain may not pick up on it to form the thought, but I think we still know it.
Owning a Doink-it [0] is the only proof you're not a baby.
Why we are even discussing this is beyond me.
You may not even be wrong, but people have a right to choose how they feel about something, how something affects them, and the only way to know is to talk to them about it.
Attributing to someone a feeling or thought they themselves did not actually have is among the worst things you can reasonably do to someone on a daily basis without interacting with them at all.
I worry people don't quite realize how harmful this behavior is, or how often people do it.
The solution, as always, is to communicate. Just speak, using words, to the person you're inventing thoughts and feelings for. Often you've successfully detected something (we are social creatures, after all), but rarely are you right on the specifics.
For the vast majority of people, though, communication is better.
Yes! I've done that too often, tiptoeing around things trying to game out all the possible ramifications. It's far better to simply try to:
* know your needs/desires
* communicate them
* ask about theirs
* handle the consequences
Even though it is straightforward, it may not be easy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Overv...
If it turns out they’re cool about it, what wonderful feedback for you about their reliability and understanding of you.
If it turns out they react badly, at least it’s feedback to ask yourself whether they’re worth that kind of trouble in the future.
If they’re passive aggressive about it - well, shame on them, and be very careful.
trying to predict how people feel without talking to them is baked into thousands of years of evolution, not just for humans, and a large amount of human communication is implied or non-verbal as well. It's hard to think it's that harmful given we've coevolved with it.
BTW, would you only take this approach with close friends/partners, or bosses/coworkers too?
Predicting how people feel is empathy, and that's great! But stopping there and assuming your predictions are correct without actually verifying them with the person first? That's harmful. You're not too busy anymore running from lions and hunting deer to stop and talk to a person before forming your ideas about them.
when bumping into a stranger, assume best intentions, apologize or say something else appropriate and move on. who cares what they actually think or feel.
the closer the person is, the more communication is warranted.
It isn't taking someone's choice. All someone has to do is speak up.
Additionally: I use they/them when I'm speaking about friends that are not mutual friends. Usually, gender doesn't enhance the story. Same when talking about my spouse in situations where I'm talking about myself being bisexual. People do not need to know what sort of genitals my spouse has, especially when it is because they want to see "how queer I am".
The way I try to work around this is to use "they" only when it would not sound grammatically unusual or confusing to do so, and otherwise rearrange the sentence to omit the pronoun.
As an example of the first, "That's their phone on the table" sounds natural because singular "their" is a lot more common than singular "they", and it's unambiguous because a phone is typically owned by an individual.
As an example of the second, "I met Bill yesterday and they went to the store with me" is odd because it sounds like "they" either doesn't agree with singular "Bill" or refers to some earlier plural antecedent, so I'd rephrase it "I met Bill yesterday and we went to the store together" or something like that.
Also, when it comes to talking about things that happen in the mind, wouldn't hyperbolic assertions like "When you do X, you're actually robbing X" actually rob people of their own agency if the listener trusts the speaker as a legitimate authority?
"He's always talked about working more with his hands, I probably shouldn't forward him this desk job that'd otherwise be perfect for his career progression."
"She'd never date a loser like me."
Either way, their capacity to act (agency) remains intact.
The very important phrasing, in my estimation, can lead people to neurotically question their feelings less they "rob" someone of the capacity to act. In reality, a more lax quip such as "assuming makes an ass out of u-&-me" gives people more breathing room for their lapses in judgement.
to deprive of something due, expected, or desired
So to say you're "robbing someone of their agency" is the same as saying you're "depriving them of an opportunity to decide for themselves"
Or suppose you're single and there's an attractive acquaintance who is thinking of asking you on a date, but they overhear you talking to a friend about a date you had, and so they assume you wouldn't be interested. You don't want to make that decision yourself?
most of our problems today are coming from the fact that people are disempowered and lack the agency to improve the situation.
failure to reach consensus could threaten your relationship.
if my boss keeps making decisions for me then i'll eventually quit my job, because i am not willing to work like that. and if my partner does it then it will lead to a breakup and if it is something else, a judge might force a consensus on us.
"You look unhappy. You must be expecting me to do something, and now [ I'm frustrated because I don't know what you want from me | I'm anxious about meeting the possible expectations I imagine you might have ]."
If someone looks unhappy, it might not be because of you. Even if they do have a need that you could meet, they might not expect you to meet it. Instead of guessing, you could simply gently ask.
There are unfortunately heck of a lot of people out there who (going by their actions) don't see denying people agency as a bad thing except when it is brought up as a standalone topic.
My buddies are still working and living in US but I've been living in europe for the past 6 years... and I gotta say, the US has become so weird to me, especially super "liberal" culture, if you can even call it that. People simply don't know how to talk to one another anymore. It's fucked.
The author's points do make some sense, but the broader context is horrifying.
Makes me wonder though about how we inevitably generalise people's personal stories into rules of thumb. I'm acutely aware how one person's journey for an antidote to their personality dysfunctions isn't always medicine for another person.
If Hayley has dominantly anxious-avoidant attachment style it'd explain her ambivalence. The antidote is engage executive regulation (to supress the anxiety and flight response), and downplay emotional resonance.
Common a formula as it is, could be a muddle for you or I if we don't have her underlying predispositions.
What does it say about me that I wrote this.
That you read a lot of self help books?
I have zero idea what “The antidote is engage executive regulation (to supress the anxiety and flight response), and downplay emotional resonance.” even means.
Applying rules of thumb takes a heck of a lot less mental effort than tossing everything into a mental bucket of "other people's experience" and then drawing on specific aspects as relevant to the situation.
But rules of thumb about how people generally are inevitably lose fidelity for individuals, making then often entirely wrong.
For example anxious people find certain things help their quality of life, but those things may be toxic to someone without an anxious disposition.
In the same way that we love someone who 'has the answer' - its cognitively relaxing - i suggest we are too easily led to sudpend judgement on issues which entirely deserve our full consideration
If you are going to anything: BE ON TIME. We have more reasons than ever to be on time or even early, live directions, maps, scheduling. Things happen and some times can be non-exact, that's totally fine. But if you're showing up 2h late to a show, or event on the regular there are issues you need to fix in your life. How did people without smart phones manage!?
If you cancel/try to reschedule a group event the same day, more than once, it is unlikely I will ever give you a concession on time or place in the future because you're a pain in the ass.
I've had these kinds of main character friends who will cancel on an event the morning before, then offer a reschedule that same day to a later or earlier time. Repeatedly.
This signals to me: "I am more important than the other people that are coming, so they should change their schedule for me." No thanks. I'll drop you a note when everything is happening but until you hit the mark I'm gonna disregard everything you say. It has driven my other friends crazy to their point they have asked me: "Hey what's up with your friend Emily?"
Other people have lives, just like yours!
Don't offer to come in the first place if you can't make it. There are times when you can't make it due to an emergency, and that's fine, car breaks down, relationship issues, work explosions, w/e.
You can be busy, or whatever I don't give a shit, it's your life sort it out. You can't do everything. You made too many plans: I don't care. You decided something else was more important at the last minute: This one is a guarantee I'm inviting you to less things. This seems harsh, but do this rodeo more than a few times and it will make YOU crazy. Also, "neurotic freak" is a weird way to write "jerk".
Probably there is a huge selection bias here as I have two friends that are now less good friends due to whatever this cancel algorithm is. I've lived it and fixed it! :D Save yourself a click, read Nonviolent Communication, and improve your life.
I think this is a legitimate social behavior where for various reasons you don't want to divest from a commitment (don't want to be an outlier, FOMO, don't want to hurt people, ...). Ideally you would fix that through communication, but we're also human after all, and have to deal with reality of social constructs and culture. You don't always have the emotional capital with people to just bail. Sometimes you're in a situation where you know that, were you to bring up that you'd prefer not to do something, the other person would immediately cancel to accommodate, even though the cost (emotional, not $$) for you to do it is lower than the cost for them no to do.
And then sometimes you enter a loop about something scary that you only do because your friends are in. A year ago I did my first major multi-day ski touring traverse. A physically and psychologically taxing thing, where once you're committed in it, you don't have a choice but complete (you can't ski down, you have to finish the loop, no matter how hard it is). I was scared AF, trying to find a good excuse to skip. It didn't and we did it, and it was the best thing I've done in all 2021. Talking about it afterwards, turns out we were all in that mental space, scared and only motivated by the fact that we'd do it together. If 1 person had emitted doubts, we would have all bailed. In the end, luckily no-one did.
So I don't think the idea behind it is necessarily bad, and I don't think you're a baby for not telling someone you're not ecstatic about something.
It's usually juggling:
- As a rule I usually end up happy I went to things in hindsight, even if I don't want to in the moment
- Empirically, canceling even once on someone significantly reduced the odds of plans being remade
- I want to see myself as the type of person who doesn't cancel plans
If you go, don't drag your feet and tell yourself it is for them. If you cancel, don't lie and make up excuses.
Extend the logic to tinder: is tinder just a mechanism to childishly avoid social discomfort (expressing romantic interest, risking rejection)?
I can't tell you how many couples met because they drank a little alcohol to loosen things up.
Technology is a symptom; not the disease. We wallow in narcissism and convenience because of the relatively enormous wealth we, and our country in general, enjoy. Being able to buy just about anything that we want (at least some version of it), and being able to insulate ourselves in a tiny bubble of like minded people and thought has infantilized us. Technology -- enabled by the wealth of the Western world -- has enabled it, but wealth is at the core. We can AFFORD to be babies. So we are. Boy, howdy! We are.
Pity is a spectator activity - you observe someone from the outside, you sort of judge them, make a token action, and then feel good about it. Pity is the agreeable option. You go into the party alone because it's something you can do. You stay with your friends on the dance floor because you don't want to leave them there.
The feel-good is not necessarily the right metric, though. It's more of a local maxima.
The adult mode would be compassion. Compassion is active participation. You are concerned enough to change someone's situation. Going to the party alone is an act of compassion. It's uncomfortable but you're doing it because you think the host should also have a good time. You're not going alone to avoid the bad feeling, you're going alone because you want the host to have a better evening.
There's also the compassionate option of leaving the dance floor with your friends. If you really think your friends are being babies, then the compassionate option might be to all leave together and enjoy it from a distance. But it sounded in this situation that they might actually be having fun in the crowd (it's hard to tell). So the compassionate option would be asking them if they're fine there and want to step out a bit. If they are comfortable, then excuse yourself in a manner that doesn't guilt them into following.
The quadrants make it seem a little black and white, but I think the axes are off. I would put one side to being passive and the other to being compassionate. Selfish might also be a misleading term, because in this case, it's being compassionate towards yourself, where you're experiencing a lot of discomfort but your friends aren't.
If I'm the one who bails, I try to just be honest about it, but it's usually something that has changed to become an impractical event. "I'm not all that enthusiastic to join a house party starting at 11:30, because everyone will want to sleep in 25 min and I won't make any meaningful connections". Which usually happens because the person was flakey about inviting me in the first place, and the good part is over.
What does that mean? If you see your ex on the street, emotionally detached is not running away from her and not running toward her. If she says, "I'm going to Hawaii for vacation," it's not asking which island or deep details. It's saying, "That sounds nice." You care but you don't really care. You're emotionally detached.
Doing this for the whole world sounds easy but it's one of the hardest things you can possibly do. Imagine if a million people suddenly loved you. It's almost impossible not to feel elated. Now imagine if a million people suddenly hated you. It's almost equally impossible not to feel devastated. But you can do it; and if you do it, you can unlock true happiness, true freedom.
It's like this article says, but I don't see it about being an adult -- it's about being truly free.
I latched onto something like this for my digital self, and it mostly broke traditional social media for me. After all, what does it matter if people you probably won't meet approve of what you post? All that time and energy for what...a slightly higher number in a database somewhere? For all the "humans are social animals"-type platitudes that try to explain the necessity of social media, it always ended up being a huge net energy loss.
But, my life is better when I am emotionally engaged in multiple spheres simultaneously: marriage, family, work, friends, hobbies. It's impossible for things to be going well in every sphere at once, so you spread out your emotional involvement among it all such that the inevitable dips are easier to deal with.
Distinguishing those two can be very difficult and in practice it's often a mixture.
That's not really "emotional detachment", though. It's not very different from actually running away the moment you see her, it's just less obviously cowardly. If you were really emotionally detached you would ask for as much detail as you could and it wouldn't affect you in the least.
Incidentally, not asking any follow-up questions to such an announcement is an obvious sign of disinterest. It's just a more polite "I don't care in the least about this thing you're telling me and I don't want to hear any more about it". Everyone knows you're doing it because that's exactly what they say when they don't want to hear about some topic.
I don't understand the paragraph at all. Are you saying detachment is like being hated? If yes I have no idea why. If not why would it be so hard?
Imagine you and a buddy have been arguing lately but you still go out hunting together. A bear appears out of nowhere and charges at your friend. You shoot and miss the bear but hit and kill your friend. There's not enough evidence to convict you of murder, so you walk free, but literally everyone around and whom you know thinks you murdered this person.
The trick is to let that wash off of you. You know you were trying to save your friend; there's not much you can do to change that opinion. Just let it not affect you as much as possible.
"like" not "liking" Is similar to.
> The trick is to let that wash off of you. You know you were trying to save your friend; there's not much you can do to change that opinion. Just let it not affect you as much as possible.
I thought you were saying to reject the feelings of the masses or something, but you're saying I shouldn't care about what the people close to me think either?
Is this just another way of saying, "accept the world as it is and as it happens and be content for it is kismet"?
The philosopher Rene Girard talks about it better than I ever could. Basically, when we reach a certain age, we start to want to fit in with the world. This is a natural and important process -- for a while. We'll often choose attributes of ourselves to extol and expand, in order to fit in with our selected strategy. We will imitate behaviors and attributes of those in that group. And during this time, we will find that subgroup that we're integrating with will want certain things -- and we will in turn want those things. He says we subconsciously start to desire what others desire because we imitate their desires. He calls it "Mimetic Desire."
The problem is that as a bunch of us are all desiring the same things, we become rivals, reaching for the same objects. Worse, we may not ever really want what we're reaching for.
I'm saying, "Divorce the world" -- an amicable, emotionless divorce. Just as you moved into a group, move out. Just as you imitated, stop. And that will free you to find your true passions, your true desires, your true opinions, your true self. And what's shocking is that now attaining things you desire will often be a million times easier because everyone isn't hunting these same things alongside you.
That said, I don't care for the label "baby". Different people have different skills – socially, intellectually, etc. – and not having a particular skill or set of tools doesn't make you a "baby". It makes you ignorant of those things. I think the label of being avoidant was much more precise language.
> I still have to remind myself all the time that it’s not actually helpful to hypothesize about how other people feel, or base my decisions off a constellation of unspoken factors.
I've had this idea for indicating along a series of steps of being willing to advance a relationship without harming it by expressing your desire for the next step too early for the other person. It would have real value I think because there really is potentially ruinous cost to being perceived as jumping the gun.
Taking the first example of arriving early at a dinner party with hosts you aren't familiar with, why do we need to bully ourselves into arriving early? From my perspective, the "adult" thing to do would be to wholly own whichever decision we make and the resulting consequences. Not showing up earlier with means you lose out on a great chance at making a meaningful connection with someone new, but it's more comfortable and hey, sometimes we're just out of social energy, that's okay too.
Taking the second example of a building mosh pit, if a large group of people are moshing, and all your friends are comfortable, maybe it's a sign that things are safer than you think. In that case, I would think that staying would provide an opportunity to move outside of your comfort-zone and maybe experience something new, and that's definitely not babying yourself. Nor is it treating your friends as babies, since you are relying on their judgment. And as the author states, we're also free to move to the back: that's not treating anyone as a baby either. In my mind, the key is again owning the decision and the consequences.
> Your own choices in these situations might go in different parts of the graph. I think it’s less about the specifics and more about understanding what it means to assert—but not baby—yourself, given who you are and what you need.
That's why the author proposes asking yourself "am I being avoidant?" In the mosh pit example, the answer might be "yes" if you trust that what applies to your friends applies to you. If you really are out of social energy, you might answer "no" and take a little extra time at the wine shop.
The substance here is "check in with yourself rather than automatically doing what's easy or comfortable" not "make the same decision I would."
this is leading to decay of society
Aren't those people that wouldn't be with you tonight (or at any time), if they didn't really want to, the best people to be around? Those people that are with you because they genuinely want to be, they should be treasured. What value is there in those others? What are they doing with their lives anyway? What are you doing dragging your feet again and again to places you don't enjoy? Do you even remember what you, YOU, really enjoy? I struggled a lot with this. In this sense, Ayn Rand helped me "grow up" as OP puts it. Yes, Roark goes way further than I would probably ever go, but Roark is not me and I enjoy a bit of harmony seeking in a group (up to a certain level that is), or setting an atmosphere. Ayn made heroes out of entrepreneurial, intelligent loners, imho that is not a core requirement of her philosophy (or way of life). It is about knowing the self, also when that self is more of a social animal, a bit of pleaser from time to time even.
Imho it is true that self-esteem correlates with how much joy you will let yourself feel in life. Too much and you hurt others, too little and you hurt yourself. There must be a balance.
There's plenty of interesting differences between babies, toddlers, Kindergartners, school kids, etc.
> It only recently occurred to me that what we actually needed was to grow up—get to know ourselves, learn to communicate. Trying to weasel out of all that with an app is, well, basically the entire value prop of Silicon Valley, but more importantly antithetical to growth. Managing your social life requires self-knowledge: Will you be in the mood next week? Will they be mad if you cancel? Will you have fun tonight even though you’re dragging your feet? The trick to answering these questions, I’m finding, is not technology or mind-reading or asking for surpluses of empathy. It’s to stop being a huge baby.
The 'baby' nomenclature, while definitely not polite, is a striking way to describe someone who isn't confident enough in their friendships or their self-understanding to bail on plans with honesty.
Also, the title of the substack is "Maybe baby" so probably playing on that.
Why is not wanting to hurt peoples feelings (or being honest about your own) weaselling out, for example?
But further, do you consider it bad to call someone immature? Is that an intentional inconsistency? Do as I say, not as I do?
I said not very mature, not immature.
But in any case, I never said you should never call someone immature, but that in this case as an alternative to name-calling someone a baby, it doesn't mean much. Pinning some social situation on someones communication skill, or friendship, or personal virtue for example.
Not wanting to hurt peoples feelings isn't weaseling out. What is weaseling out is assuming what will hurt their feelings, and acting based on that assumption, because you don't want to have a conversation with someone about their feelings.
I'd say "hedging". what if you have that conversation and it does hurt their feelings? Now you can't undo it, which is why the assumption is needed - you probe the question without showing your hand.
The article is discussing a different polarity: direct vs indirect communication. Direct communication is being honest and open about your feelings and those of others to the best of your ability. Some people only seem capable of indirect communication, where they say what they think the other person wants to hear and assume their own needs somehow come through, then are upset when the other person takes what they say at face value! And they assume the other person has some ulterior/hidden motive like themselves and try to read more into it than is really there.
Largely a good article, but before you decry the plastic widget that holds the book open, consider that some people are missing a finger.
If the plastic widget for holding books open is occasionally lopping off fingers so you need to use it more, it might be worth decrying.
That's a great question! I would love to see some data on this, but until I do, I don't really see any reason to believe this. Anxiety disorders are not a new phenomenon.
> Recent accounts suggest that levels of social anxiety may be rising. Studies have indicated that greater social media usage, increased digital connectivity and visibility, and more options for non-face-to-face communication are associated with higher levels of social anxiety [32–35]. The mechanism underpinning these associations remains unclear, though studies have suggested individuals with social anxiety favour the relative ‘safety’ of online interactions [32, 36]. However, some have suggested that such distanced interactions such as via social media may displace some face to face relationships, as individuals experience greater control and enjoyment online, in turn disrupting social cohesion and leading to social isolation [37, 38]. For young people, at a time when the development of social relations is critical, the perceived safety of social interactions that take place at a distance may lead some to a spiral of withdrawal, where the prospect of normal social interactions becomes ever more challenging.
I'm old enough that I remember a chunk of life pre-internet. Having to use corded the phone to call hang out with your friends, having to talk to parents and strangers to get a hold of your friends, calling a date to have their parent answer, having to knock on doors for church, etc... all built me up to have basically no qualms with talking to strangers, but certain younger close friends of mine can't answer the phone for the food delivery to give them the door code to their apartment.
It blows my mind sometimes, but I genuinely do consider it a consequence of technology enabling them to avoid doing those things regularly.
As someone who has done the therapy I can tell you that that app, while it may help you in the short term, is only going to make things so so so much worse in the long term - to the point where you can't live your life anymore. Medicating social anxiety with avoidance is similar to medicating pain with drugs. It just gets worse and worse until it's worse than you ever imagined. Every time you don't avoid something you're taking a step in the right direction. If possible I'd highly recommend therapy :)
The implication here is that there is always an alternative to medicating pain with drugs. There often isn't - other than letting the patient be in horrible pain forever. I'd argue that this is true for many kinds of clinical anxiety, too.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...
That said, if you feel like you need figurative "pain meds" to navigate cancelling plans, that may be indicative of a larger issue, yes.
1. Avoid work socials. 2. Hybrid working. 3. WFH. 4. Camera off in meetings. 5. Skipping meetings entirely.
Maybe not the best example but you've went from minor avoidance to help you keep your job and avoid your anxiety to major avoidance that will lead to you losing your job - and on top of that your anxiety will have increased to a level that recovering is much more difficult than if tackled earlier.
The first anecdote in a post is about the author deciding not to build something that could be a useful accessibility tool, specifically because she sees it as a net negative - which might not be how she would think about it if she'd included people with disabilities in her analysis.
Of course, this is not the end of the world; but there are cases where this kind of thinking could be much worse. "We won't put in an elevator - people should be okay with the discomfort of climbing the stairs." In fact, people did that so much that we had to pass the ADA to stop it!
I am reminded of https://imgur.com/a4p4KLa.
Even so, by placing them on the same scale, I think you're suggesting that there's a difference only in degree and that the two are on the same moral plane. But I think the difference is significant enough that they are qualitatively not the same.
"Technology babies us all the time. “Never talk to a wage worker again!” the embarrassing Seamless ads promise in so many words. “Everything you could dream of without leaving your apartment! Community without communing with a single soul!” Putting aside the marginal good these apps do for people who rely on them, their ads are clearly focused on a capable, upper-middle class that’s learned to take its neuroticism a little too seriously. They exploit what probably started as compassion-driven conversation about burnout into a recursive push for comfort at all costs. When we stretch that ethic to its limits, we make simple things like taking a phone call or being honest with a friend into something much scarier than they actually are."
Once the looks fade, then the self-reflection and introspection begins. It is difficult to be introspective and humble when you're in the 99th percentile, when you feel like you're on top of the world.
I have rarely found that statement to be true.