Peter Rosendahl Dam

A few days ago I had a long call with Thomas. The call, in which Thomas offered me a lot of insights and helped me see a larger picture of human existence, inspired the long text blow. ·· THREE ELEMENTS OF THE MIND ·· Human existence entails certain biological needs such as eating, drinking, sleeping, fucking and belonging to a group (since isolation decreases odds of survival and mating). Being human also means being able to observe differences (the ability to distinguish a car from a tree, a man from a woman, or a tall person from a short person, and so on). Most of these drives and features are instinctive and fundamental - we have observed differences, and needed to sleep, reproduce and eat for millions of years in order to survive. We cannot turn off or get rid of these instincts. Feelings are a newer phenomenon. Feeling are an evolutionary adaptation because they compel us to fulfil our urges. The feeling of hunger motivates us to seek food, the feeling of loneliness motivates us to seek company or group acceptance, etc. We cannot turn off or get rid of our feelings. Finally, thoughts and language are the latest addition to the human condition. Thoughts and feelings allow us to conceptualize the world around us as well as the world within us. This has been very useful for humans, but it comes with a very real danger: The risk of conceptualizing the world and ourselves in a way that is inaccurate or unhelpful. Our proclivity to think and create mental conceptualisations cannot be turned off (except momentarily with mindfulness). Since it cannot be turned off, we tend to make conceptualizations about everything. This includes our feelings and drives. We have various theories about what feelings mean, where they come from, how to best deal with them, and so on. Formally we call the development of such theories “psychology”, which tries to provide answers to questions such as, “What should I do when I feel jealous”, or “Why do I hate myself.” Even venerated psychologists do not necessarily develop the most accurate or helpful answers. Individuals who have zero, or limited understanding of psychology also form their own, layman conclusions. ·· EXPERIENTIAL AVOIDANCE & UNCONSCIOUS FORMATION OF BELIEFS ·· For obvious reasons we don’t like feeling unpleasant emotions. Hence we try to get rid of them. We also try to escape unpleasant thoughts, such as “I’m ugly” or “I’m too fat.” (Typically, the effort to escape a feeling is unconscious, that is, we do not know that our behaviour is an attempt to get rid of a feeling, and we tend to be more consciously aware of our attempts to change our thoughts. This is because it’s easier for us to “know” that we have a particular thought than it is for us to “know” that we have a certain feeling. Feelings are more diffuse and intangible.) In our attempts to get rid of unpleasant emotions and thoughts, we try different things out. We all develop habits, or strategies, to deal with them, such as having a cigarette or biting our nails to get rid of the feeling of nervousness, or pursuing hot women hoping that another lay will remove our thoughts of being inadequate. Let’s call these attempts to escape unpleasant mental experiences “management strategies”. Some of these management strategies are directed outwards at the physical world: if we think/feel that we are fat, we try to lose weight so the thought goes away. Other strategies are directed inwards at our mental world: we try telling ourselves that we aren’t fat, or we bury the emotion by distracting ourselves and directing our attention towards something else. Sometimes you can work both angles simultaneously: Do something about reality and try denying negative thoughts any entry into your mind. I recommend asking yourself what unpleasant feelings and thoughts bother you the most, and what you typically do to escape them. Not all management strategies are equally helpful in the long term. Take the emotion jealousy. Some will try to remove the feeling by striving upwards and obtain the things they want — others will try to get rid of the feeling by destroying the object of their envy. Consider the case of Elliot Rodger, a self-proclaimed “incel” who went on a killing spree, aiming at attractive women because he could not have them, and at attractive men because they had what he wanted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings (opens in a new tab). Killing a guy you are jealous of may satisfy you for a minute, but it will get you in jail and give rise to much worse emotions. Guys like us may not have secret fantasies of mass murders, but we have unhelpful management strategies in other ways. Personally, for many years I have felt 1. loneliness as a result of not belonging to a group, 2. jealousy as a result of observing that I was not as attractive (physically and personality-wise) as other men, and not getting the women they got, and 3. nervousness/anxiety/fear of being romantically and sexually inadequate, mostly due to rumination and unrealistic expectations about what a man should be. The solutions to our problems are often quite simple (though not necessarily easy). My particular three problems all had rather straightforward answers: 1) Go do social things, join a sports club and so on, 2) improve my physique, style and mindset, and 3) learn about female psychology, dating, sex, staying present, and so on. But I most likely made unconscious links between these feelings and made false conclusions along these lines: “I feel lonely and don’t belong, I am not as attractive as others, and I can’t get/keep the women that I want. That must mean there is something wrong with me — I am broken, different from others, or I am missing something essential that others have.” I unknowingly concluded that all my problems were somehow related and tied to something essentially unfixable about me, which is a much more complicated and intangible problem than the initial three. This conclusion made the path forward very muddled and unclear. I couldn’t see clearly what I ought to do, or even if I knew what to do, doing it seemed pointless. “Why bother doing X or Y if I am still broken inside, it won’t make a change.” Instead of working on those three tangible domains of my life, I spent much more time working on a vague problem which was only there in my own mind. I tried finding the source of and solution to my brokenness, the origins and end of my misery. I did the Social Prime bootcamp, I took the RSD Max hotseat, I went on self-development and coaching courses, I read tons of books, I meditated and travelled, looking for the answer to the wrong question. The question rested on the incorrect assumption that my feelings/problems were manifestations of something inherently wrong with me. This is an example of 1) using cognition/thinking/language to understand and make sense the feelings we have; 2) creating (sometimes ineffective or downright destructive) management strategies to remove unpleasant feelings; and 3) using language and thoughts to amplify and reinforce my emotional reality of brokenness and inadequacy. I had turned what was a vague, barely conscious feeling of emptiness in my teenage years into a full-blown, self-diagnosed mental barrier in my late 20ies. Our attempts to understand and remove our feelings can be described in a different way: Rather than changing our beliefs to match reality (which is usually the best solution), we try to change reality so that it matches our beliefs, which typically leads to frustration, like the case with Elliot Rodger I mentioned before. He believed attractive men and women did not deserve to live, or to be happier than him, so he arranged reality accordingly. I did not change my belief that I was broken; instead I lived my life, treated myself and spoke as if something was broken. The result was that, for all intents and purposes, I “was” broken. In my behaviour and in my thoughts I acted like a broken person. Thus I had changed reality to match my beliefs. This is an example of an unconscious creation of belief. Our primitive drives, our feelings and our thoughts (our attempt to make sense of our feelings) lead to the creation of beliefs and conscious or unconscious management strategies that reflect these beliefs. You could also put it like this: I thought that my feelings were an accurate reflection of what was real. If I felt inadequate, I assumed that to be evidence that I was inadequate. So while I was trying to shape my beliefs to match reality (which would generally be a good idea), it turned out wrong because I mistook my false perception to be reality. I hope that makes sense. Instead of shaping my beliefs to reflect reality (which is: I’m pretty dope), I shaped my beliefs to reflect my erroneous perception of reality (which was: I’m undesirable). So what is the optimal management strategy for a given emotion? How are they best viewed and handled? As it turns out, sometimes the best strategy is to not manage the emotion at all. I’m a strong advocate of the psychological school named ACT (acceptance commitment therapy). In this school, they call all our attempts to escape particular emotions “experiential avoidance” (since there are elements of human existence that you are unwilling to experience). They say this is incredibly unhelpful. Whenever you try to escape your thoughts/feelings, they will only increase in power and gain a stronger grip on you. Instead, they recommend mindfulness — allowing the thoughts and feelings to arise and exist within you for the moment, without doing anything to remove them, just observing them. That way, they lose their hold of you. I found this to be extremely effective, not just in social interactions but also to relax in bed (I’ve struggled with performance anxiety and being unable to get an erection). I highly recommend checking out the book “The Confidence Gap” by Russell Harris on this topic. The book also does a great job of helping you figure out what your values are, how you want to live your life, and how you can move towards that life even if your thoughts and feelings tell you not to. ·· HANDLING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ·· To start, I think it’s very important to develop the right attitude towards our unhelpful, self-critical thoughts or destructive habits. We should simply observe them rather than use them as a way to assess who we are. “Oh darn it, now I thought of myself as a loser - gosh, I’m such a loser for thinking that way. I have to think positively!”. I don’t recommend making any value-judgement of your thoughts apart from asking yourself this question: Is this thought effective and functional, and does it help me live the life I want to live and become the man I want to be? If the answer to any of it is “no”, then simply accept that the thought is there and observe it without doing anything else. Maybe even smile at it. “Ah, my brain is telling me this same old story again.” Once we have a neutral, calm attitude to our mental world, we can try to actively construct beliefs. Let’s say a woman will be more attracted to a man who thinks “Height does not matter” than a man who thinks he is not tall enough. How do we go about creating this mindset? In the ACT-book I mentioned before, and in mindfulness theory in general, there is a conceptual (and possibly real) distinction between the mind and the self. It is your mind that sometimes says you are a worthless piece of shit, it your self (which is sometimes obscured or forgotten) that knows you are not, or that you needn’t be. Other examples could be: Your mind is scared of talking to women, your self really wants to do it in spite of the fear. Your mind has negative thoughts, your self wants to be free of them and have more useful thoughts. I can’t really tell you how you “know” which is which, but I suppose the distinction is not entirely necessary. Perhaps you don’t need to know which entity is producing the thought. Maybe you don’t even need to know whether the thought IS true. Perhaps height DOES matter (it certainly does to some people). Perhaps women DON’T currently find you attractive (some women never will). The only thing you need to know is: Is it helpful to you to focus on a given thought you have, and do you want to live as if the thought was true? A personal note: For me it was important to change my beliefs not for the sake of being attractive, but simply because it is essentially good for me. Let’s say my mind goes: “That guy has a way hotter girlfriend that I can ever have because he looks better than me.” Obviously this thought is not helpful (it might not even be true). So I want to just observe it and let it go. But if my motivation for letting go of the thought is that, “Women won’t like me if I have this mindset”, then the same old belief has crept in through the back door: I must change who I am before I can be attractive enough. Rather, I will dismiss it on the grounds that “This thought is not truth and is bad for me.” Instead of changing my thoughts based on what I suspect an attractive stranger wants, I pursue change in the name of truth and improving ME - which is not at all selfish, it is actually good for the world and the men and women who get to know you. If you develop positive beliefs, you can spread love, help others to accept themselves and give pleasure to women. If you don't, you can become bitter, jealous, and even seek to humiliate others. ·· CONSCIOUS CONSTRUCTION OF BELIEFS ·· The aforementioned book does not cover how to achieve any specific goal, such as becoming a great dancer or getting in great shape. It doesn’t explain how to do a knee spin or a proper squat. Fortunately, this information is available on the internet. But let’s say your value is mental health, and your goal is to develop the most helpful, effective and attractive mindset possible. Whose authority and knowledge do we turn to then? Plenty books and courses shed a bit of light on the process of shaping your own mind, but do not cover the full spectrum. In my estimation, nobody has yet found the optimal way to go about this, so what follows here is just speculation, partially Thomas's ideas and partially my own. Beliefs can be constructed reversely and consciously. As we collect relevant information, we begin to see more helpful perspectives than the one we currently have — or, in other words, we become able to imagine a different perspective (or version) of reality. This allows us to view and handle our feelings and drives in a different way. When you have rationally established that your life would be better if you did not care about your height, or that you do not want to be ruled by fear when you consider approaching an attractive woman, then you can start engineering alternative approaches. Maybe part of the answer is visualisation. I read a book called “Psycho-cybernetics” which is supposedly amazing, but its visualization exercises didn’t change me that much. Of course it’s possible that I just need to try more. I’m really not an expert on this, Thomas probably has more to say about it. Thomas asked me to imagine this scenario: I’m standing in a room full of people. Above me there is a ball of light that shines out on other people. Some people won’t like my light (my beliefs), or light in general (truth). Some people will be annoyed that it gets in their eyes and move away from me or try to put out my light. Other people won’t care. Others still will love my light - they will move towards it, and when I speak to them, I will see a similar kind of light reflected in their eyes. Thomas added that my light grows when other people throw their untrue beliefs at me. If I recall correctly, he said my mission is to make my own light grow, shining truth to others and not having my life dictated by other people’s beliefs. For some reason this image made me feel a sense of relief and clarity. Maybe it’s because of remnants of an (infantile or appropriate?) desire to be godly, like the sun, shining light, truth, security and warmth to other people, helping them grow. Maybe I liked the image because it conveys that I am being judged by my personality rather than by my looks. In any case, it was powerful. I hope to learn more about visualization. The last thing I want to talk about is the “fake it till you make it”-approach. It’s not clear to me what “faking” means anymore. (Faking is not the same as lying.) What’s the difference between faking good posture and having good posture? What’s the difference between faking eye contact, faking confident behaviour, and having eye contact and exhibiting confident behaviour? As far as I can tell, the only difference is that the former is conscious and requires some mental effort, while the latter is habitual and automatic. And the only way to make any behaviour habitual and automatic is to repeat it consciously until it you no longer need to be conscious of it. Something strange happens when I act “as if” a girl finds me attractive. Either I tell myself, “We have good chemistry”, or I imagine it in the moment, I bring my attention to indications that we have good chemistry. When I do so, I immediately (almost automatically, without micro-management) make adjustments in my behaviour that reflects this attitude. I look at her differently, I talk a bit differently, and something between us happens (most of the time — some people you just don’t have chemistry with). When I act AS IF we have chemistry, chemistry grows. My mind may object and say, “Wait, what if she doesn’t like you?” I just smile at the thought, “Ah, my brain is telling me to be insecure”, observe it without doing anything about the it. Then I bring my attention back to imagining, or acting as if, there is a great connection between us. Similarly, when I’m in bed with a girl and I struggle to get fully turned on, I bring my attention to how good it would feel like to fuck her, I pay attention to all indications that I AM relaxed and turned on. It’s a bit difficult for me to put into words, and doing it is not always easy. Until I manage to describe it better, you will have to experiment for yourself. But it seems to work better than anything I’ve tried before — if I bring my attention to imagining a reality, if I bring my attention to all indications that this reality is already manifest, or if I act AS IF the reality is already manifest, it seems way more likely that it does manifest. That’s all for now. Hope you found some of it useful.