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Researching Your Psyche

It is usually possible to discern a structure to people's difficulties
in which internal states and external events continually
recreate the conditions for the reoccurrence of each other

 —  Paul Wachtel

Sometimes you do things you wish you could take back. Regrettably, you cannot; your actions have become part of world history. You can apologize for your actions, but you cannot undo them. If there is a recurring pattern to your misfortunes, it is more likely due to the way you react to the things that happen than to repeated bad luck or Divine persecution. The silver lining: You can research these recurring patterns and discover the causes of the unwanted effects and use your understanding of cause-and-effect to influence the way things play out henceforth.

The Space Between Stimulus & Response

Mimi's emotional reaction was determined by her interpretation of the antecedent event. You might have reacted quite differently to that same event, which suggests that the space between the Stimulus and Response is different for you than for Mimi. Personal research is designed to reveal what is going on in that space.

Recurring patterns of bad outcome, as unpleasant as they are to think about, enable you to study the sequence of antecedent events and consequent emotional reactions so you can research what causes this unwanted path of least resistance.

Begin your exploration by identifying the antecedent condition, the stimulus that seemed to trigger your reaction. This is just the nominal stimulus; someone else may react differently to the same antecedent event.  It is not the event per se that causes your emotional reaction, it's your interpretation of the event. The critical information lies in the space between the Stimulus and your Response. Specifically, how you interpret the antecedent event determines your reaction to it.

Our challenge is that the beliefs and premises that are responsible for your interpretation are so deeply ingrained that they may be hard for you to see. To do this personal research, you have to get outside of the beliefs you automatically accept as valid and look at things from the dispassionate perspective of an observer. You will have to put aside all your assumptions — even those you have used since childhood — so you can do this research.

Accessing the Wisdom

According to Aristotle: "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." To acquire this knowledge, you are about to begin a program of personal research in which you will explore the space between Stimulus and Response.

Some general principles to guide your personal research

  1. Subjective experience is state-dependent — that is, phenomena such as perception and motivation are greatly influenced by your current emotional state. When you are feeling threatened, your perceptions and motivations are biased differently than when you are feeling confident.
    • State-dependent biases are always invisible when you are under their influence; however, you will be able to recognize the distortions in hindsight [your reactions always seem justifiable at the moment they occur; the folly is often frustratingly obvious in retrospect].

  2. Your subjective reality is your creation and is biased by your biological predispositions and your current emotional/motivational state, your psychological history, and current social environment. Nevertheless, as an adult with access to good cognitive abilities, you are responsible for getting the creature you inhabit to act in accord with your interests and principles — despite encounters with stressors and temptations that motivate you to defect.

  3. Perseverance is the key to good outcome. Training the creature you inhabit to respond mindfully in emotionally provocative situations takes patience and perseverance.
    • Research shows that people with high self-efficacy can tolerate discomfort and setbacks without giving up. People with low self-efficacy tend to abandon the effort as soon as they run into discomfort or setbacks. If this is an issue for you (and it likely is) please review: Perseverance and Self-Efficacy.

  4. Changing what you think. Some premises are false and harmful. Nevertheless, they may have a Darwinian advantage over more valid and helpful ways of looking at things. Once you buy into a handicapping premise, the bad outcome it promotes reinforces the premise. To inoculate yourself against this recursive trap, here is a list of Popular Thinking Errors.

  5. Changing how you think. To recognize thinking errors, you have to get outside your thought processes so you can observe them. This requires the awareness that your interpretation of reality is a map created by your nervous system. Engaging in Personal Research involves frequent shifts of perspective that distinguish your map from the reality it is attempting to represent.

 

 

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