Notes on the Symbolic Self

Notes on the Symbolic Self

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” –Joan Didion

      The symbolic self has been proposed as an evolutionary adaptation unique to the human species.  Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that symbolic self-awareness likely emerged from previous and less sophisticated self-referential capacities including subjective self-awareness and objective self-awareness.  It follows then that mere subjective self-awareness leads a self-concept—a feature shared throughout the animal kingdom.  Objective self-awareness is observed higher level organisms including some primates, allowing for an objectified self.  Human self-awareness is an achievement of a highly sophisticate self-referential system that can be conceived of and communicate in symbolic form.  Sidikes and Skowronski distinguish its key features:

1.       Form an abstract cognitive representation through language

2.       Communicate this symbolic self to other organisms and negotiate content with others to establish personal and social relationships

3.       Set social and achievement goals that prompted by the symbolic self far into the future

4.       Perform goal guided behavior

5.       Evaluate the outcome of these goals and whether behavior have fulfilled relevant goals

6.       Link behavioral outcomes to feelings toward the symbolic self (pride—achievement, embarrassment over failure)

7.       Defend the symbolic self against events and ideas through several strategies, such as avoidance of negative feedback, derogation of negative evaluators, rejection of negative feedback, and self-deception.

       I won’t go into all of the literature that this was drawn from, nor can I address the massive amounts of literature that have focused on number 7 over the past three decades.  1 and 2 seem like no brainers. 3-6 are fruitful areas of study, noteworthy because they are exceedingly complex and therefore prone to behavioral outcomes at odds with goals.  Human beings are routinely bad at judgment and evaluation of performance in pursuit of stated goals.  When we are bad at performance we tend to look for ways to change the rules of the game, or decide that the goal was not really what we desired.  Why? Because pride feels better than embarrassment.  There is certainly a protective advantage to number 7 that contributes to self-esteem.  The optimism piece that I posted previously illustrates how to evaluate and modify negative thinking patterns.  We are prone to those, especially in the face of repeated obstacles. Unfortunately, the conditions under which we currently live seem to present obstacle after obstacle.

      The mind evolved from a set of constraints that is very different than today, and this is particularly important to remember.  As noted above, it appears that evolution has provided this unique capacity of symbolic self-awareness that contributed greatly to the establishment of human societies.  But, what now that we have human societies, and what questions should we ask about awareness?  Cognitive psychologists and behavioral economists continue to poke holes in our notions of what we believe we are aware.  When we talk of evolutionary adaptation there is a tendency to think of it as an unmitigated success.  We risk the naturalistic fallacy.  Success as species does not entail that everything about the species is advantageous. This was best articulated in by college Biology professor—natural selection’s chief motive is reproduction and yet we have the scrotum, half of the species reproductive capacity is housed outside of the human body, which makes you question whether thousands of years of humor was the goal.

     This is also why you should laugh at anyone who makes social Darwinist arguments.  Natural selection explains the flourishing of our society in a competitive environment, not treating the less fortunate and poor as subhuman, lazy, or lacking whatever virtue you can conceive to explain your own success.  But, hey at least natural selection equipped you with the cognitive mechanisms to rationalize, otherwise you would subsist in a constant state of despair over the actual conditions of the world.

     This is particularly important for the present circumstances we face. If you look at number seven you can see the conditions of almost any outgroup that has taken on a type of cultish devotion: avoidance of negative feedback, derogation of negative evaluators, rejection of negative feedback, and self-deception.  And here you have the recipe for cognitive dissonance.  I am increasingly convinced that trauma and anxiety, both individual and community, drive these conditions.  It would make sense that protective evolutionary mechanisms would become salient in the most stressful conditions.  It would make sense that a community that has been traumatized would move toward inclinations for self-protection. And if you extrapolate further you have the conditions for tribalism that have beset our culture. 

     The problem—none of them are adequate enough to be perfectly true.  In the case of trauma it is true that the event is over, even if your brain responds otherwise.  In the community it may be true that the economy does not work, crime is pervasive, etc—but this is not true everywhere and all the time. (the notes on optimism—permanent, personal, pervasive are antecedents for helplessness).  It is very difficult for someone to recognize this when their lived experience tells them otherwise.  It takes a certain flexibility in thinking to transcend this.  The symbolic self is the mechanism through which we make meaning of the world.  It is far from perfect.  If it was, none of us would make mistakes.

The purpose of the past writings, and the ones that will follow are to serve as a template for a map out of suffering.  For the purpose of consistency and because it is an essential point, I will reiterate that this worked for me.  I have no idea if it will work for you.  You will have to find your own map.  What I can share is that years of experience in counseling, my academic work in the past three to four years, personal experiences, and the level of support that I have received from others have allowed me to be self-reflective enough to intuit, apply, and note what worked and what did not. 

     One of the other great insights that neuroscience has revealed in the past decade is just how much of the memory is a creative process.  As it turns, there is a creative process that takes place when we retrieve memory.  Cognitive psychologists have recognized that this one of the distinguishing traits of human beings.  It is not that we are alone in the animal kingdom with the capacity for creative problem solving, but we are in the extent to which we can use this capacity to manipulate our environment to suit our purposes.  The symbolic self allows us to do this on such a remarkable scale that it would almost certainly position our species for evolutionary success. 

      A second and equally important achievement in cognitive and evolutionary psychology was the recognition of the modularity of the mind.  (This is extensively reviewed in Why Buddhism is True) This might be a bit dated, I am not super fond of the term, and neither is the author.  I think that network is a better conceptualization.  Modularity lends itself to the old notions of phrenology, and while it is true that certain functions correspond to regions of the brain, I believe that it is much more likely that when we talk about mind, it is the collection of multiple nodes in multiple regions of the brain that contribute to an activity that we interpret as the self at any given moment in time. 

The huge advantage of consciousness is that we have the capacity to recognize this and attend to it.  This was one of the single most important insights that helped me in my own suffering.  Thoughts and feelings think themselves, a great deal of human mental activity is unconscious and has to be, and all I have is the capacity from moment to moment to choose what I attend to. The mind is easily drawn to autopilot, because a vast collection of nodes firing away at any given moment competes for attention. This is what rumination does, pulls you away from the moment to attend to other things. 

      Rumination is a signal to the mind that something is not resolved.  This is exponentially compounded in cases of trauma, grief, and despair.  It is exhausting, but it is by no means a hopeless situation.  The insight that helped get me out of this obstacle was that I had the ability to select which module/network I wanted active.  I would occasionally wake up from an ugly dream, that I had no recollection of, just that lingering feeling of dread.  I simply told myself that this was not the network that I wanted in charge.  I want to stress the word “simply” because the insight was simple.  It was by no means simple to remind myself of this countless times throughout the day.  It is the practice of the action in this insight that helped.

     Taken together, what I am hoping to hammer home here is that the symbolic self is a powerful module that evolution has provided to protect us.  It is by no means perfect, because human beings are nowhere near perfect.  Under normal conditions we make thinking errors when presented with choices. Stress increases the likelihood, simply placing people under a time constraint increases the likelihood of making less than optimal choices.  Massive amounts of stress over prolonged periods makes it even more difficult.  Modern life has left us with enough stress to buckle any given day of the week.  And these conditions are draining, which increases suffering, which feeds isolation, and makes us identify so strongly with the self that it is hard to escape.  At the group level—we are the aggrieved, we are under attack, we are the persecuted.  At the individual level—it’s not that this is necessarily untrue, it is necessarily incomplete.

     It is not an inescapable position.  I am not suggesting that we can abandon the symbolic self, it is who we were and what we’ve carried, and it protects us in countless ways.  But, I intentionally use the word “were” because it’s not who we are.  Who we are is the process unfolding, moment by moment.  We are getting to the heart of what Maslow sought in the psychology of being.  Positive psychology has returned to this footing and holds great promise. One of the great therapeutic advancements in the treatment of trauma has been the development of Narrative Therapy.  Neuroscience and cognitive psychology have confirmed the creative processes that undergird memory.  Our great human capacity for creativity is also our remedy. Positive psychology helps to drive a better narrative.

      The stoics believed that the obstacle was the way, and sometimes the symbolic self is the obstacle. The symbolic self is the residue of living, a narrative for where we were.  If we are dissatisfied with that narrative, we have the option for writing a new narrative.  No easy feat, but we can learn to be better as with any skill. The symbolic self is the autobiographer, and has a gift for fiction. And, the lines between fiction and autobiographical elements has never been solid. 

To recap:

1.       The symbolic self was product of evolution selected because it conferred advantages to the species.

2.       It is not you, it is a mental representation of you

3.       The mind is a product of unconscious and conscious activity in a multiplicity of networks that compete for attention

4.       We have the capacity to attend to and manipulate mental schema (creativity)

5.       This function allows us to write new narrative(s)

6.       The world is neutral, it is not default negative, but we are prone to remembering and encoding negative information much more intensely and thoroughly than positive information

7.       Cognitive strategies (CBT, DBT, REBT) can help us to correct thinking errors, positive psychology allows us to build the pathways out.

Notes on suffering, DBT, and Buddhism

              I am giving some attention this week to the issue of suffering.  Two people whom I care about deeply, reached out to me this week.  Since, I have been digesting all of this social psychology material, and study of Buddhism, and spirituality in general, I figured I would offer some thoughts.  This is not advice, I cannot assure you it will work for you—more and more I notice people tune out when you start talking about mindfulness.  Have you tried meditation is becoming a bit of a punchline.  I can only share that I too have suffered deeply, and somehow achieved a massive release—personal and professional experiences collided in ways I would not have anticipated.  In many ways I am still making sense of it all.  If you wish to read no further, I will offer that this writing will address the book Why Buddhism is True, Mindfulness, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) which I practiced as a counselor for a number of years.

              Although, I have repeatedly evangelized about the book Why Buddhism is True, I have not shared personal reasons as to why it was so compelling.  People who worked with me years ago will recognize a similar evangelism I had for DBT.  That is because it works.  I saw it work.  I was sometimes chided—“yes, but it does not work for everything!”  Well of course, what does work for everything?  But, some of the reasons that I think DBT works, is the same reason why Buddhism is true—Richard Wright’s thesis.  And shit, that guy should be giving me royalties by now.  In my practice of psychotherapy I often saw two important features—skill acquisition and development, and insight.  Insight is episodic, and I suspect that it happens similarly to other cognitive and deep spiritual experiences like revelation. Skills application is the mundane, difficult, mechanical process—the hours of meditation spent redirecting a wandering mind.

              I would say that the personal relevance for me in Why Buddhism is True, came from chapter 13 on the lesson of tanha.  I had grasped the whole Buddhist concept of suffering: we suffer because we desire.  It really is not a complicated concept.  Our desire to apprehend something, whether it be another person, money, etc—all of this materialism is about gaining something. And so I meditated, sometimes up to two hours a day, at different intervals.  I repeatedly told myself that it was because I wanted these material things, and yet I still could not escape something.  And this, chapter clarified everything I had been getting wrong up to that point.  The idea of tanha also extends to what we don’t want to feel.  We are essentially, trying to grasp and obtain a version of our self that does not hurt.  Good luck with that, you will have to escape the self.  I only found one path forward; I’m not foolish enough to say it is the only way forward.  What I can tell you is that it got progressively easier because I was able—and again fortunate, to make necessary connections.

              Why does mindfulness meditation work?  Because your mind wanders.  And we live in an environment built with distractions, responsibility, and hardship.  And for many of us those stressors are not going anywhere and they require response.  But, a great amount of what we respond to does not require a response because it has no solution.  A ton of our human problems are simply irresolute, but through time.  Go ahead and dwell as hard as you want about something in the next year, I guarantee you don’t come closer now.  I used to see this commonly, and it was easily observable because I do it.  It is human. I would say that a great amount of our human misery is bookended by two phenomenon—our desire to apprehend the past (correct mistakes) and our desire to apprehend the future (control anxiety/avoid pain).

Past                                                                Present                                                          Future

ß-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------à

If you routinely find your thoughts  like "I should have, could have, would have"….you are trying to correct a mistake.  It’s a thinking error, time moves one direction.  If you are plagued by “what if” at the other end of the continuum, you are trying to assert control over the future.  It’s an illusion.  There is great line in positive psychology:  I don’t control my destiny, but I do control my probabilities.  This is true, you can only exercise control and correct mistakes when something is apparent, and that is often times only in the moment.  Forgive yourself for the mistakes you made, acknowledge you will do your best in the future.  Remind yourself you are human, you will fail again.  As Samuel Beckett said: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail better.

          I want to tell you this--It is not easy.  Life drags you a way from the moment with its countless demands and stimuli.  There is also horrific pain and suffering.  I will try to place this in the most secular terms, but I am going to use the concept of a soul. There is actually a psychologist who studies the “soul.”  More accurately, what we might traditionally refer to as a self.  There are other terms including personality, ego, spirit, etc—but they tend to have a limit to capturing a certain essence that we recognize about the experience of the self.  Why Buddhism is True may well flip many of your assumptions. So for the purpose of this writing I will refer to the soul to try to characterize a certain essence that some may believe transcends the mind and body. 

              I would offer a theory that trauma pins the soul to the brain and body.  It is a profound injury to the brain, and as such the brain’s software (the mind) gets glitchy, pulled inexorably again and again from the moment to attend to whatever is throbbing.  These are analogies of course, but the fact of the matter is that pain—even physical pain resides in the mind, and not anywhere else.  Your experience of pain is nothing more than a signal from the body.  This is easily proven by the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and other neurological conditions where something goes wrong with the signal/perception system.  But, this is extraordinarily complicated when the pain signal is in the brain/mind. 

              The mind is the only path to managing this, and for that reason the pain management clinics are now teaching mindfulness meditation.   The professor who trained under for internship used to say there is a difference between pain and misery.  Misery is what the mind adds to pain.  And when we have a mental injury, as in the case of trauma, it is much, much harder to get free from the pain, because the mental mechanisms have likely been injured in the process.  This is why I have taken to distinguishing between mind, soul, and brain.  These are semantic labels, but I know no other way to explain it.  The positivist will say this is all nonsense and that it is just the brain.  But, the positivist will run into limitations applying science to human experience, that’s why we have poets and novelists.

              I would sometimes hear patients say, meditation yes, tried it—it didn’t work.  I would hear similar things when I worked with parents on behavior coaching, time out—tried it, it didn’t work.  Except they do.  They are not applicable to every problem, or the expectation was probably too high.  If you thought mindfulness meditation was going to stop your suffering, it’s akin to sitting down to the piano and expecting to slip right into Chopin.  It’s not that I can’t play the piano, it’s that I play the piano really shitty.  Unless you like Heart and Soul, then I am ok. 

              The other thing is that sometimes the tool just isn’t the right tool.  With regard to meditation, I have found sometimes that I need guided meditation when I can’t get my mind settled, sometimes I can get it from walking meditation, sometimes I can get it quiet enough that it is just my breath.  And this lesson applies to the DBT skills too.  I would see this in therapy also, when I taught deep breathing with panic attacks—again, tried that it didn’t work, can the doctor just give me Xanax?  Sure, but you will build a tolerance, and then you will have untreated anxiety and dependence.  The model that I would suggest is that some tasks require more than one tool.  Distract is another skill in DBT.  It works, but it does not work for everything.  Radical Acceptance is sometimes the skill that is necessary.  Sometimes, you need to do mindfulness meditation, non-judgment, and distract, just to get to silence.  They build from each other, and sometimes you arrive back at Radical Acceptance.

              To return to the original example I was using on my own suffering.  I was stuck in a space where I could not seem to get free from emotions that were unpleasant, and this was propelled by a drive to apprehend something that was not possible, and so I began to let it go.  This desire to not hurt, it is no different than any other desire to be something we are not at the given moment we are provided.  It is the same mental mechanism that allows me to day dream about the better job that will provide me more money and prestige, and allow me to be something other than the person I am now.  It is hard to be a hurting person.  In fact, it is quite possible that a byproduct of evolution is that we can dream and reflect and that this has propelled our species to unimaginable heights. It allows us momentarily to escape pain.  But, it also comes with a cost.  We don’t get to live there.  And there is a cost to trying to live there—correcting the past or trying to control the future: it takes enormous mental energy.  You return to the broken and hurting body, it never went anywhere, it was here waiting for you to get ok with hurting.

stuff on optimism and explanatory style

More dissertation stuff that I thought might be helpful.  I am tossing this stuff off in the wake and there is a good reason.  It all connects with a larger purpose that I have been getting at.  I may talk about that at some point, but for now feel free to make use of anything in here and follow up with me if I fail to explain this adequately.  I can assure that it is helpful for me, because a lot of this is being incorporated into dissertation, and I would much prefer you telling me that I am making no sense, as opposed to my dissertation panel.  The other point, I have been tremendously fortunate for certain life experiences, support, and professional experience that have guided this process.  I want to point out that this is an ongoing process, and part of the reason for the blog posts is that it helps to clarify my thinking and update the model that will eventually comprise much of my academic work.

As a result, I see things that I had not seen before, and by occasional circumstance, I find that I am doing these things almost unconsciously.  And this fits with the research on automaticity—a ridiculously surprising amount of our daily mental functioning is done automatically.  Self-awareness is a challenge, some have a natural gift, others—I am convinced are nearly devoid of this capacity.  I don’t wish to sound self-laudatory, but I have achieved some gains in this area in the past three months.  It was hard-earned, I assure you.  There were days where I did nearly two hours of meditation, albeit at intervals, and the right readings on Zen hit me in the right moments.  (I still know nothing of Zen, so don’t ask me about it).  What am I getting at, the self-awareness helped me to recognize a change in thought that occurred at the gym tonight.  And this goes to the previous reading on hope.

While, I was having one of the many daily conversations in my head, there was a self-talk statement I caught distinctly—“when I finish my dissertation.”  I can tell you that anyone who has been close to me in the last year will recognize the transition from “if I can finish this dissertation.”  And this fascinates me, one because I am fascinated by psychology, and probably preternaturally self-absorbed (see not even close to Zen).  I have no idea the moment that my mind had decided that I would finish dissertation as opposed to endless fretting over the prospect—that is there was no conscious moment I can detect.  This again, lends support to previous posts about goal setting and motivation and why it is so much more complicated than many people recognize.

So, how did I arrive at a position of hope—and this is hope, in the definition of Hope Theory which concerns agentic and pathway thinking.  I recognized that it was problem because I had also achieved a certain level of optimism.  Please don’t ask at this point, I don’t have the time or space to explain the difference between hope and optimism, and I really don’t want to bore you.  Just trust.  A chance conversation this evening helped me to fill in a crucial detail that builds on the previous post.  Optimism is a better place to start with this whole thing.  In the previous post, I think I wrote something about gratitude being one of the antecedents to hope, that still stands, do it.  Plus, it feels good to express gratitude to others and that will place you in a more positive affective state.  And now, it makes sense to me why hope follows.

One of the single most important books that I read for this project was Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism.  If you have had Psych 101 you might recall the learned helplessness experiments with dogs. Conditions were set so that the dogs would literally give up in situations that became hopeless, and the purpose of the experiment was to show that it was a cognitive mechanism that produced this effect.  This was at a time where behaviorism still remained a dominant theory for human behavior.  What a lot of people outside of Psych 101 may not be aware, is that the latter portion of the experiment involved reversing the conditions.  The dogs eventually regained hope, once they perceived that their behavioral choices mattered.  The truly revolutionary discovery was that if helplessness could be learned, the opposite was true—hence a theory of learned optimism.

This comprised the bulk of Seligman’s work through the advent of the Positive Psychology movement he helped initiate in 2000 as president of the APA.  In Seligman’s book on optimism there is plenty of research to support his position, optimism is linked to better physical and mental health, wellbeing, authentic happiness, academic and work performance.  The long-term consequences for a condition of helplessness and hopelessness are bleak.  Research supports this, and that is why there is an urgency to Seligman’s work.  He went on to write the Optimistic Child for good reason.  Helplessness and hopelessness can be rewired with the proper cognitive exercise.  It is my guess that this is not being taught in schools.

If you have read these essays in order you will follow my concern.  The conditions of the present world for many of us are filled with risk.  The consequences of despair, trauma, and addiction are everywhere and they are cumulative.  I would guess that this is 80% of what I was trying to treat as a behavioral health professional.  This is why burnout is exceptionally high.  The 20% of symptomology that can be treated with medication and therapy is ground up and spit out by unrelenting and unforgiving societal conditions.  

Fortunately, the cognitive exercise that I was speaking about in the preceding paragraphs is actually quite simple, but it takes consistent application.  And that is ten times more difficult when consumed with the day’s unrelenting and unforgiving stresses.  This is one of the reasons that therapy as it is presently delivered has limited outcomes.  Sometimes, coaching is the necessary intervention.  I tell you sometimes you are treating despair, not depression.

So, optimism can be learned.  It actually rests on a fairly simple cognitive mechanism called explanatory style.  I have mountains of research that supports this and you can message me if you would like, but I can save you the read and just offer you the synopsis.  The stories we tell ourselves matter, and the stories that we tell ourselves about our “selves” matter even more.  If you have read the previous essays, I hope I made the case that this is way more complicated than you think it is.  Buddhism suggests that everything before us is an illusion to a degree.  Cognitive psychology supports this contention by exposing how tremendously faulty intuition can be. 

In an effort to leave you in a condition of optimism I am attaching an exercise I developed in my coaching class.  Actually, the handout is just the development, the exercise is credited to Seligman, who built on Albert Ellis’ theory.  Go ahead and tamper with your cognitions, it helped me move past a number of obstacles.  And remember the Stoics believed that the obstacle was the way.

and since i have no idea how to do attachments on here I will cut and paste.  email me if you want a hard copy:

From M. E. P. Seligman (2006)  Learned Optimism.  Credited to Albert Ellis A,B,C,D,E model for altering explanatory style.

Adversity

Belief

Consequence

Disputation

Energization

When confronted with a feeling of pessimism, practice recording what the adverse event is, and the consequences that follow.  There are often belief structures that are influencing the chain of logic in ways that we often fail to catch and address adequately. Skip over belief momentarily. What follows is a generic example of what this might look like in a work setting, but the model is certainly applicable for personal situations common in counseling and coaching:

Adversity:  This meeting is awful, this new supervisor wants to change everything, she doesn’t understand how the system works, it’s clear from what she is saying.  She’s very direct, and the repeated statements “these are my expectations” is really annoying.

Belief:

Consequence:  Feeling: loss of morale.  I had been thinking of applying for the open position which could be a good opportunity.  I can’t imagine that she would give me a good reference.  Start to feel despair—there is going to be all kinds of change, and I’m not sure I have the energy for all of this.

Following the consequence complete the beliefs that you find animating the feelings found within.

Belief:  You aren’t going to be able to tolerate change like this, especially if you don’t get out of this department.  You are way more qualified than what the position offers and if you stay in the position you will be stuck with no opportunity. You clearly annoyed her the other day when you inquired about the other department.

After the beliefs have been properly identified and noted, the fourth step is to move to disputation.  This is the active component in which the belief system is challenged for “pervasive, permanent, and personal” thinking.

Disputation:  First, you have zero evidence that this observation of “annoyance” had anything to do with you.  She seems incredibly direct and demanding, but she also mentioned that she is managing two departments and extremely busy.  You even acknowledged that you are extremely qualified for the position, but do you even want it necessarily?  You are busy, you enjoy the current set up working from home, this will bring added responsibility at a time that you are plenty busy enough.  It is not the end of the world if you don’t get it, because there is a very good chance you may go onto something much different after completing school.

The majority of the sentiments in the belief section have been effectively disputed and challenged by more balanced information/perceptions.  The final step is energization in which we respond with action to mitigate anxiety/pessimism that may have been influence the cycle.

Energization:  All you can do is apply to the open position, maybe it would be helpful to pro/con accepting the position.  Since she noted that she is busy, perhaps you might look for opportunities to offer additional support, she did send an email asking questions about certain procedures and requesting suggestions. (Email was later sent detailing a recommendation). Continue to focus on school, it’s way more important than a position change.

Here is what the complete logic chain would look like:

Adversity:  This meeting is awful, this new supervisor wants to change everything, she doesn’t understand how the system works, it’s clear from what she is saying.  She’s very direct, and the repeated statements “these are my expectations” is really annoying.

Belief:  You aren’t going to be able to tolerate change like this, especially if you don’t get out of this department.  You are way more qualified than what the position offers and if you stay in the position you will be stuck with no opportunity. You clearly annoyed her the other day when you inquired about the other department.

Consequence:  Feeling: loss of morale.  I had been thinking of applying for the open position which could be a good opportunity.  I can’t imagine that she would give me a good reference.  Start to feel despair—there is going to be all kinds of change, and I’m not sure I have the energy for all of this.

Disputation:  First, you have zero evidence that this observation of “annoyance” had anything to do with you.  She seems incredibly direct and demanding, but she also mentioned that she is managing two departments and extremely busy.  You even acknowledged that you are extremely qualified for the position, but do you even want it necessarily?  You are busy, you enjoy the current set up working from home, this will bring added responsibility at a time that you are plenty busy enough.  It is not the end of the world if you don’t get it, because there is a very good chance you may go onto something much different after completing school.

Energization:  All you can do is apply to the open position, maybe it would be helpful to pro/con accepting the position.  Since she noted that she is busy, perhaps you might look for opportunities to offer additional support, she did send an email asking questions about certain procedures and requesting suggestions. (Email was later sent detailing a recommendation). Continue to focus on school, it’s way more important than a position change.

Commentary on Hope Theory and More Griping on What We Are Getting Wrong

Commentary on Hope Theory and More Griping on What We Are Getting Wrong

              I am posting this piece as a part of the series of writings I am doing in relation to pursuit of my dissertation.  They are also an effort to document and process the thoughts and experiences of the last decade.  They will also reflect the deep concern that I feel presently, that almost every institution is failing us.  As a Father of three I am terribly concerned I am most concerned about the education system and healthcare.  Since, I am not an expert in education I will not spend as much attention there.  But, I will start with a gripe to illustrate my concern.  I have sat with my son and worked on math homework.  I have no fucking idea what he is doing.  Not math.  I know math.  I know how to teach someone math.  I don’t know how to put a number in a magical box that blends with another number that you put into an acorn and feed to the squirrel illustration at the output of the magical box.  That’s not even how squirrels find acorns and it’s my guess that we aren’t doing well in biology either.

              What was wrong with the abacus? I am also concerned about reading.  At the risk of sounding horribly pretentious, I wonder how will my children encounter Shakespeare, Whitman, Frost, e.e cummings, Plath (we will hold off on her for a bit)?  I found these in 11^th grade, and literature has probably sustained me to this point in my life.  However, this was incidental to the larger picture.  At that time, I was disengaged almost entirely with the education system.  I was increasingly alienated from what would have been considered normal or average social behavior, if that even means anything in high school.  But, I had this interest in literature that blended with my delinquency—I recall shoplifting Robert Frost.  Sometimes, a pang of guilt hits me and I think of B. Dalton going out of business and that I may have contributed to it, but that is probably grandiosity.  This is mostly digression, but does illustrate my larger point that I want my children to have something they are passionate about, and I worry that they may not have the luck that I had in just happening on it. 

              I remember concluding, I guess it is on me then.  I can’t expect that the children will be exposed to the content that I would hope, because I am increasingly losing hope that the education system in its present trajectory is going to do that.  And this pisses me off, because I pay a shit ton in local taxes.  And, it pisses me off because I am a single parent, and there is literally only so much time in the day, and between dinner and other activities I simply don’t have time to learn magical math.  I know how to carry numbers, I can do long division.  And, I am fortunate enough that I have another parent.  I have a number of friends that are 24/7 single parenting.  I really have no idea how you do it.  I want you to know that I think of you often when I am at my lowest, and unable to find motivation to read another journal article, take the daughter to girl scouts, attend to the youngest who just punched his brother who has mastered playing Mr. Innocent. 

              I know that I sometimes express gratitude openly, emotionally, and unabashedly, to the point that some might suspect I am getting at something.  But, I can tell you that it is because of pure recognition of how lucky I am.  None of what I have achieved was possible without others, and I have been so close to failure at times, and so close to giving up, exhausted physically and emotionally to points that it was a struggle to get out of bed. Yet, I get to pick up and start again, step ever closer to the thousand daydreams that occupy my mind.  I am increasingly convinced that I find this “hope” because of the interdependence and stability afforded to me by the network around me.  I get to pursue this dissertation because I have a remarkable degree of freedom, and that comes from trust in family and friends, which in turn creates accountability.  I express gratitude because it is so easy to miss, ignore, or dismiss the countless good deeds and gestures that others offer me daily.

              All of this is on my mind because I have been reading on Hope Theory.  It comprises one of the four cornerstones of my dissertation project.  I have been reading on it for the past three years.  Sometimes, it morphs into something different than what I assumed it was saying.  I come back to it, sometimes an insight occurs that I never noted before, or it combines with an experience that crystalizes everything.  This is where I am at, and I am sharing because of concerns that emerged from my own experiences as a parent and because of the past 20 years working in the behavioral health system, which comprises one of the poorest areas of functioning in our healthcare system.   I also see similar parallels with the education system that I anecdotally described at the outset.

              First, do not pin your hopes on the mental health system.  It is under resourced and not up to the task that society sets before it.  It might work in an ideal condition where the social safety net was not a cruel joke.  And this is not to say that there are not outstanding providers or good treatment available.  It is, and I have seen enough people make remarkable progress.  Acute mental illness is often responsive to medication.  I have seen people make remarkable progress in therapy as well.  My concern is much more systemic and that is where a great deal of the present suffering is inadequately addressed. 

              I recall an opinion piece in the New York Times written by a psychologist who lamented that we were losing the ability to treat despair.  This was when I was about 15 years ago, when I was entering a master’s degree in counseling.  It remains prescient and timely.  Again, acute depression responds well to medication and therapy, and this is about the only thing that our mental health system seems capable of delivering.  As such, you may manage to recovery from the physical symptoms of depression—your sleep cycle may adjust, you may become less fidgety, less bothered by intrusive thoughts.  But, I probably have done little to treat the underlying conditions driving despair—broken communities, drug addiction, trauma, etc.  You come to my office, you get 50 minutes, I teach you how to toy with your cognitions, I provide you a label that insurance mandates in order that I get paid, so I can be effective and not worried about continuously slipping out of the middle class myself, the next person will be at the door shortly, you will leave with some type of gnawing issue that is incompletely resolved, but you can return next week, and pretty soon we will celebrate your success and graduate you from the program.  I will make sure to document it all, so as not to be sued or fired, and if you have a problem I will direct you to the grievance policy.  And truthfully, throughout this process I will never have actually known you.      

              So, what am I getting at?  Like, the education issue, it’s on us.  I hate to sound so incredibly bleak.  It’s not that psychology, or counseling, or psychiatry is failing us, it does reduce a significant amount of suffering.  It is that it is failing in its present delivery.  Professional experience and research led me to conclude that we are not effectively addressing suicidality, trauma, and addiction.  I think everyone is aware of this.  It was only in stepping outside of direct practice that I began to recognize how horribly misaligned we are. The market ideology that dominates healthcare delivery produces a system further removed from care.  We spend an enormous amount to maintain a system that produces health outcomes beneath countries that spend a fraction.  What do I mean when I say don’t depend on the system?  I am concerned that it provides false comfort.  You drop your loved one off for treatment of depression (when it is actually despair) or you check them into a rehab for treatment.  Far too often the outcome is suicide or overdose.  And families are left to pick up and now respond to trauma, and puzzle over what was missed. 

              I was fortunate enough to be pouring over this research at the right time in my life to make sense of where I think we are failing.  It is my hope that I can provide some insights to friends and family because I am optimistic about certain features in positive psychology that have simply been underdeveloped.  First, the research on hope and optimism has solid scientific evidence that we are on to something even if the present system is failing in its delivery.  I was reading in The Psychology of Hope by C.R. Snyder that in experiments hope was more predictive of success in treatment when depression was controlled for.  In other words, interventions aimed at boosting hope may be more effective than standard treatment.  Seligman has done extensive work on optimism, and has similarly found that optimism is also more predictive of wellbeing.

              These books, and streams of research are now 20-30 years old.  I thought about this the other night, as I continue to dwell on what has gone so horribly wrong in our practice.  The Snyder book was published in 1992.  For me, this roughly coincides with the takeoff of managed care.  When I speak to former therapists, I often hear that they left the field because it was either no longer profitable, or no longer enjoyable, or too much of a burden, etc.  You will hear roughly the same sentiments when you speak to educators and their beliefs about No Child Left Behind.  Did you know that there is increasing alarm about the presence of suicide and burnout amongst medical professionals and recent medical school graduates?  If you read my previous post on self-determination, you will see that each of these systems moves its practitioners further from autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  Autonomy—we are beholden to some metric of “accountability.”  Relatedness—we have no time to work with the actual human being before us.  Competence—I have no time to develop my practice because I am checking boxes, avoiding lawsuits, or documenting.  I may be required to leave the profession altogether if I cannot endure it long enough to pay off my loans.

              We should be hopeful for what exactly?  Well, keep in mind that this is a system, that while it is stressful, it says very little about you as a human being and your innate ability to generate hope.  This is a capacity in each of us, it is just presently difficult to achieve due to the multitude of complaints and gripes that I leveled in the previous paragraphs.  Hope Theory suggests that hope is a byproduct of two iterative cognitive processes a) agency thinking and b) pathways thinking.  This is sometimes referred to as waypower and willpower.   Hope is the product of effective agency thinking—I can accomplish this, and pathway thinking—this is the path to reaching my goal.  My next essay in this series will address goal-setting because despite what we may intuitively believe—that we know and excel at setting our own goals, there is a great deal of illusion present.  In fact, goal-setting way more complicated than people appreciate.  The cognitive mechanisms and their inherent biases that have been illuminated by behavioral economists are pervasive in the arena of decision-making.

To recap: hope—is the product of agency and pathway.

Toy with setting small achievable goals. It builds from this point.

Find someone for whom you are thankful and express gratitude.  Research support that gratitude increases hope.

Feel free to pm me on any of this, even if you disagree, it will force me to know the material better.  I will be grateful.

Positive Psychology, Self-Determination, and Behavioral Economics

Positive Psychology and Self-Determination and Behavioral Economics

The January 2000 issue of American Psychologist introduced Positive Psychology to a wider audience. The broad umbrella of the Positive Psychology movement covered a number of streams of social science research that had been accumulating for decades.  This range of subjects included, but was not limited to evolutionary psychology, happiness and optimism, behavioral economics, and goal setting and motivation.  Interestingly, (if this is your thing) there were two articles that addressed self-determination:

Self-Determination Theory: The Tyranny of Freedom by Barry Schwartz 

https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1/self-determination.pdf

Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-being.  Richard Ryan and Edward Deci

Schwartz largely approaches the topic from a Behavioral Economics perspective, and it is worth reading for several reasons. Especially, if you wish to better understand why much of what prevails as our present economic thinking is simply flat-out wrong.  It is also worth reading for it’s deeper psychological and philosophical insight about decision-making—particularly optimal decision-making, which should concern as all.  Human beings have a remarkable capacity for convincing oneself of the soundness of bad decisions.  We have a gift for believing that we have rationally arrived at the proper decision by our supposed faculties of pure reason. 

Except we don’t, and this has never been the case.  Evolution simply did not produce a brain wired for this (see Why Buddhism is True for a better understanding).  Cognitive psychology has been methodically poking holes in the Rational Choice Theory for decades, prior to the coining of the term Behavioral Economics.  For good reason, human decision-making is extraordinarily complicated.  Goals can be motivated and activated without our knowledge.  Some goals are emotionally driven.  Some goals are value-driven.  Goals and motivations can overlap and compete, which is why we sometimes arrive at a position of paralysis.  To complicate matters further our multiple goals, that may or may not be competing with each other, may be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.  They also may be misaligned to the task—performance versus learning. 

If you have read anything by Khaneman and Taversky, and appreciate the points above, it will begin to make sense why we are prone to making poor decisions.  The brain builds heuristics to simplify and categorize information, but simplification and categorization are doomed to incompleteness because the information that comes to us at any given moment is always novel.  This is the same underlying cognitive mechanism at work in stereotyping.  Buddhism recognizes that categorization is the root of much of our problems in life, because it leads inevitably to judgment.  Categorization is itself an act of judgment.  It might be nice to reach a state of enlightenment in which we are free of judgment and categorization, but I’m not sure.  Categorization serves its purposes because it helps us to make meaning of the information before us.  I think that the Buddhist preoccupation with this notion is more aspirational, and if nothing more, at least Buddhism has provided us with a method of radical skepticism that suggests that we should be suspect of a lot of our perceptions—especially those colored by emotion.  Again, see Khaneman and Taversky and similar research on priming effects—people literally describe individuals as warm and friendly, depending on whether they were handed a cold or hot beverage.  That should make us all a bit terrified.

My suspicion is that the ideal is to be a better Taoist, and perhaps that means being a stronger Buddhist. The western world has undergone an intensive conditioning to compartmentalize and parse the world around us in reductive ways, that can indeed reach absurdity.  The United States healthcare system is a prime example. (I would challenge anyone to develop a system so far removed from the mission of providing actual care).  But, why did I use the term Taoist?  Probably, because I have strong pragmatist leanings, but also the strong belief that this is how we arrive at optimal decisions.  I think this is what Schwartz was getting at:

“Unconstrained freedom leads to paralysis and becomes a kind of self-defeating tyranny.  It is self-determination within significant constraints—within rules of some sort—that leads to well-being, to optimal functioning.  The task for a future psychology of optimal functioning is to identify which constraints on self-determination are the crucial ones.”

So, why am I harping on self-determination and optimal decision making?  Because, the world is complicated and our minds are complicated, and our minds often reflect the world around us and vice versa.  Whether you subscribe to the Buddhist idea and social constructivist idea that the world around us is an extension of the mind, or the more positivist belief that the world is material and goes right on living regardless of what our mind is and does—I think both positions could agree that the world before is presently ill.  I fear its careening toward something much worse.

“the fullest representation of humanity show people to be curious, vital, and self-motivated.  At their best, they are agentic and inspired, striving to learn; extend themselves; master new skills; and apply their talents responsibly.  That most people show considerable effort, agency, and commitment in their lives, appears in fact, to be more normative than exceptional, suggesting some very positive and persistent features of human nature.  Yet, it is also clear that the human spirit can be diminished or crushed and that individuals sometimes reject growth and responsibility.” 

In a world such as this we are increasingly at risk for losing sight of goals, being lost in the overlap of competing goals and demands, misaligned incentives, impulses, emotional distress—each of these factors increase cognitive bias. We experience each to no small degree daily, unfortunately many of us experience one are all of them to an enormous degree.   It is a precarious position that almost ensures that our moment to moment decisions are less than optimal.   So, when someone with a neoliberal bent on economics tells you that people just need to get a job—I did it, why can’t they?  Tell them that they are a lovely human being that was fortunate enough to be in a position where the fundamental human needs that drive self-determination were properly aligned.  Then walk away, they will likely continue to have no idea what you are talking about. 

To avoid the cynicism that this essay might be unintentionally generating, I would like you to know that I firmly believe that there is a path forward.  Positive psychology has returned attention to human flourishing and development.  Maslow is en vogue again, but a psychology of being is still far from complete.  Furthermore, there are huge misunderstandings about what Positive Psychology is and does.  It is not the “power of positive thinking” bromide, that some might assume.  There is debate within the field presently about whether this constant obsession with “self-actualization” has done more harm to our culture than good.  People are inherently at risk for misunderstanding the ingredients that go into self determination and desire self-actualization now.  Again, I suspect this is why we so often make non-optimal decisions and then double down, repeatedly. (Kahneman and Taversky address this in their theory on loss aversion). Continue that path and you arrive closer and closer to narcissism and/or diminished self-esteem—“regret avoidance may be particularly pronounced in people with low self-esteem.  For such people, every choice opportunity presents the possibility that they will gather more evidence than they already have that they do not know how to make good decisions.”   Happiness will remain ever more elusive.  The components of self-determination are likely misaligned.

Richard Ryan and Edward Deci formulated Self-Determination Theory around three basic needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  Could it be that simple?  Well, my latest thinking is that for some of us it might be.  But, I will return momentarily to Maslow’s hierarchy.  I have the feeling that Self-Determination Theory starts to get at the middle of the pyramid.  Many of us having our basic needs filed—housing, clothing, food, shelter, etc.  Sadly, in this country an unacceptable number of people do not, and increasingly the pressures that are facing the middle class push more and more of us into that lower base of the pyramid.  And for those of us who have worked with individuals in that bottom base, please don’t tell us that there are resources available and people just need to get jobs.  Manage all of what I have shared in the proceeding paragraphs while battling Schizophrenia or Bipolar or Drug Addiction or PTSD and then get back to me, or go to the local crisis center which likely will not have a bed for you.  Bridges are nice, they at least keep you dry, you can fill out your 

job applications under there. 

For those of us tenuously in the middle class, I believe that it is vital that we get this right: autonomy, relatedness, competence.  These are fundamental components for self-determination.  And because these are fundamental human needs, we have instincts that drive us toward them.  Who does not what to be autonomous?  Who does not want to feel competent, and feel that they relate deeply to the world around them?  The problem is that many of us are living under an increasing amount of stress that means we are at risk of non-optimal decisions. 

“together these results suggest that even highly efficacious people may experience less than optimal wellbeing if they pursue and successfully attain goals that do not fulfill basic psychological needs.”

An instinctual drive for autonomy may not be the optimal pursuit, if it is competence or relatedness that is driving your goal.  Decision-making is challenged by demands (and these are myriad, and in some cases probably exponentially magnified with each accumulating stressor). The world around is becoming increasingly specialized, which makes us all feel less competent as there becomes an expert for everything.  For Christ’s sake we have Life Coaches now—not knocking the profession, I do a form of it in a way, but what does that title say about us?  And relatedness, many of us grew increasingly isolative for the past decade under societal pressures and demographic trends.  This can sound bleak, however if you want to see this trend in reverse pay attention to the enormous amount of activity going on at the community level.  David Brooks pisses me off at times, but he has been writing about this a lot, and I’m beginning to conclude that he is correct.  I suppose a legitimate conservative must find hope somewhere; the Republican party is rotting corpse.

Rational Choice Theory is one the staple arguments for a certain type of economics.  It in a nutshell it rests on the assumption that human beings are rational choosers based on preferences, which rests on yet another assumption that people have complete information.  The problem is not a matter of information, but rather the processing of information.  Why should we care about this?  Because a certain type of economic theory is so pervasively wired into the collective psyche that it effects multiple areas of our being (See Erich Fromm the Art of Loving to understand how ideas of marriage evolved from the Victorian Era thought the Industrial Revolution). 

“not all social activity, or even all economic activity, is organized around markets and exchange.”

“the dominance of rational choice theory in the context of markets as a model for human autonomy has had a significant effect on American’s aspirations with regard to self-determination.”

Second reason, applying market ideology to everything has had pronounced effect on wellbeing.  We have massive amounts of affluence, albeit unshared.  This is unlike the prosperity that followed WWII which was widely shared.  And this should scare us, we have a social safety net that is not generous, an aging population, a garbage healthcare system, and increasingly unhealthy population with progressively more mental illness.  Under Rational Choice Theory:

“Wellbeing is understood to involve maximizing the possibilities for choice, maximizing the number of available options.  A self is just the bundle of preferences that happen to coexist inside a single skin, and self determination is just the unfettered pursuit of those preferences.”

Well, we can thank cognitive psychology for arriving at a roughly similar position that Buddhism has been teaching for 2000 years.  This idea of the executive-rational self that makes decisions based upon pure reason is nowhere in sight.  Be wary of those who appear passionately certain, especially in matters of opinion.  Preferences are contextual, not rational (see Thaler on mental accounting and Khaneman on Prospect Theory).  I didn’t even discuss the whole issue of the value content of money as it is expressed through preference.  If you run into someone who continues to insist that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, ask what they believe the value preferences are in this condition:  You find 100 dollars, you are A) Bill Gates  B) You  C) A motel housekeeper.   I have a hunch that preferences might vary.

“the rational chooser, as described by rational-choice theorists, [is] a person who exists under only a rather restricted set of conditions that have been true only in the recent history of our species and then only in certain parts of the world.”

And this is why I find it so incredibly offensive when people level sweeping generalizations about the poor and their economic behavior.  There is a saying that people want self-determination for themselves, but have very little problem telling others how to live their lives.  And because this thinking is so pervasive, people have very little problem telling you how to live your life.  This is why most of us go into slow-motion shutdown when people preach at us.  It’s why developing teens become better at tuning us out.  And if you think that I am suggesting that I have some refined ability to be conscientious of this at all times, I can assure you I do not.  I am a single parent, often managing 3 at a time.  I say and do things when I am stressed, that steals autonomy from one of them at any given moment.  I am a counselor and even though I have nearly 20 years of practice, I find myself slipping into advice giving.  I have made exceptionally poor decisions for emotional reasons, believing that I was being fully autonomous the whole while. This is human.

I will be addressing more of these subjects in coming posts. For now, to recap.  The nutriments for Self-Determination are:  Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. They are in you because they are basic psychology needs that evolved over time.  You can find them daily:

Autonomy: find some small act that you can do independently, and to the best of your ability free of emotional constraint  (this may cause anxiety and stress if emotions are the obstacle)

Relatedness: find something to do in your community, we need roots, we need to water them deeply (there is no autonomy without interdependence)

Competence: small goals, succeed, cross them off, give yourself credit, you’re getting good at this.

A Civilly Disobedient Open Letter for Anyone Accused of Virtue-Signaling and Other Garbage from the New Right-Wing Lexicon

A Civilly Disobedient Open Letter for Anyone Accused of Virtue-Signaling and Other Garbage From the New Right-Wing Lexicon

            Greetings from Pittsburgh.  We are still the best city in the country, the most-livable city in this United States.  You saw that this weekend in the response to tragedy. 

            Earlier this year I was accused of “virtue-signaling.”  I had an idea what the term meant; I tend to see it used pejoratively when someone levels a moral argument. If you are not familiar with this term   For example I might state:

            I believe that the local ordinance guy is an actual human being, sending me actual letters about my overgrown lawn, and should not be harassed for doing his job (Chris Dougherty, 204 S. Cedar, suite 2)

             Oh quit virtue-signaling! You don’t actually care about Chris Dougherty, who works at 204 S. Cedar, suite 2 and hates having the restroom outside of his office clogged with paper towels.

            See how that works! What a fascinatingly feeble manner of avoiding a dialogue of any substance.  The internet helped me clarify all of this.  I soon learned that I was in the same company as the Pope.  Yes, the guy with a direct line to God was accused of virtue-signaling, just like me!

            But, I will give you credit whomever you are, it must have been difficult that day to generate a counter argument as to why children should not be caged.  And, since I am giving you credit, in the real tradition of the Christian church, I also want to express my love.  By getting me so fundamentally wrong, I was forced to reckon with the fact that I have been too idle.  Single-parenting three children, spending twenty years working in behavioral health, and tending to the enormous amount of suffering that I see on any given day, has left me exhausted and barely able to complete my dissertation.   I found comfort in being generally moderate in politics and temperament, and went about my life just trying to be kind.  You are correct that I was not doing enough.

            You might have assumed that I was a social-justice warrior because you have filled your mind with the type of garbage media—the type that has you believe that angry baristas have taken your city. It feels familiar to the trope from a few years ago about cities under sharia law. By the way, have you met your local MS13 gang member? I have, he’s a stitch, but never a snitch. 

            I would like you to know I was never a radical.  Christ was a radical.  Buddha was a radical.  I can’t even hold a candle.  But, now I have Squirrel Hill on 10/27/18, and I feel like I have to hold a candle.   I have to speak up because people I care about can’t even find their words now.  To be clear, I cannot speak for anyone in the Jewish community or Squirrel Hill because it is not my place.  But, I am not willing to tolerate a world where my 10 year old, in all sincerity states—“should we be afraid to go to church?”

            The consequence of speaking up is the recognition that I will have to be more active.  And, by active I mean in the Christian tradition I was raised in.  I’m talking abolitionist active, Dr. King active, Fred Rogers active.  Earlier this year I gave money to Everytown.  Tonight, I think I will give to the Anti-Defamation League and the ACLU.  I have not attended church enough this year, so consider this some sort of secular tithe.  I will give to any organization I can think of that you may despise.   I will get back to building the Pittsburgh I want for my children. I am going to cram so much love, and hope, and tolerance down my beloved city’s gullet that there will be rainbows shooting out of even the darkest asshole.  I am coming for your dark heart and the dark horses of the apocalypse, not on a unicorn.  Unicorns are fake news, but sea level rise is not, and so help me God if you get in my way, you may be impaled on the narwhal I ride in on.