“Calling is terrrrrrrible!”

“But why?”

“It’s baaaaad!”

“Okay, imagine we’re going to call someone, what’s that like?”

“Aaaaaaaaaah!!”

*brain makes the pink ‘:O’ face of agony*



I recognize that one… I spotted it some other time as the negative response to trying to push myself to do something I don’t want to do. Hmm… That’s a separate thing though, I’m gonna look at that some other time. (cos if I resolve why calling is bad, then I don’t need to push into something that’s bad, so pinkface won’t happen)

“So imagine I’m not pushing. Think of the concept of calling someone. How does that feel?”

*Bouncy blobby opaque antracite-colored barrier, inside which is ‘calling someone’. Not a lot of feelings associated with it, except something like a “hmpf”*

Any vector towards the blob glances off. A push into the barrier bounces off.

Keep attention on the blobby thing. Maybe if I look at it for a while, I’ll get a better sense of it.

…

It’s not getting clearer… Let’s try a few things…

“Okay, so the concept of calling someone to ask if I can schedule a viewing for the room, that’s a gray blob. How about (the concept of) calling a friend of mine?”

*gray blob*

“Interesting. How about calling myself?”

*No problems*

“So, like, putting the phone against my ear and then talking doesn’t seem like a problem, right?”

*No problems*

“Cool. Okay. How about if I didn’t call, but went up to the person in real life to schedule a viewing?”

*gray blob*

Oooh… Getting somewhere…

“Hey brain, we’ve been talking to our housemates a bit earlier today, that wasn’t a problem, was it?”

*No problem. Conversation was ‘empty’.*

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

“How about I call up a stranger for no reason, and just talk about whatever?”

*Little aversive, since they’d think I was weird. But not really a problem.*

“How about talking to an automated system on the phone?”

*Still a little gray blobby*

It seems that the gray blob happens when talking to someone when I have a specific purpose for the conversation.

*Sorta add the Purpose as a separate object in my mind. It’s orange.*

*Put attention on gray blob again*

…

After 30 seconds or so, Blob gets a little more internal structure. The concept of the phone conversation has a start at the top, then a whole bunch of dark fuzzy vague area, and then bottom left there’s the orange purpose. There’s a fluid-like flow that comes from the start, and it disappears into the vague darkness, and comes back out at the bottom. However only 30% of the flow ends up at the purpose. 70% flows past it, never reaching it, kinda disappearing into nothingness. There’s a clammy feeling of dread associated with that. The 70% feels vaguely associated with cases like ‘room is already gone’ or ‘room is for students only’ or ‘they don’t know what I’m talking about’ or ‘we can’t hear each other because the connection is bad’ or lots of other stuff like that.

Hum. Interesting. Uhmmmmm… So we’re losing 70% flow and that’s bad, and also the middle area is dark and vague. Hooooowabout if I add some structure to the phone conversation? Like, I’ll make some kind of a flowchart to follow, like telemarketers have. ‘If they say this, I respond with that.’ Some of the routes end up in the Purpose, and some end up in end notes that do not achieve the goal of scheduling a viewing, but they are end nodes.

Flowcharty thing appears in the vagueness, starting at the start, and having some routes down to the Purpose. There’s some fluid flow down into that, and some flow into ‘unsuccessful end nodes’… And about a 50% leakage to the right into nothingness, representing unexpected directions of the call.

Well… That’s an improvement. But phone conversations are pretty unpredictable, so I can’t really make a flowchart that captures 100% of the cases. Hmmm… Why is it bad that there’s fluid not going into the purpose anyway? Isn’t that, like, also good to know?

*Does some vague mental restructuring around the purpose of the call. Instead of ‘schedule viewing’, the goal becomes ‘see if this is a room that I can view’*

New purpose is more overarching. Captures about 90% of the flow. Clammy dread is a lot less. Dark gray blob becomes a lot thinner, associations with the concept of calling becomes brighter. There’s still some anxiety, but it’s easier to trace; the vague dark middle area where the flowchart isn’t well-defined is uncomfortable.

So that seems like calling is now a lot less bad, and I can make it even less bad by making an expansive flowchart. Cool (:

I might have to deliberately shift the Purpose in my mind a few times before it sticks, cos if I’m not conscious of it my mind will fall back into established patterns. But that’s easy to do now that I know the structure.

Edit: Did some work on the pink face of agony. It’s the thing that pushes back against a push to do something I’m averse to. The thing I’m averse to is a big gray arrow, and is also the thing pushing. The pink face is anxious and panicky and in pain, because if I try to actually attend to the gray arrow, it will go really slow, be really painful, and probably fail. All the while, more gray arrows are coming in from all sides. And the longer I don’t attend to them, the more come. The pink face would rather hide from the world, even though it knows that it would still feel anxious because there’s still gray arrows coming in.

So, it seems the pink face does what it does because of a bunch of unconscious beliefs:

If I work on the gray arrow, it will be painful and really slow

There’s new gray arrows coming in all the time

Not attending to the gray arrows makes more of them.

Actually, all those beliefs have been historically true, and are not obviously false right now. So it doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to do very much with the pink face by affecting the underlying beliefs.

If I hypothetically could turn gray arrows into orange ones (ones that feel good to work on), then the pink face would be happy. Also, it would welcome more arrows, cos that means more fun!

So… That sounds good, but I’ve already been doing that whenever I can. But maybe I won’t be able to do that for every task, so I kept exploring.

Taking an abstract gray arrow (representing ‘a task I’m averse to’), why do I believe that it will be painful? Why do I believe it will go slow? Why do I believe that I’ll probably ‘slide off’ (fail) 20% in?

Well… Because there’s a lot of pain while doing the task — a lot of it actually being generated by pink face.

Yay, brains, lol. Working on something aversive is painful because I’m trying not to work on it because working on it is painful o:

Anyways; I can actually resolve that by ‘folding the pink face into the gray arrow’. That way they’re not two separate parts anymore, and there’s no additional pain coming from pink face. (Folding is a technique by Mark Lippmann, from the draft of his book “Folding”)

Now I’ll have to remember to actually do the folding when I get a concrete gray arrow… But I know what to do now (: