> "Improve the moment" where you simply think about what pleasant sensory experience could you introduce right now to make you feel better and then you do that

> "Improve the moment" where you simply think about what pleasant sensory experience could you introduce right now to make you feel better and then you do that quickly This is (un)surprisingly similar to a dog training technique called counterconditioning where you change your dog's emotional response to a scary bad thing. If your dog barks aggressively every time they see a person in a wheelchair, you give them a treat every time they notice a wheelchair. The more immediate the response the better, so you have to watch your dog's eyes to know exactly when they see it. You try to find their threshold (e.g. they get scared when the wheelchair is 20 ft away and not moving) and work right around that threshold. Once they're comfortable you push their threshold again (e.g. now the wheelchair is closer or moving or in a different environment). Eventually they have a neutral or positive reaction to a person in a wheelchair because they know that 1) nothing bad will happen and 2) they'll get a treat! On the other hand, when untreated, this scared reaction can be self-reinforcing like the ugh field. Wheelchairs are a little scary. Then your dog saw another one and borked and it was a bad experience so your dog figures wheelchairs are even more scary. Anyway, it helps to realize that we're constantly training ourselves based on the stimuli we introduce into our lives. It's just easier to see with the simpler dog model. (I guess Pavlov had something to say about that.)