AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

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AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Building a social life, part three.

I have engaged in a variety of activities thus far. My current strategy is to try both activities I am familiar with and know I will like mixed with some "wildcard" experience to expand my horizons. Thus, these are the current classes/groups I am now actively apart of:

1. Weightlifting class with the SAHMs.
-- They are actually all very nice people, and I have enrolled to take the class once more, but it is still difficult to make friends here because most of the time is merely spent on the exercise and then everyone leaves. Nonetheless, this has helped with my weightlifting abilities and techniques greatly.

2. Board game club
-- This is a meetup group where we play a variety of indie board games every week. I have not gone enough to make friends yet, but everyone I have met here has been interesting thus far, and the games are fun. This is also very cheap as everyone else brings the games.

3. Dungeons and Dragons
-- Very similar to board game club.

4. Police academy
-- This is my current "wildcard" activity. My town offered a 16-week police academy class for free, and I enrolled in it. We spend three hours a week inside the police department learning how the town police force functions. It has been a highly interesting class, and I have learned a great deal about the town this way, but similar to the weightlifting class, meeting people here has been difficult. I am realizing that I need to be more proactive about approaching strangers in these classes because unlike the board game activities, there is no real reason to speak with anyone organically.

Mental Health
Going from my previous activity level (slug) to being out of the house 3x-4x a week has made it quite clear the reason I was not doing that in the first place. Mainly, my mental health has still not recovered fully from the pandemic, and doing anything "challenging" is extraordinarily draining. It is not just a matter of "push yourself," it is more that doing more than I can handle results in these "emotional hangovers" where I am completely unable to function the following day. Thus, I have had to become very careful about how and where I spend my energy or I will crash. This is very frustrating, as I do not feel like I am able to reach my goals unless I overcome this limitation.

Thus, I have decided to prioritize fixing my mental health above my other goals. As I have mentioned before in this journal, I have struggled for nearly a decade with this. It was easy enough to ignore when I was only dragging through work and not attempting to do anything else, but as I attempt to build my life outside of work, being depressed and dead inside is an active limitation that I must work through.

In order to do this, I have decided to "become my own therapist" by taking this as seriously as I would any other medical condition. I am viewing it as if my doctor diagnosed me with diabetes and I must fix my lifestyle or face severe consequences. And if I am going to pursue treatment on my own terms, rather than going to an actual therapist(*), then I must take it as seriously as if I were in actual therapy.

In addition to a rigorous focus on diet and exercise, I will be using a therapeutic approach called "internal family systems," which is where one attempts to discover parts of oneself that are still stuck in previous negative experiences and are driving present behavior with maladaptive coping mechanisms learned from the past. (These are what Plotkin calls "subpersonalities.") This has been quite useful thus far. The primary technique is to notice when you are experiencing either an internal conflict or highly negative present emotion and then "ask" that part of yourself what it is they feel and need. It is a useful skill for introspection and self-improvement.

The further I go down this path, the more I have come to realize that solving one's internal baggage is, perhaps, the most important thing one can do if you are looking to take true ownership over your own life. If you come from a difficult background, the baggage you must work through may be greater, but given how widespread the present mental health crisis is, it is my belief that anyone may benefit from these techniques.

(*) I have tried both therapy and antidepressants in the past, but found both to be largely useless. The problem with therapy is that you know yourself better than your therapist, and if your problems are more "complicated" than what they are used to typically dealing with, such as niche personal problems one faces on the pursuit to FI, therapy is not much help.

I do believe therapy may be of help sometimes, especially in moments of crisis, but if one is functioning enough to hold down a job, and you are willing to put in the additional work, simply reading books written for therapists and applying those techniques yourself may yield greater results. The most important thing is you have a technique for introspection followed by a review that turns what you have learned into actionable steps. This is not always easy to do, especially if one is already struggling, but I do believe the "self-therapy" approach may work if one is willing and able to do the research and complete the actions.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Good on you for prioritizing mental health. My deep dive into physical health as part of an ERE mastermind group led me to focusing an equal amount of time on my mental health. The two are undoubtedly connected.
AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Mon Mar 28, 2022 12:56 pm
In order to do this, I have decided to "become my own therapist" by taking this as seriously as I would any other medical condition. I am viewing it as if my doctor diagnosed me with diabetes and I must fix my lifestyle or face severe consequences. And if I am going to pursue treatment on my own terms, rather than going to an actual therapist(*), then I must take it as seriously as if I were in actual therapy.

In addition to a rigorous focus on diet and exercise, I will be using a therapeutic approach called "internal family systems," which is where one attempts to discover parts of oneself that are still stuck in previous negative experiences and are driving present behavior with maladaptive coping mechanisms learned from the past. (These are what Plotkin calls "subpersonalities.") This has been quite useful thus far. The primary technique is to notice when you are experiencing either an internal conflict or highly negative present emotion and then "ask" that part of yourself what it is they feel and need. It is a useful skill for introspection and self-improvement.

The further I go down this path, the more I have come to realize that solving one's internal baggage is, perhaps, the most important thing one can do if you are looking to take true ownership over your own life. If you come from a difficult background, the baggage you must work through may be greater, but given how widespread the present mental health crisis is, it is my belief that anyone may benefit from these techniques.
Are you familiar with Dr. Gabor Mate's work? I haven't seen him mentioned on the forums, but his research explores what you describe above. I'm wrapping up his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and it has caused a lot of introspection about early family dynamics, tacit internal dialogues, and coping mechanisms. I'd recommend looking into him based on your post.

You can check out his interviews with Tim Ferris or Rich Roll if you are interested. On the surface the research focuses on substance abuse and addiction. But it is much deeper than that. He's looking at addiction as a spectrum that develops as a result of early trauma, stress, neglect, or lack of attunement with our primary caregivers. Modern industrial society has created an environment where it is increasingly difficult to emerge from childhood without some type of addictive behavior. Some of those are more frowned upon than others.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

This is quite a range of activities! I really like the idea of the random card for trying out things and attempting to meet people in the community (will try something like this in the future). It might be really interesting to find out why the other folks are taking the police class (if they did not state that already) as a way to connect. I will have to read more about IFS and Mate's work. I think that most of these personal therapy approaches have similar base ideas expressed in different ways that appeal to different ways of thinking. All very hard stuff! Let us know how it goes!

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@Western Red Cedar - Thank you for the book recommendation. I have placed a hold on it at the library. I have been avoiding diving into anything too personal in this journal, but there are certainly many maladaptive thought patterns I learned from my upbringing that have taken me decades into my adult life to unlearn. It has been a slow and painful process, but fortunately, there has been a lot written recently on how early trauma/stress/attachment leads to adult mental health challenges, and these resources have been extraordinarily helpful. This is something I have been quite grateful for, as one of the great challenges of coming from a family with high rates of mental illness is that you learn to assume maladaptive behaviors are simply normal because everyone in your family behaves that way.

As I have commented before in this journal, it is the "freeze" response that I am often trapped in, and so much of my personal growth has been learning to move past the "freeze" instinct. It often manifests as hopelessness, learned helplessness, avoidance, dissociation, inability to know one's own needs/desires, and addiction. I believe my early pursuit of FI was motivated by this "freeze" response as a way to escape the need to engage with the world.

@mountainFrugal - There is also "Schema Therapy," which is similar to IFS, which you may also find useful to research. These concepts are all ways to look at one's own behavior patterns and change it, which is never easy to do.

The "wildcard" approach has been useful in expanding my horizons thus far, and I can recommend it if one is trying to learn new things. For instance, from the police academy, I have learned a great deal about how the police department and my local town operate. It has also given me leads into other potential activities I may try next. For example, some participants in the class are members of a local gun range, and they have discussed meeting up there later for target practice, which is something I may attend. The police department also offers free self-defense and emergency preparedness classes one can sign up for. They are also hiring volunteers for their victim's advocacy program or full time employees in their communications department. Given ham radio is a skill I have been meaning to learn for my web of goals, considering a job in dispatch, for example, may help to further my personal goals more than software development would. These are all new opportunities I have been offered simply by randomly taking this class.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

I'm reading "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari, and I wanted to copy this quote into my journal:
If you spend so many of your waking hours deadening yourself to get through the day, it's hard--he explained--to turn that off and be engaged with the people you love when you get home.
You have to shut yourself down inside yourself to get through this--and Michael uncovered evidence that this affected your whole life. The higher up you went in the civil service, he found, the more friends and social activity you had after work. The lower you went, the more that tapered off--the people with boring, low status just wanted to collapse in front of the television when they got home. Why would that be? "When work is enriching, life is fuller, and that spills into the things you do outside work," he said to me. But "when it's deadening," you feel, "shattered at the end of the day, just shattered."
This is the essence of burnout. I've also seen it described as "phobia of the inner experience." Mindfulness is supposed to help with it, but these two quotes capture the essence of what it means to learn not to be a salaryman any more and the dangers of staying a salaryman too long. A part of finding "freedom to" is finding a way to drive yourself with passion and not the stress response, of finding a way to feel motivation and desire and purpose again instead of dissociated burnout.

I'm trying to hang in there until I have my house paid off, which I can do in a year, but more and more I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm tremendously burned out and need to quit software before I can find what else I want to do.

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grundomatic
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by grundomatic »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Tue Apr 05, 2022 11:28 am
I'm trying to hang in there until I have my house paid off, which I can do in a year, but more and more I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm tremendously burned out and need to quit software before I can find what else I want to do.
Substitute "teaching" for "software" and I could have written this. Having made the decision, I feel much better. I hope you get to where you can pull the trigger and be done with it.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

My conclusion is that I'm probably not burned out by software, but by the amount of effort required in any mentally demaning full-time job in general.

For example, I really like the amateur research into computer vision/ visual SLAM that I do now, but when I do it at a pace resembling a full-time job, I feel like a dead man within a week or less. It seems that I was just not made for sustained mental effort, or maybe I'm doing it all wrong somehow.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@grundomatic - Thank you, that's good to hear you experience as well. I keep reminding myself that I can always make more money in another career, or even go back to software, if I so choose. It's really easy to succumb to loss aversion with respect to one's own career, even if it doesn't bring you any more happiness.

@zbigi - I feel you there. That's the reason I never went into academia. What's rough about that problem is that you end up out competed by people who are willing to dedicate their whole life toward the pursuit, but such is the trade off, I suppose. I really think it's rough because full-time jobs require the kind of effort and dedication one needs as a "life calling" but the job is just not that.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Self-Therapy - Discovering Subpersonalities

I debated writing this post for awhile because this is going to veer off into weird therapy-philosophy-personal experience territory, but I ultimately decided I should share my experience in the event anyone is struggling with the same issues I am.

As I've mentioned previously in this journal, I've been using Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a form of introspection. The idea of IFS is that everyone is made up of "ego states" that act semi-autononmously and can drive your behavior without your conscious awareness. These are the sub-personalities that Plotkin describes in his work.

Well a part of IFS therapy is to identify these ego states and treat them individually. Each ego state is thought to be "stuck" in a pattern of past behavior that, while it helped you cope in the past, can cause maladaptive behavior in the present. In this form of therapy, you want to find each ego state, find what their fears/worries are, what their current behavior is, and try to negotiate with them to stop doing whatever negative behavior they're stuck in.

An example might be that you have an ego state that eats for comfort and is causing you to gain weight. You would want to find the things that trigger that ego state to engage in that behavior, find out the emotional need that ego state is trying to fix, then try to work with that ego state to give up that behavior and adopt a new coping mechanism.

This can all sound a bit weird/woo, but if you can accept the premise, it can be really helpful in unraveling the actual causes for bad habits and things like depression/anxiety.

I've been using three techniques to discover ego states in myself, and they are:
1. Mindfulness meditation
2. Noticing when I feel deeply conflicted or am experiencing rapid mood swings and trying to unravel what the internal conflict is about
3. Listening to my own internal monologue/thoughts/emotions throughout the day and trying to slowly categorize them into given ego states
4. Writing down the dominant thoughts/feels of each ego state

Number 2 and 3 have been the most insightful. It can take some practice and some focus, but you can better identify which ego state is driving which thought as you gain experience.

So far, I have discovered these ego states using these techniques:
1. Me(?) (the default mode/dominant ego state) (Ni)
--- The "me" ego state likes playing with ideas and creativity, but struggles with organization/emotional regulation if left alone.
2. Formal/responsible (second most dominant ego state, seems to correspond to Te)
--- The "responsible" ego state is less expressive than I am but does a good job organizing things and staying on task, as well as following plans.
3. Sensitive/afraid to take up space (Third strongest, seems to correspond to Fi)
--- This ego state only seems to emerge when either I or Responsible are tried. This one seems to be very sensitive and feels a lot of emotions. Also seems capable of enjoying the little things in life if in a good mood.
4. Teen rebel (Fourth strongest, seems to correspond to Se)
--- Wants to engage in a lot of high sensory/adrenaline rush activities, such as sports, eating flavorful food, watching action movies, or playing competitive games.

It's really interesting that my four dominant ego states seem to correspond to the INTJ function stack, which is a coincidence I discovered while writing this post.

Anyway, I've been watching/trying to communicate with these ego states for about a year now, and I've made a lot of progress in understanding my own needs and wants by doing this. I've also gained the ability to watch for when the ego states themselves switch and notice the signs that one of these functions is now driving my behavior. I can also "summon" a particular ego state sometimes (but not always) to preform a specific task that they are better suited at than the others. For example, ensuring that the Responsible ego state is dominant while working ensures better results than if Teen Rebel is dominant.

Now, the INTJ function stack also has the "shadow" functions, which given this pattern, I am assuming probably exist as ego states too, only they are the ego states that drive more of the negative psychology/depression/anxiety. I have a much harder time communicating with these ego states, and I can only notice them once it's too late and they're already the dominant driver of behavior, but I think I have discovered two so far. They are:

1. The Nihilist Self-Critic
--- Hates everyone and everything, thinks everyone is out to get them and that doing anything is pointless.
2. The Social Conformist
--- Is afraid of being seen as "too weird" by normative society, clings to masking behaviors that simulate normality while causing internal emotional distress. This ego state, I think, is the one that's stuck inside the salaryman mindset and is making it hard to move on from FT work.

These two are a lot less visible to me, and a lot of my recent attempts at introspection involve trying to understand these two better. Also, if there are four shadow functions, I might have two more shadow ego states that are completely beyond my awareness right now as well.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

I've also come to prefer stack-theory rather than MBTI. I see the functions as threaded software pieces---possibly a direct expression of the nervous system i.e. neocortex and limbic system---that continuously run trying to interface with each other and with the reality of one's experienced environment. This construct[ion] eventually builds the ego that can then be identified (classified) according to personality type.

Your shadow (according to theory) is simply your main stack inverted over e/i but in the same order. Thus for you (INTJ) with NiTeFiSe, your shadow is NeTiFeSi (=ENTP). The simplest shadow coping behavior is projecting its tendencies onto other humans. Avoidance may be another. As such, when the ego is stressed the shadow may surface with "opinions" like:
Ne - Could you please apply some self-discipline to all those random ideas you keep throwing in my direction already?! I don't have the energy to restore order to your monkeybrain!!
Ti - Stop asking me to prove every single logical step between A and B. It's obvious that B follows from A. People are idiots.
Fe - Following your social rituals for the sake of group harmony feels rather inauthentic to me, so I'll just refuse and make up my own rituals for you to follow, ha!
Si - I hate tradition for the sake of tradition. Also, you already told me that story five times before.

[This might provide a framework for constructing/identifying arch-types ala Plotkin. E.g. {coping behavior type} x {shadow function}, like what does an avoidant Si sound like? A projecting Ti? I've mixed them around a bit above.]

OTOH, when not stressed (or rather only slightly stressed with good stress rather than bad stress), I suspect that the shadow actually provides a lot of creative drive. If channeled right, this can be "construtive". For example, the INTJ can use their own shadow to inspire themselves to build better world systems. OTOH, if the shadow hi-jacks the ego, the ego can become destructive and focused on finding complicated explanations for why the whole world is conspiring against it based on the bad ideas the shadow is feeding it. If the INTJ shadow takes over, the person essentially becomes an evil version of the ENTP e.g. shitposting and trolling people for fun when bored, making stuff up, and abandoning people on a whim.

I'd stipulate from an ego development perspective, the shadow operates at a lower stage than the ego (insofar I'm allowed to discuss them separately from each other rather than an integrated Jekyll/Hyde unit). E.g. the ego might be Kegan4 but when the shadow surfaces or rather dominates it will act like e.g. a much less developed Kegan2 or even Kegan1 (survival mode).

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

Thank you for sharing @AE and to @jacob for showing the inversion! Many ideas just clicked into place for me. I need to actually start reading some of the IFS books while continuing the various Plotkin exercises. Having a common language for all of these ideas using the "stack" makes a great deal of sense. I will do my best to get up to speed ASAP on IFS.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:16 pm
I see the functions as threaded software pieces---possibly a direct expression of the nervous system i.e. neocortex and limbic system---that continuously run trying to interface with each other and with the reality of one's experienced environment. This construct[ion] eventually builds the ego that can then be identified (classified) according to personality type.
That aligns with how it subjectively "feels" to have different subpersonalities/cognitive functions once you learn to recognize them. It takes practice, but I've learned to tell some of them apart, and so I can now sometimes notice it when one becomes the "executive/default" over the others. That is to say, my dominant/primary subjective experience is Ni "driving" the body/thought origination with Te providing support. After doing some exercises, I'm able to switch this so that Te is "driving" and Ni is providing support. This actually felt very weird at first because Ni is the dominant ego state, so letting Te be dominant while Ni is secondary at first felt like a strange inversion of control, but it helped me learn to recognize when a cognitive function/subpersonality other than Ni was acting as the dominant force within the ego at a given time.

It's by far easiest to do this cognitive switching with Ni/Te, as those are the dominant functions for INTJ, but I was later able to do it with Fi/Se too. Getting Fi/Se to be dominant requires a combination of tiring out Ni/Te (either through stress or solving a lot of mental problems) and finding "positive triggers" for those functions in the form of problems Fi/Se can solve.

I am now realizing as I write this that I get "stuck" in Ni a lot when either Fi or Se would be a more appropriate ego state for a given task. For example, during physical exercise, it might be more useful to try and solve that problem with Se instead of Ni. I might try to more actively channel Fi/Se into appropriate tasks more often rather than just let Ni/Te run everything.
jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:16 pm
Your shadow (according to theory) is simply your main stack inverted over e/i but in the same order. Thus for you (INTJ) with NiTeFiSe, your shadow is NeTiFeSi (=ENTP). The simplest shadow coping behavior is projecting its tendencies onto other humans. Avoidance may be another.
...
[This might provide a framework for constructing/identifying arch-types ala Plotkin. E.g. {coping behavior type} x {shadow function}, like what does an avoidant Si sound like? A projecting Ti? I've mixed them around a bit above.]
This is a useful observation. I'll ponder this as I try to dig up the shadow functions more and report back if I find anything interesting.
jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:16 pm
I'd stipulate from an ego development perspective, the shadow operates at a lower stage than the ego (insofar I'm allowed to discuss them separately from each other rather than an integrated Jekyll/Hyde unit). E.g. the ego might be Kegan4 but when the shadow surfaces or rather dominates it will act like e.g. a much less developed Kegan2 or even Kegan1 (survival mode).
That aligns with IFS, which states that various ego states get "stuck" in the past as a result of trauma/negative experience, which effectively halts their development. Thus, for an INTJ, it might be possible for an Fe ego state to get "stuck" in an adolescent-level of development (Kegan2) while Ni goes on to develop to Kegan4. While under stress, Ni gets removed as the "executive" ego state and the underdeveloped Fe takes over. This might also explain why people seem to fall down Kegan levels under stress--the more common (and therefore more developed) ego states get temporarily removed from executive control and replaced with the underdeveloped (and stuck in memory time, not present time) ego states that function at a lower developmental level.

@mountainFrugal - I'd be curious your thoughts! I developed this framework after reading a few IFS therapy books for clinicians/Plotkin's stuff and mixed it with the cognitive stack framework. I ended up designing a few of my own exercises to try and uncover various subpersonalities, and I've had success with it so far. IFS has you personify the cognitive functions/ego states because it helps you tell a more compelling narrative, which makes it easier for the meaning-making part of your brain to understand it. It's why IFS can sound a little weird/woo at first but is actually very useful if you can accept the premise.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

On Burnout

SWAT came to police academy last night to talk about their job. They were two guys in their 40s, charismatic and passionate, and with a whole slide deck of all the insane situations they've responded to. One described the time he and his team had to storm a second story apartment while under active fire in an attempt to save another police officer locked inside. Over 300 rounds were fired within the mere span of 30 seconds, and one officer was wounded in the raid.

SWAT is an additional duty on top of normal patrol work. You aren't compensated anything extra for beyond your normal wage. It requires 24/7 on call, running into dangerous situations, and an intense training schedule. There are easy jobs out there, and this is not one of them.

And yet, what was most striking about these two officers was the amount of passion they had for it. They were motivated by the sense that this job was important and that they were going to save people from situations where no one else could. SWAT was their life, it was their calling, their raison d'etre.

However, SWAT had a problem. Everyone on the team was 35 or older. The younger generation, they said, had no interest in joining SWAT. The demands were too strenuous. The on-call requirements made family life difficult. Younger officers, it seemed, only want to put in 40 hours a week then go home. This was only a job to the fresh recruits. It was not a calling. And so, they weren't joining SWAT because it was too much work and too little reward.

The generational divide was stark. The older officers were motivated by an intrinsic motivation to do what they thought was the right thing. The younger officers were there to collect a paycheck and go home. This difference in their attitude toward work filtered down in everything they did. Correlation is not causation, but it is not unreasonable to assume this might also relate to the same social factors causing the rampant mental health crisis among the younger generation. To answer what one of those factors might be, we have to ask ourselves a simple question.

What is burnout?

The article, "Is That All There Is? Why Burnout Is A Broken Promise" has an answer. Burnout, it turns out, is a form of betrayal.
Gunderman contends that burnout is not, then, necessarily caused by stress and overwork, but "the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts notice."

Thinking of burnout as a form of betrayal is illuminating, because it frames burnout not as a solitary experience — an agony you battle alone, something that's your sole responsibility to heal from — but a relationship in conflict. For those medical students, the conflict comes from being let down by their professors and mentors, and their subsequent interrogation of whether this path would allow them to be the kind, empathetic doctors they wanted to be. For others experiencing professional burnout, the details of the conflict vary, but the core problem remains the same: Workers feel betrayed by their employers.
While illuminating, the scope of this is too narrow. Burnout is not merely a crisis of faith in one's work. No, the burnout crisis so many face today is a crisis of the entire system. It is not that one's singular job is unfulfilling. It is that all jobs are unfulfilling. It is not enough to simply work too many hours. It is that you are working too many hours to build advertisements on addictive technology platforms to sell products that no one needs at a price no one can afford and at the cost of the living ecosystem of the world itself.

Why be a programmer when web technology is destroying the social fabric of the western world? Why sell insurance when the insurance company denies claims to those most in need? Why become a doctor when you are underpaid, overworked, crushed by debt, and only seem to exist to overprescribe pills?

And why join SWAT if law enforcement is only the corrupt arm of the government?

It is not that your job is soul crushing. It is that all jobs are soul crushing. For all the safety and material comforts of the modern world, our postmodern condition has hollowed out the emotional quality of our lives. Trust no institutions, not government, civil, nor corporate, for they are all only going to use you to deepen the profound existential crisis of western society.

But one must be careful with this line of reasoning. It is far easier to destroy than it is to create. Deconstruction of society's flaws is important, but to deconstruct sources of meaning without constructing an emotionally salient replacement leaves people ungrounded, unrooted, and with nothing to look forward to but the weekend. And yet, like fish in the ocean, we cannot escape our social environment. We cannot escape what we are. We can criticize consumer capitalism, but without a replacement in our value system, we cannot overcome what we have internalized.

And so, we still think of ourselves only in terms of our ability to work in a world we can no longer trust.

What the path out of this looks like, I am not sure. Whatever it is, it is going to need this emotional component. Community, purpose, engagement are all psychological needs, no matter how painful to admit that may be if you are non-normative in your personality, your background, or your goals. Perhaps this conflict, to live in a world without meaning or trust, yet still require meaning and intimacy by your human condition, is the essence of postmodernity.

To really, truly escape burnout, to find fulfillment beyond measuring yourself as your ability to work, you must answer that question.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AxelHeyst »

:shock: to that entire post.

It feels like we need social support systems that either don't exist or we don't have access to.

We need to build systems/institutions (that we can believe in) that don't exist yet in order to have the support required to emotionally/psychologically handle the effort required to... build stuff. :cry:

My take is that internalizing postconsumer praxis is required initial step. But like, really though. Not just FIRE: *E.R.E.*. As long as our mindsets/actions are still owned even a bit by the consumer Machine (that turns humans/souls into wallets with legs) we have no chance. Gotta escape Plato's cave.

But then... At least from where I'm sitting, it seems like then a bunch of stuff has to happen simultaneously. Maybe the answer is that we need a critical number of :pioneer species' folks to blaze a trail, weird hardy sorts who are capable of operating without proper support. Folks who have a certain kind of high risk tolerance, who will operate without the social nets in order to put the effort in so others can come later and fill it out. Nutjobs, in other words.

(Sort of like climbing on lead way above pro, and setting bolts and anchors so the follower can climb with much reduced risk)

I just read this about optimism. Main takeaway is the different kinds of optimism that exist, passive and active.

I think postconsumer praxis unlocks access to optimism, but then it's a choice whether you go the active or passive route - or rather what your hope allocation split is, heh.

I've been noticing in myself greater optimism and less burnout symptoms the more I spend time thinking about 'the lifeboat flotilla'. (But I've also got a ton of other changes in my life recently so who knows).

Also this (image meme).

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by sky »

Some people approach work as an altruistic quest to improve the human condition. A job is an opportunity to help move things in a positive direction. That is how I found meaning, purpose and motivation during my career.

The path to burnout is caused by 1000 betrayals of purpose. I like that explanation.

At the end of career, hopefully not long after burnout, one must make a 180 degree turn from altruism to a focus on one's self, the people in close association with you and the physical environment around you.

My response to burnout was to focus on Epicurean ideals such as happiness, tranquility, comfort, enjoyment and friendship. A focus on benefitting one's self and those in close association. I won't claim that this brings some kind of fulfillment or enlightenment, but there is a warm satisfaction in being good to one's self.

I wonder if the altruistic mindset is actually the root cause of burnout.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

sky wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 4:15 pm
I wonder if the altruistic mindset is actually the root cause of burnout.
I think it's more general than that. Specifically, entering work with a mindset of contributing to something bigger than the self but eventually realizing that 1) the machine generally doesn't care about the cogs as long as they're replaceable; and 2) many cogs don't seem to care about the machine as long as they get a paycheck.

Of other relevance is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... -a-fuckism and https://www.amazon.com/How-Found-Freedo ... B00M20I134
Alexander Pope wrote: Blessed in he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
OTOH, this seems like a lousy way to live [from my perspective on myself anyway]. The art is in setting one's expectations just so as to come out right above what's expected. The happiest people are the pessimists for they are always positively surprised ;) :P In reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. For example, humans are great at blaming others when things fall below expectations while taking credit when things come out above #thanksagencybias.

All that to say is that in my physics career, I DGAF'ed about other people/humanity as such. I specifically went with basic/non-applied research to avoid anything that related to humans. However I did have the false (naive?) expectation that the goal was to produce quality results rather than a quantity of publications and grant money. As such loss of faith was death by a thousand cuts as I slowly figured it out.

From my perspective the difficulty of "dialing it in" is that I seem to prefer to have a tiny input on a big problem that's likely unsolvable (an infinite game, see Carse) rather than 100% input on a tiny problem that is definitely solvable (a finite game like tic-tac-toe). I keep talking about retiring from public life to ultimately build cuckoo clocks and watching the world burn from my workshop. In reality, I'm not sure I could do it.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by sky »

Relationship between altruism and burnout

The longer you exist in a behavior pattern that puts the interest of the organization/society/humanity over one's own personal interest, the greater the potential for a burnout crisis.

The more effort one spends focusing on the needs of the organization/society/humanity, the less one is able to care for one's own needs, and the greater the potential for a burnout crisis.

There may be a time of life relationship, where those in early to mid career have the energy to neglect their own needs for the good of the order.

As the number of minor betrayals start to build up, a level of bitterness can build up. This can lead to one intentionally not making any progress for the organization. A high bitterness level probably means that one is not well suited to make decisions for the organization. If one is not able to RE, a high bitterness level might lead to sabotage.

A highly altruistic person, after experiencing the 1000 betrayals, may eventually lose or reject the original altruistic motivator, perhaps even leading to vengeance against those he/she once tried to save.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Ego »

Burnout is the normal reaction of a person doing the same few things over and over again, year after year. Not burning out under such circumstances would be an indication of a larger problem with the person.

Perhaps the team aspect of the Swat Team as well as the variety of unusual problems they get to solve may help them to remain enthusiastic and avoid burnout.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AxelHeyst »

Recall the two types of burnout: type one, which basically refers to running at too high a level of effort for too long and that can generally be amended by some rest and a more balanced approach, and type two, the more spiritual / philosophical form of burnout, which is what is what we're mostly talking about here. Although both types certainly can coexist...

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

AxelHeyst wrote:It feels like we need social support systems that either don't exist or we don't have access to.

We need to build systems/institutions (that we can believe in) that don't exist yet in order to have the support required to emotionally/psychologically handle the effort required to... build stuff.
This is the key, I think. It's going to require an expansion of ERE philosophy to apply to things other than the individual, such as the multitude of complex systems that govern society. In other words, to use The Listening Society's MHC stages, we need an approach that isn't just systemic, not just metasystemic, but one that is either paradigmatic or crossparadigmatic. It's a philosophy that applies outside of oneself without falling victim to what I call the "commune problem," where these efforts either collapse into cults or fall apart due to interpersonal politics.

The crisis is, I believe, existential. To exist, one has to exist inside a medium or a context. Existence is participatory, and participation implies the existence of the Other to interact with. But when that Other is fundamentally poisoned because of one thousand betrayals, when the context you are supposed to exist in seems hopeless, when you are stripped of agency and turned into a cog not by another person but by the impersonal system itself, you pull back and detach, disconnect, dissociate. Why try when the logic of your position is utterly indifferent to the outcome?

And yet, you cannot exist without participation in your context, so you cannot pull back, not really. You can make an attempt to by dissociating into distractions or addictions, anything to pull you out of the pain of the present moment, but the very nature of human existence means you can't really escape, not in an existentially significant way. You can only numb the reaction.

When I started my career in software, I groked the Sociopath/Clueless/Loser nature of work before I even started working to any significant extent. My plan was always to just hoard money and get out. I figured I was always going to be on the losing end of the bargain. I had very little faith to lose.

But what killed me was that I couldn't even write computer code because that's not what being a software developer was about. I loved computer science, I loved coding, I had done both since I was 13. So I expected my job to be writing code. What I didn't expect was it to be 4 hours a day of meetings, writing features that would get scrapped, writing technical debt that would never be resolved, and working on production support tickets that could have been avoided if project management had let us actually write things the right way.

I ended up giving up after about a year in and doing the minimal amount of effort to skate by. The absolute worst part about this strategy is that it worked. No one noticed as long as I got core tasks done. I could completely zone out during planning meetings because the feature would be scrapped half the time and the one person who cared always carried the meeting anyway.

The insidious part about this is that disconnect from work lead to disconnecting from the rest of my life. The brain doesn't draw a distinction between work and home; all stimulus is stimulus for the brain. So by no longer caring or participating in work, I stopped caring or participating in the rest of my life. Everything became about avoiding the work experience because the futility of my position was too painful, and then numbing the existential pain of my half-existence outside of work.

As I have now come outside the other end of this, I think giving up at work was absolutely a huge mistake, and yet I struggle to stop doing it because there is absolutely no incentive to try. It's the logic of the entire system that is the problem. And so, the crisis of faith turns into that spiritual burnout.

I think undoing the damage of burnout is really important in order to escape Plato's Cave and build something better than the salaryman/consumer mindset. Maybe by learning to do that at an individual level, we can then apply the lesson at a metasystemic or paradigmatic level.

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