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When ever this notion comes up i cant help but wonder how good crashing and burning thanks to ignoring reality is for your mental health. Just because stuff is

When ever this notion comes up i cant help but wonder how good crashing and burning thanks to ignoring reality is for your mental health. Just because stuff isnt nice doesnt mean its safe to ignore. Its worth mentioning that dealing with negative thoughts and experiences is part of how we grow as people. Its why Bambis mother got shot in a Disney movie. Because sooner or later, kids have to deal with harsh stuff. Unfortunately adults do too. Their example, a parent with covid in a hospital, is a good one. This is serious stuff you need to come to terms with. If that seems overly harsh or depressing, i find Stanley Kubricks words about the indifference of the universe quite helpful. (Starting from "If life is so purposeless, do you feel it’s worth living?") https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/26/stanley-kubrick-playboy-interview/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/26/stanley-kubrick-pl... In the end all we can do is decide how we want to deal with reality. Unless we want to later deal with the consequences of not having done so.

Aloha 3y ago
You don't need to dwell on it either - and that's the issue, most people dwell on it, because they're taught that all feelings are good and valid, and should be explored, my own experience says the opposite, not all feelings deserve exploration, and too much navel gazing is bad for ones mental health.
- cf141q5325 3y ago
  I dont disagree. But there is a big difference between not getting attached and pulled around by your negative thoughts and just ignoring them. The way out is agency over how you deal with reality, not better blindfolds in the short term.
- kykeonaut 3y ago
  However, not being able to explore such feelings ends up making you an unsympathetic person, as you cannot bare these feelings with others. Another argument is that you are denying yourself of the experience of being human. These feelings exist for a reason, just as physical pain exists for a reason. You wouldn't hurt yourself on purpose (or maybe you do c;), but physical pain helps you stay safe. I feel this is the same purpose of negative feelings. Finally, I have found out that suppressing these feelings does not allow you to fully process and heal from the events that trigger them.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    "Suppress" seems to be a loaded word. In the context of "denying it exists", yes, it's clear to see that it's not possible to process the negative feelings if not explored. But the positive interpretation would be to not spin on these thoughts endlessly. It's a trap for all of us and obsessing over hurts doesn't serve us well either. I have a theory I call "the emotional digestive system": we take in these hurts, taste them, chew on them. Then they digest. If the process is working well, we shit them out.
maxbond 3y ago
I regularly dismiss thoughts that are distressing but not at all necessary to dwell on. For instance, sometimes when I'm working, a certain problem I'm having or technology I'm working with will remind me of some stressful work situation I've had in the past. There's no reason to relitigate some bullshit that happened years ago, so I do my best to set it aside. I'm not ignoring any important reality, none of that matters anymore. There's nothing further for me to learn from the situation, I've already analyzed it to death and there's no new information available. So the healthy thing to do is recognize that this is a spurious signal from my brain. It's relevance is only tangential, and dwelling on it would be stressful and unproductive; it's utility is negative, and it should be filtered out as noise. You brain generates a bunch of signals and many of them just don't matter. It's not much different from finding shapes in clouds. But watching clouds is pleasant and easily stopped, so there's no harm in it. But ruminating is damaging and can be difficult to break out of if you get too far along in the process.
- cf141q5325 3y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I think this boils down to your ability to determine what is beneficial to revisit and what isnt. I would argue if you are able to differentiate the two reliably and are further able to tell that >There's nothing further for me to learn from the situation its unlikely that you are suppressing anything. To be at that point you have to had dealt with it already and are just not getting hung up on the past anymore. Which you arguably shouldnt, having dealt with the situation means you know what to look out for in the future to not become that version of yourself again. There is nothing left to suppress here, people arent a static entity through time. Suppression for me implies not having dealt with the situation and not having learnt its lessons. Otherwise you wouldnt need to suppress it. The whole thread is really a great showcase for assumed attribution of meaning and the inherit loss in complexity in language.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    For sure. That is how I would generally use "suppress," I think that's the common conception, but the article seems to be using it more in the sense of shrugging something off; they're asking participants to refrain from imagining certain scenarios while presenting them with stressors. I agree about language and it's been my experience that many disagreements boil down to using different definitions for the same term. Tangentially, I have a personal project that's a sort of "individual urban dictionary" to try and help people avoid such confusion, by enabling them to define their terminology and provide links to it, but it's on the back burner.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
That's not the point of the study. Many negative thoughts are safe to ignore. There's a difference in dealing with realitiy and wallowing in negativity for its own sake, or because of some freudian bullshit.
- cf141q5325 3y ago
  >That's not the point of the study. Be that as it may, there is a big difference between not wallowing and ignoring/suppressing something. Especially if you leave Freud out. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress Suppression implies force and a struggle. Its quite different from not dwelling. I am pretty sure we are talking two ends of the same spectrum with an upper and a lower bound. The reason its worth pointing out is that the simplification otherwise creates new problems due to overcorrecting. While not pointlessly dwelling on negative stuff is certainly good advice, it doesnt mean suppressing negative stuff you havent dealt with is a good idea in the long run. Suppressing the knowledge of information that create negative emotions is a bad idea since its very likely valuable information you will need in the future to not repeat your mistakes. One is a problem with agency over emotions and reactions, one is a practical functional problem. I think the reference to Freud and suppression might be a not thought through attention grab on part of the authors. Different to what their press statement says, what they have found does not run counter to accepted narratives. While i sympathize with the need for funding, this is a dumb spin.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    Not wallowing in negative emotions can be a struggle.
    - cf141q5325 3y ago
      Indeed, but i would argue that this is a good indicator that you have room for improvement here. Which i found to be amazing news. For example, depression is often characterized by black and white thinking and getting tunnel vision. You become so focused on the worst things you can come up with being true that you loose sight of your perspective being incomplete and the stress makes it harder and harder to snap out. Which results in either incomplete or erroneous conclusions you still hold with conviction. After all, you know X to be true and as a result that you are doomed to experience Y. So unless you are the only human not functioning this way, you have good chances of changing your experience without resorting to supression. I think the difference in dealing with these patterns manifesting comes from insight. You can try to suppress that initial bad insight temporarily or you can come to terms what is happening to you and how much you should care about what at which time. A lot easier said then done sure, but going full suppression seems like really bad advice. Be it through distraction or a bottle, you sooner or later will be confronted with a distorted self image again. At that point you are getting countermeasures for distortions and unrealistic expectations. You might get used to them, but they were just distortions. Getting used to them might have not been a good idea. Even if you reduce suffering, you are establishing a new higher normal. I get that this sounds a lot like Freud, but i am looking at this more from a human error perspective. Its not much different from cognitive biases, its part of how the mind comes to erroneous / incomplete conclusions and how these can create negative feedback loops. Making the first step suppression instead of introspection seems really counterproductive. You are kind of stuck with your brain and might as well optimize some. Some agency is achievable and it often doesnt need to be hard. No sense in being sad about your brain being buggy. Brains just are.

Aloha 3y ago

You don't need to dwell on it either - and that's the issue, most people dwell on it, because they're taught that all feelings are good and valid, and should be explored, my own experience says the opposite, not all feelings deserve exploration, and too much navel gazing is bad for ones mental health.

cf141q5325 3y ago
I dont disagree. But there is a big difference between not getting attached and pulled around by your negative thoughts and just ignoring them. The way out is agency over how you deal with reality, not better blindfolds in the short term.
kykeonaut 3y ago
However, not being able to explore such feelings ends up making you an unsympathetic person, as you cannot bare these feelings with others. Another argument is that you are denying yourself of the experience of being human. These feelings exist for a reason, just as physical pain exists for a reason. You wouldn't hurt yourself on purpose (or maybe you do c;), but physical pain helps you stay safe. I feel this is the same purpose of negative feelings. Finally, I have found out that suppressing these feelings does not allow you to fully process and heal from the events that trigger them.
- pstuart 3y ago
  "Suppress" seems to be a loaded word. In the context of "denying it exists", yes, it's clear to see that it's not possible to process the negative feelings if not explored. But the positive interpretation would be to not spin on these thoughts endlessly. It's a trap for all of us and obsessing over hurts doesn't serve us well either. I have a theory I call "the emotional digestive system": we take in these hurts, taste them, chew on them. Then they digest. If the process is working well, we shit them out.

maxbond 3y ago

I regularly dismiss thoughts that are distressing but not at all necessary to dwell on. For instance, sometimes when I'm working, a certain problem I'm having or technology I'm working with will remind me of some stressful work situation I've had in the past. There's no reason to relitigate some bullshit that happened years ago, so I do my best to set it aside. I'm not ignoring any important reality, none of that matters anymore. There's nothing further for me to learn from the situation, I've already analyzed it to death and there's no new information available. So the healthy thing to do is recognize that this is a spurious signal from my brain. It's relevance is only tangential, and dwelling on it would be stressful and unproductive; it's utility is negative, and it should be filtered out as noise. You brain generates a bunch of signals and many of them just don't matter. It's not much different from finding shapes in clouds. But watching clouds is pleasant and easily stopped, so there's no harm in it. But ruminating is damaging and can be difficult to break out of if you get too far along in the process.

cf141q5325 3y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I think this boils down to your ability to determine what is beneficial to revisit and what isnt. I would argue if you are able to differentiate the two reliably and are further able to tell that >There's nothing further for me to learn from the situation its unlikely that you are suppressing anything. To be at that point you have to had dealt with it already and are just not getting hung up on the past anymore. Which you arguably shouldnt, having dealt with the situation means you know what to look out for in the future to not become that version of yourself again. There is nothing left to suppress here, people arent a static entity through time. Suppression for me implies not having dealt with the situation and not having learnt its lessons. Otherwise you wouldnt need to suppress it. The whole thread is really a great showcase for assumed attribution of meaning and the inherit loss in complexity in language.
- maxbond 3y ago
  For sure. That is how I would generally use "suppress," I think that's the common conception, but the article seems to be using it more in the sense of shrugging something off; they're asking participants to refrain from imagining certain scenarios while presenting them with stressors. I agree about language and it's been my experience that many disagreements boil down to using different definitions for the same term. Tangentially, I have a personal project that's a sort of "individual urban dictionary" to try and help people avoid such confusion, by enabling them to define their terminology and provide links to it, but it's on the back burner.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

That's not the point of the study. Many negative thoughts are safe to ignore. There's a difference in dealing with realitiy and wallowing in negativity for its own sake, or because of some freudian bullshit.

cf141q5325 3y ago
>That's not the point of the study. Be that as it may, there is a big difference between not wallowing and ignoring/suppressing something. Especially if you leave Freud out. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress Suppression implies force and a struggle. Its quite different from not dwelling. I am pretty sure we are talking two ends of the same spectrum with an upper and a lower bound. The reason its worth pointing out is that the simplification otherwise creates new problems due to overcorrecting. While not pointlessly dwelling on negative stuff is certainly good advice, it doesnt mean suppressing negative stuff you havent dealt with is a good idea in the long run. Suppressing the knowledge of information that create negative emotions is a bad idea since its very likely valuable information you will need in the future to not repeat your mistakes. One is a problem with agency over emotions and reactions, one is a practical functional problem. I think the reference to Freud and suppression might be a not thought through attention grab on part of the authors. Different to what their press statement says, what they have found does not run counter to accepted narratives. While i sympathize with the need for funding, this is a dumb spin.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Not wallowing in negative emotions can be a struggle.
  - cf141q5325 3y ago
    Indeed, but i would argue that this is a good indicator that you have room for improvement here. Which i found to be amazing news. For example, depression is often characterized by black and white thinking and getting tunnel vision. You become so focused on the worst things you can come up with being true that you loose sight of your perspective being incomplete and the stress makes it harder and harder to snap out. Which results in either incomplete or erroneous conclusions you still hold with conviction. After all, you know X to be true and as a result that you are doomed to experience Y. So unless you are the only human not functioning this way, you have good chances of changing your experience without resorting to supression. I think the difference in dealing with these patterns manifesting comes from insight. You can try to suppress that initial bad insight temporarily or you can come to terms what is happening to you and how much you should care about what at which time. A lot easier said then done sure, but going full suppression seems like really bad advice. Be it through distraction or a bottle, you sooner or later will be confronted with a distorted self image again. At that point you are getting countermeasures for distortions and unrealistic expectations. You might get used to them, but they were just distortions. Getting used to them might have not been a good idea. Even if you reduce suffering, you are establishing a new higher normal. I get that this sounds a lot like Freud, but i am looking at this more from a human error perspective. Its not much different from cognitive biases, its part of how the mind comes to erroneous / incomplete conclusions and how these can create negative feedback loops. Making the first step suppression instead of introspection seems really counterproductive. You are kind of stuck with your brain and might as well optimize some. Some agency is achievable and it often doesnt need to be hard. No sense in being sad about your brain being buggy. Brains just are.