3 ms·

Having worked as a therapist for years, treating thousands of client, and read more books and studies on this than I can count, I can for certain say that is MU

by jtrn 9mo ago

Having worked as a therapist for years, treating thousands of client, and read more books and studies on this than I can count, I can for certain say that is MUCH MUCH simpler to change the environment than your personality to improve well beeing and general functioning. To tired to pick a apart this article now. But this is feel good nonsense... Just one example, mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome. Also, 6 weeks is nothing. When I worked at inpatient unit we sometimes needed 6 weeks before patient reverted to baseline personality after admittance. This is just as silly as saying that you changed your lifestyle permanently with regard exercises after just a few weeks into your new year's resolution. You MIGHT have, but lets wait untill next year and see if the permanent claim is true.

tailspin2019 9mo ago
Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by “change the environment”?
- callc 9mo ago
  Not OP, but here’s what I think they mean: if you want to eat healthier then get rid of all the junk food in your home. Only buy healthy food. No more deciding between health and unhealthy. You made the choice for your future self by changing your environment.
- ytoawwhra92 9mo ago
  Move house/town/region/country. Get a new job. Make new friends. Leave bad romantic relationships. Get a pet. Go outside. Etc.
  - AbstractH24 9mo ago
    Bring out different parts of you rather than change who you are.
- jtrn 9mo ago
  Think of it like moving a husky dog from Siberia to the Sahara. Nothing has changed with the dog, but it's not functioning quite as well after the move. The classic examples are things like going to a library where everyone else is silent and studying, finding a job that suits your temperament, like accounting for the sensitive type and ambulance driving for the sensation-seeking type. Create a social contract for exercise meet-ups, and downgrade to a dumb phone to overcome doom scrolling. Having the router block all Internet traffic after 10 o’clock. And so on. Moving from one place to another is immensely helpful for some. Changing friends, and even starting or stopping medication, counts as environmental changes in this instance, since it's part of the arena on which the personality plays itself out. Just make sure to stay away from all this “nudge” people. They never have anything helpful to actually contribute to in this.
srid 9mo ago
> mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome. This is interesting. Is it also the case for those seeking bliss in the name of "jhana" (cf. Jhourney)?
- jtrn 9mo ago
  Given that you asked about this topic, I assume you are interested in it, so I apologize in advance if this comes across as negative. I come at this as a ruthless pragmatist. My background is in Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) and long-term mindfulness, so I’ve read the literature. My only metric is: “What is your goal, and does this tool actually help you achieve it?” From that perspective, I have four major issues with the modern "Jhana" movement: There are currently no large-scale, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) proving the clinical effectiveness of the "Jhourney" method or "Sutta Jhanas" for mental health in the general population. Until we see data, this is experimental, not medical. Then it strikes me as "Drug-Free Hedonism." It is a classic case of Spiritual Materialism: instead of buying a Ferrari to feel good, you "buy" a Jhana state. It is still the ego seeking gratification, just using a different currency. The marketing language ("ecstatic," "orgasmic," "dopamine hit") explicitly invites a consumerist mindset. You aren't dissolving the self; you are just consuming a peak experience. The "State vs. Trait" Fallacy In my observation, the people drawn to these niche practices are already optimizing/biohacking types. They are selecting a practice that reinforces their existing personality rather than transforming it. I see very little evidence that accessing these temporary states leads to permanent positive traits or behavioral changes once the "high" wears off. On a personal moral level, I find the logic of extreme contemplative devotion flawed. Historically, the "true Buddhist" monastic model relies on others for food and sustenance. You can frame this as "spiritual focus," but a pragmatist could easily frame it as a lack of self-sufficiency—or even laziness. I rarely see a tangible improvement in productivity, self-sufficiency, or general functioning in people who dive deep into this mysticism. That said, I do believe in the "software upgrade" of mindfulness—specifically the ability to step back, observe, and evaluate thoughts without engaging them (the core of Metacognitive Therapy). There is decent evidence for that. But that is a tool for functioning, which is very different from chasing bliss.
pardon_me 9mo ago
I agree. Approximately three months are necessary before starting to claim "personality changes" are at all permanent.
- cainxinth 9mo ago
  Words are cheap. When someone tells me they’ve changed, I need to see at least a year of consistent behavior before I take that claim seriously. Far more often, what looks like change is just a honeymoon period that fades, with old habits resurfacing and regression to the mean taking over.
jtrn 9mo ago
Now I read it. And yes, it’s not very good. The article conflates symptom management (state) with structural personality change (trait) and mistakes behavioral masking for genuine psychological shift. Personality traits are defined by their stability and enduring nature, independent of active intervention. If a change requires constant, conscious maintenance (the "medicine"), it is by definition a coping strategy, not a personality trait. This indicates the underlying neurotic structure is still present, just temporarily suppressed. You don’t cure type one diabetes by taking insulin; you manage it. Any new intervention (yoga, journaling) creates a temporary lift in mood and self-efficacy (the Placebo effect or Novelty effect). Measuring immediately at the peak of this novelty does not account for the very common regression to the mean that inevitably follows. And here is a basic demonstration of why you do RCT with proper non-subjective measures for outcome. She writes: "I had wanted to change for the sake of this article... Answering questions like this helped push me up the percentiles." She asserts that answering the questions differently proved she changed, rather than proving she simply learned how to answer the test to get the desired result. Introverts can behave like extroverts, but it costs them metabolic and psychic energy. Extroverts gain energy from it. She conflates social skills (which can be learned) with extroversion (a biological orientation toward reward sensitivity). And even if I practice mindfulness for years myself, I’m extremely skeptical about over the top claims surrounding it. But a highly neurotic patient can learn mindfulness to manage panic attacks. They are still high in trait Neuroticism (highly sensitive to threat), but they have better "software" to handle the hardware. The article claims the hardware itself has been swapped out, which is an annoying oversimplification for readers. So in summary, this article goes against everything I have seen in my practice, it doesn’t understand the concepts in question, and it’s not even internally logically coherent. So basically just as bad as every other mainstream article I ever read on psychology.

by jtrn 9mo ago

tailspin2019 9mo ago

Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by “change the environment”?

callc 9mo ago
Not OP, but here’s what I think they mean: if you want to eat healthier then get rid of all the junk food in your home. Only buy healthy food. No more deciding between health and unhealthy. You made the choice for your future self by changing your environment.
ytoawwhra92 9mo ago
Move house/town/region/country. Get a new job. Make new friends. Leave bad romantic relationships. Get a pet. Go outside. Etc.
- AbstractH24 9mo ago
  Bring out different parts of you rather than change who you are.
jtrn 9mo ago
Think of it like moving a husky dog from Siberia to the Sahara. Nothing has changed with the dog, but it's not functioning quite as well after the move. The classic examples are things like going to a library where everyone else is silent and studying, finding a job that suits your temperament, like accounting for the sensitive type and ambulance driving for the sensation-seeking type. Create a social contract for exercise meet-ups, and downgrade to a dumb phone to overcome doom scrolling. Having the router block all Internet traffic after 10 o’clock. And so on. Moving from one place to another is immensely helpful for some. Changing friends, and even starting or stopping medication, counts as environmental changes in this instance, since it's part of the arena on which the personality plays itself out. Just make sure to stay away from all this “nudge” people. They never have anything helpful to actually contribute to in this.

srid 9mo ago

> mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome. This is interesting. Is it also the case for those seeking bliss in the name of "jhana" (cf. Jhourney)?

jtrn 9mo ago
Given that you asked about this topic, I assume you are interested in it, so I apologize in advance if this comes across as negative. I come at this as a ruthless pragmatist. My background is in Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) and long-term mindfulness, so I’ve read the literature. My only metric is: “What is your goal, and does this tool actually help you achieve it?” From that perspective, I have four major issues with the modern "Jhana" movement: There are currently no large-scale, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) proving the clinical effectiveness of the "Jhourney" method or "Sutta Jhanas" for mental health in the general population. Until we see data, this is experimental, not medical. Then it strikes me as "Drug-Free Hedonism." It is a classic case of Spiritual Materialism: instead of buying a Ferrari to feel good, you "buy" a Jhana state. It is still the ego seeking gratification, just using a different currency. The marketing language ("ecstatic," "orgasmic," "dopamine hit") explicitly invites a consumerist mindset. You aren't dissolving the self; you are just consuming a peak experience. The "State vs. Trait" Fallacy In my observation, the people drawn to these niche practices are already optimizing/biohacking types. They are selecting a practice that reinforces their existing personality rather than transforming it. I see very little evidence that accessing these temporary states leads to permanent positive traits or behavioral changes once the "high" wears off. On a personal moral level, I find the logic of extreme contemplative devotion flawed. Historically, the "true Buddhist" monastic model relies on others for food and sustenance. You can frame this as "spiritual focus," but a pragmatist could easily frame it as a lack of self-sufficiency—or even laziness. I rarely see a tangible improvement in productivity, self-sufficiency, or general functioning in people who dive deep into this mysticism. That said, I do believe in the "software upgrade" of mindfulness—specifically the ability to step back, observe, and evaluate thoughts without engaging them (the core of Metacognitive Therapy). There is decent evidence for that. But that is a tool for functioning, which is very different from chasing bliss.

pardon_me 9mo ago

I agree. Approximately three months are necessary before starting to claim "personality changes" are at all permanent.

cainxinth 9mo ago
Words are cheap. When someone tells me they’ve changed, I need to see at least a year of consistent behavior before I take that claim seriously. Far more often, what looks like change is just a honeymoon period that fades, with old habits resurfacing and regression to the mean taking over.

jtrn 9mo ago

Now I read it. And yes, it’s not very good. The article conflates symptom management (state) with structural personality change (trait) and mistakes behavioral masking for genuine psychological shift. Personality traits are defined by their stability and enduring nature, independent of active intervention. If a change requires constant, conscious maintenance (the "medicine"), it is by definition a coping strategy, not a personality trait. This indicates the underlying neurotic structure is still present, just temporarily suppressed. You don’t cure type one diabetes by taking insulin; you manage it. Any new intervention (yoga, journaling) creates a temporary lift in mood and self-efficacy (the Placebo effect or Novelty effect). Measuring immediately at the peak of this novelty does not account for the very common regression to the mean that inevitably follows. And here is a basic demonstration of why you do RCT with proper non-subjective measures for outcome. She writes: "I had wanted to change for the sake of this article... Answering questions like this helped push me up the percentiles." She asserts that answering the questions differently proved she changed, rather than proving she simply learned how to answer the test to get the desired result. Introverts can behave like extroverts, but it costs them metabolic and psychic energy. Extroverts gain energy from it. She conflates social skills (which can be learned) with extroversion (a biological orientation toward reward sensitivity). And even if I practice mindfulness for years myself, I’m extremely skeptical about over the top claims surrounding it. But a highly neurotic patient can learn mindfulness to manage panic attacks. They are still high in trait Neuroticism (highly sensitive to threat), but they have better "software" to handle the hardware. The article claims the hardware itself has been swapped out, which is an annoying oversimplification for readers. So in summary, this article goes against everything I have seen in my practice, it doesn’t understand the concepts in question, and it’s not even internally logically coherent. So basically just as bad as every other mainstream article I ever read on psychology.