I find this and your previous article interesting, for I provide hypnotherapy, which does indeed dig deep to find the root cause of issues - and gets rid of them in doing so.
In contrast, normal therapy seems to be just sitting around discussing how awful the problem is, how awful it makes you feel, and so isn't it just so awful? I fail to see how that is helpful.
I think this is my main concern about people using AI for therapy. The AI will just agree it's terrible, congratulate you on being so strong as to stand it, and ask if you'd live to delve deeper into some solutions for your terrible problem? It will then give you the cookie-cutter BS you already knew and which doesn't work. So you tell it how you failed, and it congratulates you for being so strong as to admit you're a failure, and how that's not failing, that's the first step to success! Rinse and repeat, spiralling into a pit of despair, until you look up at the monitor when it says something that makes no sense, and realize you're actually alone, talking to code.
Great article as always WIL, keep up the good work!
There are videos made by Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG titled "I feel like I have no purpose" and "Processing Emotion". He argued that if you want to find purpose in your life, you have to focus inward yourself rather than external world, therefore some "silence" like walking in nature, commuting, doing chores, or going to toilet without distraction is necessary. It's like "Shower Thought", some people find wild ideas when they are showering.
Focussing to external stimuli like playing video games, scrolling social media, watching cat videos, suppress our internal signals. We actively numb ourselves. "Silence" and boredom is useful to un-numb oursevles so that we can reconnect to our internal signals and find our purpose. He also said often times the first part of internal thought arise in negative way.
I would like to know your opinion on these videos as both contradict your article at some degree. Perhaps there is a balance between "Flow" and "Self-introspection".
Yes I definitely agree with that. I get some of my best ideas for writing when I'm out taking a walk with no distractions, just letting my mind work out ideas. Same with showers.
I've done several meditation retreats and all kinds of psychedelics, I'm definitely not saying mental exploration is to be straight up avoided. It's very helpful. We need to go through cycles of focus and introspection, if someone were in flow at all times and completely immersed in the external world... they're probably on mushrooms.
What I'm advocating is to be suspicious of overly pessimistic interpretations of reality/the mind/the human condition.
There's "self-reflection" and there's "self-rumination."
I totally agree with that. I was about to post asking about the difference between rumination and meditation, as I've seen when I've meditated that most of the time I'm trying to not ruminate, and I found that if I immerse myself in something, be it tackling a new program or doing a difficult workout or something similar, I find myself in a state of meditation, not really thinking of anything.
However, the post does come a bit as a "do things, don't think" speech. I'm glad you explained a bit more here.
I think the problem is that you're picking the wrong shrinks. It's like you've been burned by a few mechanics and have declared the car repair industry to be a destructive sham. Worse, you've picked arguably emo existential philosophers as reasons not to look within. As you mentioned above, rumination is *excessive* thinking about one's problems. I'm guessing that introspection, like anything else, is going to be dose-dependent for efficacy.
“The skills of becoming happy turn out to be almost entirely different from the skills of not being sad, not being anxious, or not being angry.”
― Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.”
― Albert Ellis
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
“Egocentricity is a problem, however, when it becomes exaggerated and is not balanced by such social traits as love, empathy, and altruism, the capacity for which is probably also represented in our genome. Interestingly, very few of us think to look for egocentricity in ourselves, although we are dazzled by it in others.”
― Aaron T. Beck, Prisoners Of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence
“While you can't control your experiences, you can control your explanations.”
― Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
The article acknowledges that self-reflection is good (but not rumination) and I've spoken about other more inspiring psychologists like Frankl before. The message of the article isn't "psychology is bad."
No, the message is self reflection may negatively valence one’s worldview. That’s possible, of course, but I think, in the main, self reflection and therapy help people and saves lives.
Bad therapy can do damage just like bad medicine does. To your point in the article, one could be happier in a flow state riding your bike, and that’s fun and all, but it doesn’t fix issues like having an external locus of control or struggling with mental behaviors that lead to self sabotaging important relationships.
If I’m losing the nuance of the message, my apologies.
We must be social and active to maintain our sanity, but we also need some self reflection to grow and change. As always, its about balance.
Would like to add that ruminating on physical injuries and ailments also makes them much worse than they are objectively. The other side of this: You ever hear stories of doctors looking at xrays and saying "How can you walk with your spine like this?" Its because they chose to stand up and walk.
Have some loved ones that I would love to shake the shitty thoughts out of and force them to go outside and participate in real life. But they have to figure it out on their own.
Since the mind and external world are not separate, it is possible to transform your mind while focusing externally. Connecting with others, learning new attitudes and ideas, and observing your feelings provide opportunities to transform. I agree that the nature of mind isn't inherently bad. That's what the Buddha meant in the 4 noble truths. The cause of unnecessary suffering can be uprooted from the mind. It's only so depressing to focus internally when the mind is conditioned to spiral into negative reactions.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9). We can rationalize anything and deceive ourselves more easily than we can others. It's incredible that psychology as a field even exists when it tries to "will" into being mental health by forcing a depressed to ruminate about his problems.
I think there's an important distinction between wanting happiness and wanting truth. Many of the philosophers you mentioned prioritized truth.
By any objective standard (nonreligious) standard life is cruel, the world is dark, and pain, suffering, and death are our inevitable fate.
The difference between a healthy mind and an unhealthy one is how you deal with that information. Obviously dwelling on it excessively will probably not lead to happiness, but the great thinkers aren't wrong for pointing it reality.
I do think you are very correct about self rumination though. The fastest way to stop being depressed is to stop thinking about yourself and go out and help someone else.
I really thought this newsletter would pivot into a more actionable section at the end, where a positive conclusion would be made about the benefits of flowstate and doing instead of thinking.
Instead i feel like it ended on a bit of a sour note 😂
I find this and your previous article interesting, for I provide hypnotherapy, which does indeed dig deep to find the root cause of issues - and gets rid of them in doing so.
In contrast, normal therapy seems to be just sitting around discussing how awful the problem is, how awful it makes you feel, and so isn't it just so awful? I fail to see how that is helpful.
I think this is my main concern about people using AI for therapy. The AI will just agree it's terrible, congratulate you on being so strong as to stand it, and ask if you'd live to delve deeper into some solutions for your terrible problem? It will then give you the cookie-cutter BS you already knew and which doesn't work. So you tell it how you failed, and it congratulates you for being so strong as to admit you're a failure, and how that's not failing, that's the first step to success! Rinse and repeat, spiralling into a pit of despair, until you look up at the monitor when it says something that makes no sense, and realize you're actually alone, talking to code.
Eww.
Great article as always WIL, keep up the good work!
There are videos made by Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG titled "I feel like I have no purpose" and "Processing Emotion". He argued that if you want to find purpose in your life, you have to focus inward yourself rather than external world, therefore some "silence" like walking in nature, commuting, doing chores, or going to toilet without distraction is necessary. It's like "Shower Thought", some people find wild ideas when they are showering.
Focussing to external stimuli like playing video games, scrolling social media, watching cat videos, suppress our internal signals. We actively numb ourselves. "Silence" and boredom is useful to un-numb oursevles so that we can reconnect to our internal signals and find our purpose. He also said often times the first part of internal thought arise in negative way.
I would like to know your opinion on these videos as both contradict your article at some degree. Perhaps there is a balance between "Flow" and "Self-introspection".
Hey Ardiansyah,
Yes I definitely agree with that. I get some of my best ideas for writing when I'm out taking a walk with no distractions, just letting my mind work out ideas. Same with showers.
I've done several meditation retreats and all kinds of psychedelics, I'm definitely not saying mental exploration is to be straight up avoided. It's very helpful. We need to go through cycles of focus and introspection, if someone were in flow at all times and completely immersed in the external world... they're probably on mushrooms.
What I'm advocating is to be suspicious of overly pessimistic interpretations of reality/the mind/the human condition.
There's "self-reflection" and there's "self-rumination."
I totally agree with that. I was about to post asking about the difference between rumination and meditation, as I've seen when I've meditated that most of the time I'm trying to not ruminate, and I found that if I immerse myself in something, be it tackling a new program or doing a difficult workout or something similar, I find myself in a state of meditation, not really thinking of anything.
However, the post does come a bit as a "do things, don't think" speech. I'm glad you explained a bit more here.
This is fascinating!
I wonder then if SNS tends to make people unhappy because it is always invoking people to make judgement calls on what they think is good or bad.
In other words, pushing people back into their own head..
To add to this, doing this hundreds of times a day in response to various topics is bound to get tiring..
I think the problem is that you're picking the wrong shrinks. It's like you've been burned by a few mechanics and have declared the car repair industry to be a destructive sham. Worse, you've picked arguably emo existential philosophers as reasons not to look within. As you mentioned above, rumination is *excessive* thinking about one's problems. I'm guessing that introspection, like anything else, is going to be dose-dependent for efficacy.
“The skills of becoming happy turn out to be almost entirely different from the skills of not being sad, not being anxious, or not being angry.”
― Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.”
― Albert Ellis
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
“Egocentricity is a problem, however, when it becomes exaggerated and is not balanced by such social traits as love, empathy, and altruism, the capacity for which is probably also represented in our genome. Interestingly, very few of us think to look for egocentricity in ourselves, although we are dazzled by it in others.”
― Aaron T. Beck, Prisoners Of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence
“While you can't control your experiences, you can control your explanations.”
― Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
“It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow
The article acknowledges that self-reflection is good (but not rumination) and I've spoken about other more inspiring psychologists like Frankl before. The message of the article isn't "psychology is bad."
No, the message is self reflection may negatively valence one’s worldview. That’s possible, of course, but I think, in the main, self reflection and therapy help people and saves lives.
Bad therapy can do damage just like bad medicine does. To your point in the article, one could be happier in a flow state riding your bike, and that’s fun and all, but it doesn’t fix issues like having an external locus of control or struggling with mental behaviors that lead to self sabotaging important relationships.
If I’m losing the nuance of the message, my apologies.
We must be social and active to maintain our sanity, but we also need some self reflection to grow and change. As always, its about balance.
Would like to add that ruminating on physical injuries and ailments also makes them much worse than they are objectively. The other side of this: You ever hear stories of doctors looking at xrays and saying "How can you walk with your spine like this?" Its because they chose to stand up and walk.
Have some loved ones that I would love to shake the shitty thoughts out of and force them to go outside and participate in real life. But they have to figure it out on their own.
If you look at your mind and you don't like what you're seeing, it is only going to make it worse. It's a feedback loop.
If people thoughts would be heard out loud, most people would sound insane.
Focusing on the external world does not turn the ugliness of your own mind into beauty.
It is the very ignorance that Buddha talked about.
I thought you knew better than to equate rumination with thinking.
Since the mind and external world are not separate, it is possible to transform your mind while focusing externally. Connecting with others, learning new attitudes and ideas, and observing your feelings provide opportunities to transform. I agree that the nature of mind isn't inherently bad. That's what the Buddha meant in the 4 noble truths. The cause of unnecessary suffering can be uprooted from the mind. It's only so depressing to focus internally when the mind is conditioned to spiral into negative reactions.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9). We can rationalize anything and deceive ourselves more easily than we can others. It's incredible that psychology as a field even exists when it tries to "will" into being mental health by forcing a depressed to ruminate about his problems.
I think there's an important distinction between wanting happiness and wanting truth. Many of the philosophers you mentioned prioritized truth.
By any objective standard (nonreligious) standard life is cruel, the world is dark, and pain, suffering, and death are our inevitable fate.
The difference between a healthy mind and an unhealthy one is how you deal with that information. Obviously dwelling on it excessively will probably not lead to happiness, but the great thinkers aren't wrong for pointing it reality.
I do think you are very correct about self rumination though. The fastest way to stop being depressed is to stop thinking about yourself and go out and help someone else.
Just like your previous publication, I remembered previous personal experiences as examples hehehe
By the way, I'm always curious about where you research about these topics
Aside from this, I'd love to see what you would write about solipsism and its repercussions disguised as spirituality and whatnot.
Really appreciate your content
I really thought this newsletter would pivot into a more actionable section at the end, where a positive conclusion would be made about the benefits of flowstate and doing instead of thinking.
Instead i feel like it ended on a bit of a sour note 😂
Now relate this to how AI is developing…