{up on the watershed/standing at a fork in the road}

[kaberett]

It is commonly asserted, in popular culture (or at least the parts of it that I frequent), that chess grand masters when given a board set up mid-game and asked to list all possible moves... won't. In contrast to amateurs, who'll get a rather more complete set, because -- goes the anecdote -- grand masters just don't see the bad moves.

I have been unable to unearth any actual corroborating evidence for this; I've found a lot on "chunking", on the ability of chess grand masters to recreate mid-game but not random boards they've seen very briefly to a relatively high degree of accuracy -- but that isn't actually what I wanted to set up this post, so instead I'll just present it on the meta level (and gratefully accept any offers of references).

Because the thing I want to talk about is unlearning, well, precisely that.

I've been thinking, recently, about the psychological trick of looking at your catastrophic thoughts, your worst-case scenarios, your Only Possible Explanations, and -- learning how to address them by means of sitting down and just... writing a list (of ten, or five, or three) alternatives that do not have to be realistic or plausible. "She's not replying to my message because she's on a highly classified Mars mission and she's got far enough out that the lightspeed delay is significant." "He's having a tea party with a dinosaur and can't get over the feathers." Anything, anything at all, that gets you out of the space of discarding anything but the Worst Case Scenario as impossible, before you've even really consciously considered it.

You're (re)learning how to see the "bad" moves. You're learning how to see options.

And it's generally much easier to start, to practise those skills, with things you're not even trying to make yourself believe -- where the extent of your emotional engagement is resentment of the exercise -- than with anything that feels threatening because, for example, it involves vulnerability, or uncertainty, or hope. It's got other benefits -- it's distracting; it might even be amusing -- but that's the core of it: you're learning not to dismiss out of hand the options that are obviously impossible.

Like, you know, "maybe they don't actually hate me".

Comments

[redbird]

I think this approach may be useful for me right now (I may have heard of it before, but that's different from remembering it without prompting).

[kaberett]

Oh, I am glad -- thank you for letting me know <3

[cynthia1960]

Yes, thank you for this useful framing.

[kaberett]

You are very welcome. ♥

[tei]

Thank you for this!

[ewt]

This [reminds me of] / [seems related to] a technique in this post by 8daysofhappy several years ago, which is a little more structured (and not always as helpful, for me).

I'm fond of it because it takes the bit of my brain that is accustomed to looking for infinite dangerous possibilities (to stay safe) -- the "what-if engine" if you will -- and uses the same mechanism to find the positive ones.

[kaberett]

Yes! Precisely.

[silveradept]

Certain places I have been built into their scripts exercise at rejecting others and bring rejected before beginning the evening's program, and what they said was to come up with something patently ridiculous to ask, so that people got the practice in and knew that rejection was something they could take, even if the practice they had was with something that was absurd.

I've always wondered whether it had a subconscious effect or not, and this post suggests that it does, and that starting with the ridiculous is a good idea. So thank you for this, and also for reminding us that there are other options available, even when some of them seem weird.

[davidgillon]

. "She's not replying to my message because she's on a highly classified Mars mission and she's got far enough out that the lightspeed delay is significant."

Bugger, they're onto me! ;)

Seriously, that's interesting.

[haggis]

Yeah, I have done this and found it really helpful, although generally I look for plausible options, rather than impossible ones. My brain gloms onto the worst possibility and ignores the far more realistic ones and just generating a long list can help balance that.

[kaberett]

YEP. Really glad it works for you. <3

[sfred]

Oh, I need to listen to some Indigo Girls now. <3

[kaberett]

I am keeping half an eye out for another livestreamed gig...

[vass]

This is really good, and I love the dinosaur tea party in particular.

(For me I needed to go a step more basic than that, and actually articulate the Worst Case Scenarios to myself, because until I did that I was just tensing up and feeling inchoate dread and not admitting what I dreaded. Partly because fear, but partly also because it sounds stupid and/or shameful (and Catastrophisation Is Bad, Don't Do That, so at some point I stopped acknowledging those thoughts when they appeared.)

So for me it's more like *grandpa voice* "Eh? What's that? Speak louder! ...Maybe I said something wrong and now they hate me? Mmm, yes, I see. Well, that could happen. It's happened before with other friends. And it hurt a lot when it did, and I wasn't expecting it that time. Yes, I might have said something wrong and now they hate me. ...Or they might be afk hiding because they think I hate them. That's quite possible too. Or they're busy. That could happen. I think that's happened to me more times than someone not replying because they hated me. But if they do hate me, I'll survive that. I did before."

[None of which helps when the most likely option is that someone doesn't want further interaction with me, and I don't think they'd be honest about it if I asked. I can disengage in that scenario, but my Captain Awkward Golden Retriever will spend years second-guessing that decision, wondering if I should have kept trying.])

[kaberett]

Yes to all of this, and also some oof-ing. <3

[recessional]

I have no articulateness to add but a lot of "Mood" feelings.

[booksarelife]

Ooh, I love this! (Do you have any sources about this kind of retraining your brain? Because I want to politely shove a few of them at a friend of mine at some point)

[kaberett]

This is the kind of skill that tends to show up in discussions of "distress tolerance". Here's one pop self-help place it shows up with some other techniques!

[jesse_the_k]

Lovely mind acrobatics! Thank you.

[kaberett]

<3

[applenym]

Very useful mind trick! Thank you for sharing.

[kaberett]

You are welcome!