so i used to go to these rationality workshops where people were developing rationality techniques that were supposed to make your life better, solve your problems, etc. it was a formative experience to repeatedly notice how these techniques failed me: i never wanted to do them
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typical ex: there was a technique called aversion factoring that was supposed to help you figure out why you, say, never wanted to go to the gym. basically you listed out all the reasons you could think of and then tried to deal with them one by one. i *never* wanted to do this
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it took me a long time and a lot of other experiences to figure out why: even thinking about, say, going to the gym was producing really uncomfortable feelings i didn't know how to handle and wanted to run away from, and the technique didn't give me room to notice this
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when we taught aversion factoring the examples of reasons-not-to-go-to-the-gym were like "i don't like being sweaty" or "the gym's kinda far away" but for me i think the main problem was that i felt extremely ashamed of how out of shape i was and that shame was overwhelming
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there was also a secondary problem, maybe worse in some sense, related to not knowing how to ask people for help. shame can be melted by the encouragement of a friend but there wasn't anyone in my life i felt comfortable asking to be my gym buddy
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as i got deeper into the emotional stuff i really started to appreciate how a seemingly mundane surface problem ("why don't i want to go to the gym") can lead to and be a symptom of these much deeper issues ("why am i paralyzed by shame and also have no friends")
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i have a new technique for dealing with aversions now which is much simpler, which i like to use with clients. if someone says "i keep procrastinating on this project" or w/e i ask them to pull up the project on their computer, stare at it, and then start telling me how they feel
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the foundational assumption here is that basically all aversions are aversions to uncomfortable feelings, not to activities or objects or people as such. ime this very simple approach brings up at least one meaty chunk of emotional stuff very consistently
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it can already be a minor revelation for people to just have the space to ask themselves how they feel about the project (or w/e) at all. to be like "oh shit now that you mention it staring at this project makes me feel sad / scared / angry / ashamed / etc., wow, jesus"
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it doesn't have to be heavy like this either, i think on at least one occasion it was as simple as "oh i feel confused... because i literally can't make progress on this project until i ask X person in my organization to clarify Y thing about it. well, i can just do that, easy"
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and what i really like about doing this is that it feels like a *relief*. when people really nail how they're feeling it really can lift a weight off their shoulders or their chest or wherever they're holding it. that sense of relief is your body telling you "yes this is good!"
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seeing how drastic the shift was from "let's make a list of *reasons*" to "how do i *feel* about this" was a major motivation for how i got obsessed with emotions and suppressed emotions. they just increasingly seemed to be the real bottleneck for many ppl, at least rats
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although in retrospect it's also clear that rationalists specifically are people who would be selected for having emotional bottlenecks. i think the way "normal" "well-adjusted" people deal with stuff like this is just talking their issues out with their friends?
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so that very ordinary and straightforward way of dealing with problems can break if you don't have friends, if you have friends but don't know how to open up to them, if you have friends you can talk to but mysteriously there are specific topics you never ever ever talk about
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which suggests a special role for shame here. if you have a problem you're so ashamed of you can't bring yourself to talk about it under any circumstances then you're stuck. conversely learning how to metabolize shame unblocks your ability to talk about everything else
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turns out you can keep someone stuck having a problem forever by denying them permission to have it
and conversely, you can help someone get unstuck by giving them permission to have the problems they in fact have
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it do be like this sometimes tho
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
After my first workshop, I started doing my own local workshops and teaching the techniques to my friends and interested strangers. Eventually I stopped for similar reasons: what was actually useful was deeper emotional reflection you couldn't really do in a public workshop.
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