[Dface and Doubtingthomas] Discussion Tree Practice

I’d suggest making tag color and border color match.

ok like making it shorter right?

like making the tree with stuff people specifically label as a node they want to add to the discussion tree

ok

ohhh I think that changes everything. Im gonna read Idea Tree Discussion Activity Suggestion more

It does change a lot but I think it was a basic suggestion. I think it said that we do not have to add everything we say in this forum to a tree. Only things we want to. We can have multiple trees and we need to know which conversation is part of which node.

Sorry, I got stuck. I shouldnt have focused on one detail for so long. I was doing avoidance behavior. Having a convo with piers reminds me of college and how emotional and hostile I got to the other students and professors cuz they provided crits.

Im afraid of getting hostile and emotional again. I dont think im ready for convos with other people. I think I have bad ideas about the value of discussion.

Why? Is it because you think you might get emotional and hostile? Wouldn’t that depend on the conversation topic? I think a conversation about trees has a very low chance of getting emotional.

My speculation and suggestion:

ATM you are (or, might be) on the edge of some useful humility regarding those emotions. If you try to avoid them then you will never master them. If you want to be unaffected by them (and remain rational in spite of them), then you need to master those emotions.

If you want to respond positively to criticism, then this is a chance to practice that. You say that you’re “afraid”. Is that not an instance of being afraid of criticism? Those moments (when you do get emotional) are the best chance for you to figure out why you have those feelings and to understand them - IMO. It’s hard to introspect about something the further in the past it gets.

Here is my suggestion: read https://fallibleideas.com/emotions
The final section is “How To Change Emotions” – you should read the entire article, slowly and carefully. (and post about stuff you don’t fully understand and your ideas, too – that way ppl can help if you get stuck on something.)
One thing I have to add to the article that helps me: in those moments when you slow down, consider your goals – what are you actually after; and consider the other person’s goals, too.

Edit: IDK if this post is okay for this category. I posted about that here

Edit: IDK if this post is okay for this category. I posted about that here

I (meta) discussed this post in the other thread at Friendly Category Posting Policies Question - #4 by Elliot

Why?

I think im very indecisive with my responses. I overthink what I want to say and barely get around to saying something.

Is it because you think you might get emotional and hostile?

Yeah, I dont know what im gonna get out of a peer to peer convo. Im used to peer to teacher convo with curi.

Wouldn’t that depend on the conversation topic?

Yes, it’ll be different if we were to talk about something heated and personal.

I think a conversation about trees has a very low chance of getting emotional.

I don’t know what’s keeping me from responding to something not that hard. Im overthinking my responses to you.

Is reading or any other project that’s important to you going OK?

re: what’s keeping you from responding part. I think I have this or a similar problem too. Trying to be verbose and writing down everything helps me in clear my mind. I get clarity about what I want to say when I write down a lot.

Is reading or any other project that’s important to you going OK?

I took a break from paragraph analyzing so I can focus on discussion trees.

Taking a break looks like a bad idea now cuz im not doing anything rn.

Trying to be verbose and writing down everything helps me in clear my mind.

Yeah, i think free writing is good to get my thoughts out.

@Max Thank you for your reply. I’ve been reading it this past week in bits. My emotions played a factor in non responsiveness, but I think it’s actually that I didnt know what I was going to get from a discussion with DT.

I was having trouble visualizing my goals like how does learning discussion look like when Im talking to DT? Am I going on a tangent and not getting anything done?

I think i shouldve asked more questions in the forum instead of struggling silently trying to get one thing.

You’re welcome.

I guess by ‘visualizing’ you mean like making your goals explicit and knowing how to judge if you’re making progress / meeting them / etc. These are good things to bring up if you feel uncertain. I find that if I’m not clear on my goals, or aren’t sure that what I’m doing is meeting those goals, then it’s harder to commit and see things through. I find writing about my goals helps (even if it’s just private), and doing some clear planning. WRT planning I like the method Eli Goldratt has in It’s Not Luck; roughly it goes like:

  1. Write down the main goal.
  2. Write down all the big things that could go wrong; i.e., the reasons that you might not meet your goal.
  3. Come up with intermediate goals that address each of those things that could go wrong.
  4. Come up with methods to meet the intermediate goals.
  5. Order all of the methods and intermediate steps based on dependencies – this gives you the plan. (you can repeat steps 2-4 to break down intermediate steps, too)

You can structure this as a tree, which might help both with practicing the structure of ideas and getting the plan clearer in your head (it also often helps having something visual where you can see the structure).

Note that you can often find synergies w/ steps 3 and 4, like a single goal or method that helps prevent multiple undesirable things that you identified in step 2. I find that it’s harder to enact a plan when I include too many things that can go wrong and too many intermediate steps to address them. To start with, if you want to try this, I’d suggest doing smaller stuff first (where fewer things can go wrong), and for bigger things to prioritize the stuff that can go wrong and ignore smaller things that you can solve ad-hoc as you go through. That way you get a clearer idea of where the bottlenecks in the plan are and the major obstacles between you and your goal.

Yup, this sort of thing is good to bring up. If you feel stuck then you could make a thread asking for suggestions with a bit of explanation about where you’re at or the problems you think you’re running in to. (otherwise it makes it harder for ppl to give you specific advice)

Have you watched some of my tutoring videos? If so, how did that go?

I haven’t watched them. I planned on watching them just yesterday after reading this post. This is a problem I’ve noticed: I only do learning activities if it gets recommended by you. And it has to be in the near future. It’s like I need constant confirmation and approval.

Edit: I meant to say that that if the recommendation is recent then I like it more. The sentence I actually wrote which is “And it has to be in the near future.” is incorrect

@Dface This is all replies to stuff that Max said, but it is meant to apply to your situation/problem.

I think “mastering” emotions may be the wrong way to think of them. It is hard to tell because it’s not really explained, so it could mean a lot of things. But usually when people talk about, say, mastering their anger, they mean that they still get angry, and they just have some amount of control over it. They are able to suppress it, or use it in a targeted way, instead of feeling overwhelmed by it.

So they aren’t really resolving the issues, beliefs, internal disagreements & coercion, etc that are causing their anger. Instead they are just channeling, controlling, suppressing, etc, the anger.

If someone doesn’t have a lot of experience paying attention to, understanding, changing, etc, their emotions, then a conversation with another person is not the best place to start.

It is better to first start paying attention to your thoughts, physical sensations, etc, when you are not emotional. You can learn to sort of step outside of your thoughts & feelings and view them on a more meta level when you are calm. Paying attention to thoughts & feelings like that is a skill, and it is easier to learn & practice this skill if you start while you are calm, and then later you can start to apply it when you are feeling emotional.

(This is what mindfulness meditation is: you learn the skill of focusing your attention, paying attention to your own thoughts and feelings, being able to view your thoughts and feelings from an outside perspective, etc)

Once you can use mindfulness, a lot of people will be able to use it during an emotional conversation with another person to calm themselves down, but in the beginning, usually the best thing for them to do is leave the conversation until they are calm. (There are exceptions when it is a conversation you have to have, like a decision needs to be made with another person.)

And people mostly should not be having conversations on here that they are emotional about – the conversation quality really suffers, people end up being more irrational, illogical, hostile, mean, etc, when they are emotional. So I definitely don’t think people should be having emotional discussions here as a way to practice dealing with their emotions. In general, people should not write messages on here when they are upset.

I agree the emotions essay has good advice. But to be able to follow that advice, I would suggest first practicing mindfulness meditation, to get some practice with the skill of paying attention to thoughts & feelings in that way.

Once you can do mindfulness meditation when calm, you can start to apply it to your negative emotions. One way to start is to think about something you are emotional about. You just bring it up in your own mind, when you are calm. You don’t need to involve another person, get into an argument or discussion, etc. You can instead think of something that upsets you and pay attention to those emotions.

This is a common type of guided meditation practice session: they will direct you to think of something that upsets you, and then pay attention to your feelings. The mindfulness meditation stuff directs you to just pay attention to your feelings. You can do that first, start to identify what you are actually feeling, what it feels like in your body, what your thoughts are, how you know you are upset, etc. And then when you get good at that, you can apply the emotions essay advice.

Then once you have practiced on your own (when you don’t have another person to worry about, or a current problem to deal with) you will be better able to use the same techniques in real time when emotional situations come up.

Of course, if problems come up in your real life before you have practiced much on your own, you can try to use the meditation and emotions essay advice to deal with them and calm down. But you shouldn’t be seeking out things that will make you emotional when you are just starting to learn these skills.

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