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Comment by mindwok | Hacker News Reader

As an anxious person with people-pleasing tendencies, something I've been trying to focus on is reframing the situation and removing fear entirely. For me, fundamentally the fear of social interactions comes from the fear I'm going to do something wrong, that person will react badly, and I'll feel bad about myself. I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions which is something you cannot control.

Instead, I'm trying to focus on feeling good or bad based on my intentions, and seeing people's reactions as merely a feedback loop to better align my actions with my intentions. It has been difficult but I think it is slowly working.

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>I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions which is something you cannot control.

Yes. A thousand times this. It has taken me years to create a situational intuition around this. Another thing that I have had to learn is that people aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are. Like, take whatever amount of time that you think someone is thinking about you in any social situation, and divide that by 10. That’s still more than they are thinking about you.

> Instead, I'm trying to focus on feeling good or bad based on my intentions, and seeing people's reactions as merely a feedback loop to better align my actions with my intentions.

This is the way. People might disagree, but I've noticed that our intentions really do influence the outcomes because our intentions affect the way we approach problems (Kinda like Wave function collapse). My world is a mere reflection of who I really am, what I really think and what I meditate upon.

Yes, I completely agree. Instead of being upset with outcomes (like how people react to me in interactions), there's three things I've been trying to instead focus on: Am I at peace with my core values? Do my intentions align with those values? And finally, do my actions align with those intentions. If something bad has happened, and those three questions are a 'yes', then you have no reason to feel bad because you've been completely true to yourself and this occurence is something outside your control. If it's a 'no', then you probably need to do some reflection and figure out where in that chain something is going wrong.

If you say something unpleasant to a boss or someone else with the power to hurt you in life, even if it is aligned with your values (like enforcing boundaries or refusing unethical tasks), you may get fired, lose your income and destabilize your future safety, and have every reason to feel bad about your situation.

I see your point but I’d argue that if you feel bad about this it means your core value is actually financial stability over sticking to your principles at any cost, and in that case your actions and intentions didn’t align with what you truly value.

Easy to say when you aren’t homeless or at risk of being made homeless.

For some folks, unfortunately, lying at times is a necessary survival mechanism.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. If you value financial stability over taking a stand about things you might disagree with, then lying for survival is aligned with your values. Using the ideas I described above, this would be completely acceptable for the person doing that.

Epictetus would add that you need to act in accordance with "nature", by which he meant the world as it is, including human behaviour, not as we want it to be. In this case "nature" would include the behaviour of the boss and you can act accordingly, knowing that if you challenge them you may suffer repercussions.

Still you might think, I did the best I could.

I've been doing this too, but saying to myself "you are off the hook altogether" with the reasoning that the harm from not attempting something is just so much worse than any typical consequence from saying or doing something dumb in the moment, to the point it needn't even be a consideration. But I like this approach of focussing on intention, to rationalize it.

But your actions may have good intentions but still end up getting a bad reaction. Think codependency; you may have good intentions dealing with the other person's bad behaviour, but you're still encouraging the bad behaviour that way, and you may still resent your own actions despite your good intentions.

That's the idea though, if your intentions are sound but you're not getting the reactions you expect, then you need to re-evaluate how you're acting. The important part is not to beat yourself up about it - bad reactions are just a way for you to learn and correct your actions, fundamentally you are still the person you think you think you are.

They key thing here is that what you’re describing can be interpreted several ways.

One could be maladaptive (long term) and is the easy approach (or may be necessary to survive short term) - ‘oh, I need to be nicer or give more’, or ‘oh, I need to manipulate them or make them be okay with this’ which is the codependent approach.

The other is to step back, realize perhaps you’re already giving too much, and it’s time to leave (safely) or deal with more blowback at the moment to set a boundary even at the risk of real problems.

That takes courage and a wider view, exactly what is hard to do when in these situations though.

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