Very cool, if true

I hereby officially declare you to be a person.

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marrog.livejournal.com

*Clicks answer*

*Clicks link*

Ah. Hm. See, I have trouble with the word 'beliefs'. I do not believe any of these things. That doesn't mean I don't feel them sometimes. I don't want to give the erroneous impression that I'm the only completely non-dysfunctional person (in the poll so far) that you know...

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That's why I put the note underneath. I would never have said "It is better to run away from problems than deal with them." - but I acted as if that were true, so some part of me must have believed it, even if I never would have admitted to it, even to myself.

(Edit: Which isn't to say that I think you have any of these - that's a personal judgement. I'm just trying to make this as wide as possible, because otherwise everyone is going to just tick the "Not crazy" box.)

Edited Date: 2010-11-05 09:28 am (UTC)

From:

marrog.livejournal.com

See, this is why I sometimes think I might be a tad sociopathic.

I have a lot of conflicting pieces of social programming that fight it out in my psyche on a pretty much constant basis, but the truth is that whatever bits of me are saying - that I should be working harder, beating myself up more (or less), feeling victimised, feeling like the bad guy, a failure, lucky or unlucky - the brutal truth is that if I'm comfortable, I don't much care why or how I got there; only that I'm comfortable.

I don't need to have got there through hard work, through talent, luck, or anything else. I don't need to be working to feel worthwhile and I make the effort to stay in a job not because I want to be productive but because I know I'd be less comfortable, on balance, on benefits (in many respects, not merely financial). I have no ambition to be more than I am as long as where I am is sustainable - although that's not to say I won't take the opportunity to move further to be more comfortable as long as it's not inconvenient. Any aspirations I ever had toward something more exalted than that are long-since gone.

So ultimately, although I have heard all of these things said in my head, and parroted them to society at large, the real truth is that I don't really feel accountable to any internal guilt/victim-machine. Perhaps this is because my first Ethic, the Protestant Work Ethic (point 2 above), is so completely unforgiving and unfeasible that it had to be rejected outright but nonetheless couldn't be replaced. For whatever reason, my internal workings hold me to be entirely responsible for any failure, but simultaneously just don't care that much. Anything else is just Pretend.

As to other people, all someone has to be doing to gain a base level of respect is to, to my perception, be 'making the effort' - whatever that might mean in context. It won't make them someone I associate with necessarily but it will make them someone who's basic ethics I have no problem with.

So ultimately I'm pretty unrepentantly self-interested. I wouldn't screw someone over to get ahead, but mainly because I don't care enough. I don't always take the path of least resistance, but mainly because I sometimes like conflict. I don't hold people to ridiculously high values in practice, but mainly because when it comes to principles I don't make my own cut anyway so how could anyone else? And since beating myself up about my own inability to meet my own socially programmed standards would make me less comfortable with my life... I don't.

So I guess what I'm saying is that there are all sorts of very normal 'awfulizations' that have gone through my mind throughout my life. But I've never really cared much about any of them.

(I also hold the view that most people work exactly the same way, but saying that tends to have people up-in-arms because I'm suggesting that everyone is secretly self-interested and no one ever really holds themselves accountable for anything, and for some reason people don't like it when you imply that about them.)

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I don't think that's sociopathic, I think it's fairly normal.

I know that I have friends who do beat themselves up for some of these things, but I think that _that_ is dysfunctional.

I don't think I have any of these at the moment. But I definitely had a few when I was younger, and I'm glad I got rid of them.

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you sound *extremely* like me.

I have been described as somewhat sociopathic - but that was by someone I considered *over* sensitive to social mores/pressures/other people.

I am driven to "be good at stuff" (I wouldn't call it a Work Ethic) but not for any reason other than my own emotional satisfaction. I'm just not happy being cr@p/passable/average at stuff. I did learn, about 7 years ago, to cut other people slack, but me? hmm, not really.

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nancylebov.livejournal.com

"Guilt/victim machine" is very good.

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hfnuala.livejournal.com

I only believe no 2 for myself. Which is both arrogant and self hating - why don't I deserve the slack I give to others?

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lizw.livejournal.com

My life improved tremendously once I started treating it as a moral duty not to be harder on myself than on other people. It seems to be a difficult one to get across to people, though.

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lizw.livejournal.com

Hey, this is kind of cool - it makes me realise that I've made quite a bit of progress over the years in recognising those beliefs as irrational and learning to act less as if I hold them. Thanks!

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Not a problem - I feel much the same way!

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bohemiancoast.livejournal.com

Some of these are ones that I think I had as a child, that they are normal for children, especially in their milder forms, and that failure to let go of them as you age is part of what we point to when we say that people haven't grown up effectively. I think 3, 4 and 8 in particular. And I'm interested that only one of these refers explicitly to the distinction we draw between children and adults.

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Yes - those in particular are things which are perfectly normal, or even healthy, for children. And many of the rest are about letting go of either being a child, or of the things that happened in ones childhood. Well spotted, I hadn't noticed that at all!

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nmg.livejournal.com

Quite. I can see quite a few of these in the

garklet. When I see the same beliefs in adults (or rather, the evidence of those beliefs in their actions), I try to be sensitive to their views, but inevitably end up thinking that they need to get a sense of proportion.

Most of the beliefs are the expression of either an abrogation of personal responsibility, a Manichean worldview, or that one is the most important thing in the universe. Most people grow out of them.

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sigmonster.livejournal.com

"To every human problem there is a solution: simple, convincing, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken

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Or "engineers syndrome" as it's otherwise known :->

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9. My "area" is behaviour modification and change. So I know that people do change and I know some of the theories of the process. However, before that, and occasionally now I forget people can change, and often do.

6. Also, I hate being hypervigilant, but it happens. So the best thing I can do now is to accept it, intellectualise the issue, decide on action and put it out of my head. When my emotions get a bit angsty, insert distractions, because whatever it is, I've already taken care of it.

2. I still struggle with this problem, because about 4 years ago I started to derive self-esteme from an external source. External sources are not reliable, and for me, it needs to be internal. I've spent the last year trying to reroute this.

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Yeah, (2) seems to be the most common, and I'm fairly sure that most of my friends are applying it to themselves rather than others.

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To others? I'm confused? You asked us to assess the list refering to ourselves?

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You had different instructions at 9am didnt you!

These are all common negative beliefs that people hold. I have a book somewhere that has a chapter similar to this that would make an interesting LJ post.

Unfortunately, I have no free time!

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Nope, same instructions. Not changed anything.

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What I meant was, given
"2. One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person."
Most people on my flist apply that to themselves - thinking that they are worthless, rather than judging the people around them like that.

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cairmen.livejournal.com

I'm not answering these, but for clarification - do you mean that you conciously believe these are right, or you tend to act according to them?

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See my first response to Marrog above - unconscious belief (or alief) still counts.

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In cognitive behavoiour therapy, you could kind of view them as automatic negative beliefs.

For example "If I can't do x then that means I am a failure".

Edited Date: 2010-11-05 11:04 am (UTC)

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Only No 2. for me. Though only the first part

"One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects"

There is no "or else". Maybe that's an even worse attitude :-)

The rest have always been, to me, obviously silly.

The exact *oppposite* of No 8. is far too seductively appealing to me on some emotional level - but is so clearly ludicrous in terms of practicality (we all stand on the shoulders of giants etc...) that it's never made belief status.

No 4. it's not awful or terrible - but, for me, not to be put up with if at all possible. A sign that I need to do something about it to sort it out to more how I would like it (if at all practical to do so).

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to clarify - I meant No2 for ME only. I never even considered it in respect of other people. Which is possibly interesting in itself.

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This seems to apply across a lot of people. They judge themselves worthless much faster than they judge others. I blame the parents.

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