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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

For most of us, certainly including me, a lot of those electric fences are alive and well.

They are powered by thoughts associated with pain. Anything that triggers those thoughts, triggers that pain. We are not even aware of how our thinking has been constrained. We just avoid the possibility of triggering the thought.

A person constrained by such a fence is very obvious from the outside. We see the irrational rationalizations that they can't. Because our thinking isn't constrained by the pain that shapes their thinking. But it takes work to accept the pain of your own painful ideas.

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You're right, we see everyone else's fences perfectly while blind to our own.

Here's what helped me most, when I hit a painful thought, I try to think about it as, "What are you protecting me from?"

Usually it's something that happened once, often years ago. Next time you feel that electric fence, just notice it. Then take one tiny step towards it (Joe Hudson talks about this as emotional fluency). The fence will beep (your emotions). You'll feel the old pain. But nothing actually happens. And slowly, slowly, you realize you're actually free.

The problem that I had with that approach is that the pain of the painful thought caused me to shy away from what was central to it.

Instead I have found that targeted gratitude has enabled me to bear the pain, while I face the pain, understand its cause, and start doing something about it. This isn't fast, it has been a journey. But a very good one.

Absolutely love the idea of "Targeted gratitude". You're right that sometimes the pain makes us shy away from looking directly at root causes. Gratitude as a way to hold the pain while we work through it is a profound idea. Simultaneously asking what the pain is trying to protect us from and thanking the pain for what it's trying to protect us from and giving yourself some grace for the courage required to do this. Thank you so much for sharing this, it's really helpful!

I recently realized that I had lingering old pains and those were triggered by someone going through a similar experience and I literally felt their pain. It took me a lot of digging in my mind, peeling off layers, to understand even what the root pains are.

Sending a message to someone and potentially not getting any (meaningful) back is something I find very hard to accept, though I know not responding is often not on purpose.

For me, it is not so much about an electric fence, more about a feeling of rejection or abandonment that seems really hard to eradicate.

The fear of no response is real. It's not about logic, it's about old wounds. What helps is sending messages with zero expectation. Treat it like throwing paper airplanes. Some fly, some don't. And that's completely ok!

The ones that don't fly aren't rejections, they're just physics.

Thank you stranger, for this valuable metaphor! I'm on it!

Worth looking at the book the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

You only have to be zapped a few times to be shy of it.

I tried reaching out to a bunch of folks from where I used to live a few years back, and got unanimously ghosted, until eventually someone responded telling me I was a vile piece of shit for what I did to X, who it transpired in my absence had brewed up a full on horror story about me, involving battery acid and violence - entirely fictitious, but apparently people thought little enough of me to believe it.

Now, I’m content enough to not go lick the fence voluntarily.

And that is exactly how it is in that dog's brain. In his mind, the electric fence is alive and well.

That is the whole point of the article.

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