How 'not okay to want that' becomes awayness-based motivation

I'd say that kids generate internal blocks when they receive messages that it's not okay to want what they want

Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv · Dec 21, 2021

I have the belief that people know what they want as kids and then learn to get in their own way as they get older, but I have never particularly sought out contradictory evidence etc, and I figure I should do that

Dec 23, 2021

there's a great quote from Bessel van der Kolk about healing from trauma being about learning that it's okay to feel what you feel and know what you know, and I have an addition about wanting

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Mar 9, 2021

I have an addition to this: healing from trauma also involves learning that it's okay to want what you want. (Not all wants are going to be satisfiable directly without causing others' suffering, but it's still entirely okay for the want to exist.) twitter.com/Malcolm_Ocean/…

the addition needs a caveat of course, like any pithy true sentence one could either put the caveat on the level of action (it's okay to have a violent urge but not okay to act on it) or on the level of underlying need vs strategy (ok to want power but not by killing)

but at any rate, suppose you're a kid, and you want something, and your parents can't deal with how you're going about wanting it (and or trying to get it) for any of a dozen reasons so you get some "no" signal, whether a *look*, or a stern word, or no dessert, or a cane...

and you don't want to get more of that no signal, so you (usually unconsciously) vow not to go about wanting that thing again

QC @QiaochuYuan · Dec 22, 2021

so instead i want to thread in another idea / frame i got from @Malcolm_Ocean, sarah peyton's "unconscious contracts." there are other ways you could talk about this like schemas, i like this language because it feels respectful and true to the experience sarahpeyton.com/category/how-t…

these build up this is how people learn awayness-based motivation the fear is louder than their wants but it can never tell you where to go, only where not to

QC @QiaochuYuan · Dec 22, 2021

and to give a more phenomenological flavor of what i mean by avoidance being badly underspecified: if you spend a lot of time searching out new and exciting things to be afraid of and anxious about, you learn a lot about what *not* to do but not about what *to* do

too many things to avoid, and everywhere is problematic, meaning you either bounce around frantically (anxiety) or become completely stuck (depression)

QC @QiaochuYuan · Dec 22, 2021

an individual unconscious contract in isolation can seem heroic or noble. i still want to treat other people better than my father treated me the problem, and the connection with depression, is when you accumulate so many "avoid at ALL COSTS" that no actions feel possible