DRMacIver's Notebook
Visible parts of internal states
Visible parts of internal states
I write a lot about feelings, emotions, etc. I’m well known for it, and people say they find my writing on it helpful. So, let me tell you something that I’m genuinely quite concerned about: What if everything I’m saying is basically fake?
I’m very good at theorising and coming up with plausible explanations for things, much better than I am at being reliably correct about themNot through any deep personal failings or idiosyncracies you understand. Being correct is just hard., so I’d probably be able to write all this stuff even if actually it didn’t work at all and I was just kidding myself about what had happened to me.
To be clear, I don’t think this is the case. I’m extremely convinced that it’s not 100% the case. I’m… less convinced that it’s 0% the case. A specific percentage is hard to pin down, but I do know that I’m missing some important things, and I suspect some of them are in areas that I’m pretty convinced I understand.
The problem with describing internal experiences is that there are no external reference points that you can point to as a shared object. Part of why my explanation of labelling feelings focuses so heavily on externally visible behaviour is that those are the bits that you can see. They constitute a shared object you can talk about together.
I think this is a good partial measure of emotional progress. You know that someone shouting and shaking their fist at you about how good they are at anger management, how dare you say they’re not, is probably fooling themselves.They could just be lying, but it’s such a bad lie that fooling themselves seems more likely.
This is an extreme example, but I think you see a lot of this in the self help space. e.g. I’ve seen plenty of people talk about how to become less neurotic whose behaviour I’ve observed and, well, will not be taking their advice too seriously.Is it plausible that this is just because of their high starting point and the thing they did is a genuine improvement? Definitely! But it tends to be coupled with a lack of self awareness about where they’ve ended up that makes me suspicious.
For my part, I think some of my claims to improvement are more credible than others. I’ve definitely reduced my anxiety levels,Although experiences of attending dance classes have definitely demonstrated that some claims I’ve made in the past to have “fixed” my social anxiety are at best suspect. It does feel like a different sort of thing - I find the experience stressful rather than anxiety inducing - but I’m not sure the externally visible behaviour is that different., and I think a lot of my presentation is more confident than it used to be.
If, on the other hand, I claimed to have fixed my depression I think you should look at a lot of my recent writing and put on your best skeptical face.I’m working on it, OK?
I do think there’s a sort of general… knowing myself better, and being better able to act on what I want, that I have improved at but am still not good at. I can’t articulate this in a way that’s very convincing though. It’s enough that I think it’s real, but maybe not enough that you should too.
The point is not, however, that you should only believe things are real if you’ve got really clear visible evidence that they are. A lot of purely internal things are real. It’s just hard to have full confidence in them.
This means it’s really nice when something nebulous and internal that you’re trying to improve has some really clear externally visible correlate. If nothing else, it makes it much easier to improve the thing because you can just track whether the visible thing improves.Though beware value capture. No visible improvement at all is suspicious, but once you start getting some visible improvement more visible improvement will not continue to be better indefinitely.
Anyway, one interesting handle I found on all of this recently is, oddly, pilates.
I’ve tried doing pilates and things like it in the past and I was bad at it. Most of why I’m doing much better this time is not through any deep personal progress or growth as a human being, I’m just paying a really good teacher for one on one lessons.
But there is one specific thing that I’ve noticed that I can do now that I don’t think I used to be able to do, which is that when I’m told to do a movement and I can’t do the movement I can figure out how to do the movement. Most of the time anyway. There’s a specific sort of introspection which feels a bit like… mentally rummaging around in the relevant body part, wiggling it a bit and seeing what happens, until I figure out how to use the right muscles to do the thing. I’m almost certain I didn’t use to be able to do this, and now I can, and it feels very much adjacent to the sort of introspection skills I’ve picked up when doing Focusing or IFS or the like. This isn’t strong evidence for any of that being useful of course, but it’s at least an interesting link.
I think this observation of visible versions of internal goals extends a lot into the exercise space more generally, although of course most forms of exercise are visible to some degree. My overall exercise goals are very internal in that they’re largely centred on being less in pain. But subjective comparison of pain over time is hard. Sure I can tell the difference between being in pain and not being in pain, but can I tell the difference between being more in pain and less in pain? Not reliably.
I can, on the other hand, tell the difference between being able to do an asian squat better or worse, or measure how long I can stand on one leg for, and these are pretty good visible versions of the internal experience of having better leg strength and mobility, so work well as things to focus on.