This is the opposite of everyone’s intuition though: they want to tell agitated people to calm down and glum people to get active and cheer up.
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My intuition is a third thing: depressed people should get upset & articulate their problems, anxious people should do scenario analysis & conscious risk mitigation.
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Hm, both of those sound like “have you considered that you feel bad because of a real problem and tried fixing it?” which is v. much my experience of what works, but I view “fixing problems” as high/pos.
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Because “you can do something about this problem” is active/hopeful.
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I don't see what could count as an improvement that doesn't increase the usable free energy of the person being helped. But solutions can be inactive; e.g. it may be better to be endorsedly inactive but open to opportunities, than unendorsedly depressed.
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I really don’t *understand* certain kinds of low-energy unhappy states — things like existential angst, jadedness, lack of ideas, etc.
it seems like sometimes those people report being happier finding “acceptance” or Buddhist-type “emptiness”, which I don’t get either.
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Like...sometimes young tech guys are real passive and don’t know what they want and distance themselves from emotions and they report huge increases in energy & happiness from “soft/gentle” practices like crying or self-acceptance?
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“Get more energy, paradoxically, by being SUPER gentle and not making yourself do stuff” vs “find peace and equanimity, paradoxically, by going out & doing the stuff you know deep down is your true top priority”
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All my states are low energy. Good or bad, happy or sad, peak power output is never going to top like 100w unless I’m at the gym.
So yeah, contentment may be an energy minimizing posture.
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Right, you seem to be both more inclined to express “peace/acceptance” and “cynical/bored” sentiments. And you value interestingness like it’s rare.
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