Posted by pseudoname on October 10, 2006, at 14:06:19
In Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" (which I recommend, despite its faults), he talks about how "normal", "healthy" humans have these safety mechanisms in their minds that kick in at times when things are going horribly wrong in our little worlds. Thus we think if our dog dies we'll be inconsolably miserable for months, but when it actually happens, we aren't *able* to feel as bad as we thought we would or think we should. Or contemplating a disaster, we expect to tear out our hair & give up, but when disaster actually hits, we tap some reservoir of emotional equilibrium and just do what needs to be done. Also, there are built-in biasing mechanisms that make us brush over our undeniable faults and errors and really, truly *believe* the lame excuses we may make for our shortcomings, even while we see that, logically, they're ridiculous in applying them to anyone else.
While I sometimes seem to have some crisis-management equilibrium, as I was reading the book, I kept shouting, "BUT I DON'T HAVE THOSE MECHANISMS!" Mostly, I don't brush over or excuse my faults & errors. Even if I speak up to defend myself, nevertheless I agree with any critic; I'll go far beyond them, in fact.
And I can't see how other people manage to do it, either. If I were leading almost anyone's life — saint, statesperson, billionaire, mensch, whatever — I would be unrelenting in my self-criticism. How do they do it?!
Declan has made the observation that depressives tend to be moralistic. Perhaps this is related or even underlies that, somehow.
I wonder if there is a specific physiological process that accounts for it. "If I only had a couple more axons extending back to Area 51…" or whatever.
Sometimes the label "mentally ill" or the idea of physiological brain disease seems to be liberating for me in that normal, healthy, fault-excusing way. But the effect is short-lived.
I don't want to get a PBC for this post, so let be clear: I'm not saying other people are bad or undeserving of healthy bias. I just don't get how they manage to do it.
poster:pseudoname
thread:693576
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/esteem/20060921/msgs/693576.html