[cogsci] therapy's inverted incentives
goal: feel/do better; genuinely buy into the successful strategies in life
symptom: subconscious hesitation to fully buy into something that has been proven to your conscious mind
problem: detangle a tiny/humongous knot from the past that is preventing buy-in
ideally: evaluate hesitations on their merits and update priors as needed
- if merit is hard to verify: laser-focus to the source of hesitation
- if source not found: mental walk through recognizable time periods to establish provenance (hs, college, job/location, etc.)
substrate: think of your brain as limited real estate. the number of neurons, and neuronal connections, has some physical limit. the way to decrease a thing's foothold in your head is to think of it less. more mental time/effort spent on something means that thing's mansion gets that much bigger
solution: to achieve our goal, we must laser-focus to find the knot, and detangle it as fast as possible. think of your favorite spy or heist movie, working against the clock. the longer you are underwater detangling the knot, the more brain damage you suffer
MAIN POINTS:
this laser-focused, hyperspeed detangling is antithetical to how therapists feed their families
quickness and agility is paramount for a good, effective outcome. but therapy involves drudging through the gutters of the past for literally HOURS. the time scale needs to be in minutes, not months
the more time/effort spent in the suboptimal/malignant parts of the past, the bigger the malignant palace. the bigger the malignant palace, the bigger your shitty feelings
CAVEAT: there is no substitute for detangling the knots. Thinking of the knots less will not make them go away or reduce their impact. Quick, surgical detangling yields better results and costs less, emotionally/physically/financially
conclusion: make sure the solution's mansion is bigger than the problem's.