Normally, when we think about being less wrong, we think about being less wrong about external reality. When sailing, we ask questions like "Where are we?", "Where is our destination?" and "Where are the rocks hiding beneath the surface?", and really hope we don't get these things wrong. Because if the map by which we're navigating doesn't correspond to the territory, we're likely to end up very confused about what we're seeing, and lack the ability to navigate effectively.
But there's another kind of confusion which can be extremely tricky to navigate.
The chronic pain transcript is a good example of this other kind of confusion and how extremely tricky it can be. Part 1 introduces the problem as essentially debilitating chronic pain from physical nerve damage, which sure doesn't look like a problem of confusion. Yet the solution, shown in part 2 in full, reveals that careful navigation was able to substantially relieve his suffering overnight.
This "other kind" of confusion which can be so deceptively tricky, is confusion about the content of our own maps. This person suffering from chronic pain wasn't wrong about having nerve damage, but he misunderstood the cause of his suffering, what his pain meant to him, and why he wasn't attending to it. It's as if he was sailing towards the point that his map had labeled as the destination, but because he misunderstood his ships motion in that direction as "due to the wind", he wasn't able to effectively get his ship to do what he thought was right.
When we mis-map our own maps, we end up equally unequipped to navigate, only instead of being confused about the reality that surrounds us, we will be confused about how we're trying to navigate the world around us. And instead of being ineffective at interacting with the outside world, we will be ineffective at interacting with our own beliefs, and methods of navigation. Which is how he ended up stuck suffering for so long. And how many of us get similarly stuck, in all sorts of circumstances.
When you're confused about the fact of whether you're confused, and hold the mistaken belief that you aren't mistaken about what your beliefs are, it can be a really difficult to escape from this epistemic trap. Beliefs like "pain is bad" and "I know what I believe" feel like directly experiencing truth, so it's really hard to find the seams to begin tugging at -- or to even know to look.
Rather than continuing to tear at the seams, let's begin building an alternative model, which does not have these limitations.
Imagine that we have an irrational fear of dogs -- only, we're too damn naive to realize that you can't reason with irrational fears.
Obviously this is crazy, and it's not so easy. One time I was so scared that I literally couldn't get my hands to let go of the rope, and I had to use my feet to kick my own hands off. You've probably had your own experiences trying to "reason" with things like fear, so I don't think I need to sell you on the idea that "maybe just reason better" is naive. But let's explore it anyway for a moment, and just assume I was being dumb or something when I was kicking at my hands instead of just letting go.
How might this go? Often, people will make mistakes that lead to failure even when the task they're attempting isn't impossible, so let's first make sure not to do that. Assuming we're extremely epistemically careful, what is the first sign that we're butting heads with reality?
In order to answer this question, we must avoid a bunch of common pitfalls. For one, we must make sure we know which question we're asking. "Should I be afraid of this?" is not the same question as "Is it dangerous?". One implies the other, so it's extremely easy to conflate them either without noticing or without noticing that it matters, but they are still distinct questions. One is "Is this thing dangerous?", and the other is "Is that answer we just gave correct?".
Answer the former, and you answer the former. Okay, maybe our answer there wasn't correct. In order to correct our answer to the latter question though, we have to change our answer to the latter question.
Is this thing dangerous?
Once we ask the right question, we still have to answer it if we're to change our minds. If we flinch away before we answer it, then our answer won't change. That's why it is important to understand how to diagnose and correct a flinch.
This can be a very uncomfortable question. Put yourself in the shoes of someone struggling with an irrational fear, and notice what happens when you're asked "Is it dangerous?"
The responses that come up tend to be things like "No, but I can't help it", or "It's irrational, I know". The former answers and then immediately negates the meaningfulness of the answer, while the latter doesn't answer the question at all. Neither of them have the gravity of just saying -- sigh... "No. It is not dangerous", or "Yes. It is dangerous".
Or even "I don't know."
If we're going to be epistemically careful, we need to notice these flinches before we commit them, and refocus our intention on finding truth.
Is it dangerous?
If you're sufficiently afraid of dogs, and not happy to just answer "Yes!", this can be a very difficult question to answer so definitively like that. Because who wants to be afraid of dogs? Self judgement as "irrational" starts to make a lot of sense, sometimes. Often the answers we reach -- and which are shown by our fears -- do not look correct. For one, being afraid of dogs is no fun, so that doesn't seem like the right answer. But for two, you also know that it's pretty silly, since most dogs are completely sweet and harmless (most of the time).
At the same time, as overblown as the fear may (or may not) be, dogs bite. I've been bit even by "nice" doggies, and have scars to prove it. If you're phobic, maybe you've been bit too. If you give yourself some room to not worry about looking stupid and look at the facts, there's a reason to be afraid of dogs. You can't guarantee you won't get bit (again), and getting bit really freaks you out. You really don't want it to happen (again). Once you're honest about this you can start to frame it as a decision: you can avoid ever getting near dogs and live in fear of them... or you can go pet the dog and risk getting bit.
But just because you see it as a decision doesn't mean it's easy or that you're ready to face it. It's easy to get caught up in these kinds of things. Imagine someone with this fear comes up to you pleading for your help, and you're stuck in this "naïve" perspective where people can just do whatever they want, and just have to figure out what that is, exactly.
"I shouldn't be afraid of dogs, this fear is stupid and irrational".
Okay? So go pet the dog.
"I can't!"
Why not?
"Because I'm afraid!"
Afraid of what?
"It might bite me!"
Yeah, it might. Is that okay?
"Of course not! I don't want to get bit!"
Then don't pet the dog
"But I want to pet the dog!"
Okay, then go do it
"But I'm afraid!".
We can go on all day like this, bouncing back and forth between "I don't want to be afraid, that's stupid" and "Yo, I'd really rather not get bit here".
NLP has a neat technique to deal with this kind of thing called "collapsing anchors", which uses another technique called "anchoring". "Anchoring" is more or less just NLP's term for "classical conditioning"[1], however their approach is notably different in that instead of merely using it to explain behavior they use it in a very hands-on practical sense to actually change behavior.
A more thorough description can be found with a quick Google, but the brief summary is this:
1) Fire up state A and "anchor" it to stimulus 1 by presenting the stimulus at the same time. E.g. "Think of a time when you felt confident. As you step back into that situation, see what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel", and then once they're in that state, anchor it by touching their right shoulder.
2) Break state. Ask an unrelated question or whatever. How are you liking this sequence so far? Shoot, I was hoping it'd make more sense than that.
3) Fire up state B and anchor it to stimulus 2 in the same way as before. E.g. anxiety in the problem context, and their left shoulder. Maybe test again
4) Break state.
5) Touch both shoulders simultaneously, and watch what happens.
It actually is pretty neat, and you might want to play with it in that form first, just to get a feel for it. Especially if you take a moment to test your anchors to verify that you got that part down before trying to collapse them into each other.
The way it's usually explained is like you fill up one bucket with "confidence" and the other with the problematic anxiety, but you make sure to fill the "confidence" bucket higher so that when you mix them together it overwhelms and drowns out the anxiety. One simple trick for confidence in any scenario!
Except of course it doesn't actually work like that. I mean, it does work, sometimes, but when it works that's not really why.
Properly understood, "collapsing anchors" is a set of handrails intended to guide people along the path of actually deciding.
Imagine you have a speech to give at your friends wedding or whatever. You're feeling nervous about it, and you don't like it one bit. Then someone asks you "What happens when you try being confident?". What's your response? "I dunno"? "I can't"? "I'm not confident"? "Screw you"? Probably not anything too profound or helpful.
But what if things get spelled out in a bit more detail?
When was the last time you did something noteworthy, something potentially challenging and intimidating, but did so without fear or anxiety? Either because you had practiced so many times and succeeded so many times that there's just not that much uncertainty left, or else because there's just nothing left to do with whatever uncertainty is left. Something where you don't "feel confident", you feel competent -- because when you think "Am I actually good at this, or am I just propping myself up?" you immediately know "No, I'm actually good at this" -- in the same way that you'd answer "Are you sure you have a nose, or might you be misremembering" with "I have a nose. It's right there, I can see it". You know what it feels like to just know that you're ready to handle whatever is about to come at you? That's an experience you're familiar with, yeah?[2]
Now, hypothetically, what would it be like if you were somehow able to be in that state of mind with regards to this speech you have to give. What if you had that same confidence. That same knowing what you're doing. That same certainty that things will work out because you're ready to make them work out. Only this time, in the context that used to flummox you. How does it play out differently this time? What might happen, if you were to simply trust in yourself and just go for it?
That's a bit different than simply asking "Have you tried being confident?". Now, the answer isn't necessarily "Confidence bucket bigger! Confidence bucket win!". Maybe it's "Lol, I'd probably be careless and mess up again like I did last time. That's how I lost my confidence in the first place" -- but even that is an actual answer.
Or maybe it's "Huh... I've never thought of it that way before", and you have something new to take to the problem context, which may or may not be a full or partial solution.
The important part of "collapsing anchors" is that you're making sure that you're actually summoning the embodied understanding that leads to these disparate conclusions, and pulling them into the same space so that they can be considered simultaneously. Rather than simply "saying words" and wiping our hands of it as if "I did my job", actually making sure the words -- and gestures, and entire context -- actually summon the experience you're trying to draw from, so that questions like "What if you tried being confident?" get answered from the first person, as you find out what would happen according to your object level predictions. As opposed to subtly switching questions from "What would happen?" to "which description of what would happen would be true?" -- or dismissing the question entirely before even trying to answer it.
When done right, "collapsing anchors" brings things together, in a way that "Have you tried just being confident" generally doesn't. And in order for the two perspectives to be merged and chosen between, someone has to do the legwork to actually connect the handles like "confidence" to the felt senses to which they refer.
NLP's technique of using kinesthetic ("touch") anchor is simply one way of doing it[3] -- one simplified set of hand rails to introduce us to the concept of "actually deciding" in a simplified way so that we can follow. The kinesthetic anchors aren't really necessary. Above I used italicizing and multiple phrases referencing the state I was aiming to evoke to try to fill the same role. Maybe it worked for you, or maybe it didn't really connect -- it's hard to "force" people into engagement in this format, and it does help to have touch and body language and real time calibration -- all of which are useful. Rather than thinking of it as a robotic "touch same spot to elicit same feeling", recognize that it's a form of language. It's communication, and by leaning on and emphasizing certain key words (like "that confidence"), you convey that you're linking that word -- and/or that look, or that touch -- to that state and using it as a handle. You're digging in until you actually have a hold of the entire experience that goes along with it, and pulling the two seemingly mutually exclusive experiences/conceptions of reality into the same room and saying "Hey you two, what do you think of each other?". Because our experience of the world is our map of the world. It's what we use to navigate because it's what we perceive as real. And the verbal strings we call "beliefs" are often meta-maps, declaring what our maps should say, or which beliefs would be true. And if we want to change how we navigate we have to change our object level perceptions of reality.
Sometimes it's enough to say "and what would that be like if instead of feeling anxious you had that same confidence that you take to <thing you're good at>". Sometimes you have to spend more effort reminding people what it even feels like. Every once in a while you'll even come across someone who is sufficiently on top of their shit that you can just say "Bro, have you even considered being confident?"[4] and they'll do all the legwork themselves.
And of course, sometimes people flat out don't wanna do it for one reason or another. But let's look at what happens when you do, as applied to our old fear of doggies.
You don't want to waste your life living in fear of nice doggies, yet you also want to not get bit. You really want to have them both, and wouldn't that be nice. It'd really be great if you didn't have to "make up your mind" about which is worse: not getting to pet doggies and feeling afraid all the time, or taking a risk and maybe getting bit. And so you don't weigh the two felt senses[5] and collapse them together. Getting the best of both worlds is always good, and it's a good idea to think through whether maybe we can have our cake and eat it too -- at least to an extent. Maybe we can discriminate between the smiling Labrador puppy and your friend's snarling rescue dog that looks suspiciously like a wolf. But at the end of the day labs can bite too, and at some point you need to weigh your options and decide.
And when you do, it goes something like this...
I want to pet the doggie, and if I do, I might get bit.
...
...
...
(Seriously, give it a moment. Shit takes time.)
...
Is it worth it?
Am I willing to stick my hand out and pet that dog knowing that there is some chance that the dog is going to bite it?
And then you sigh a bit. And then you're silent. And you picture not the separate issues of petting (good!) and being bit (bad!) but the combination package of getting to pet the dog and maybe but probably not (but maybe) getting bit. It doesn't yet have a goodness value, since you have not assigned one yet. You've never weighed the ingredients and settled on a value for the package deal. You've never decided.
So it takes some sitting. And some silence. And some passively imagining the package deal and asking yourself "do I want that?". It's a very gut level thing. You can watch it happen. You can notice that not all of the factors of emotional weight are on the table and go fetch them. But it's not your job to force it, or to try to tell yourself what you want -- if you tried that with anyone else people would call you a controlling jerk and they'd be right. Proclaiming "I declare bankruptcy!" is not the action of declaring bankruptcy, and proclaiming "I have decided!" is not the action of deciding. No, we're just asking ourselves -- and letting ourselves decide whatever feels honest "Is that actually something I want?".
And when the answer comes to you there's no "but"s. It's not "I want to pet the doggy but I don't want to get bit", because it's not two things. We're not asking "Wouldn't you like to pet the doggy [if it could be known safe]?", and we recognize that to be a different question. An easier question, with an obvious answer. This time we're asking if you want the package deal of petting lots of doggies and maybe getting bit one in a thousand or so. We're asking about what you don't know. And when you have an answer to that, it's just an answer - "Yes, I want that deal" or "No, I do not want that deal".
If your answer is yes, then you can say "Yes, I want to pet the dog, even knowing that I might get bit. I still want to pet the dog because it's worth it. I want that package deal where my hand might get bit". You want your hand to get bit, probabilistically, because it's a small probability and overwhelmed by the positive puppy petting that it comes along with.[6]
Or if your answer is no, then you say "No, I don't want to pet the dog. It's not worth the chance of getting bit". And that's the end of it. It's not "But I wish I could pet it and it wouldn't bite me!". It would be nice if you could have that, yet you don't think to say it because it's just "duh" - it's a dog and you can't predict them perfectly, duh. That "but I wish..." has no steam left after agreeing with it. Like "of course I wish! what's your point?". Like "Wouldn't you like a million dollars to just fall out of the sky?" Sure? who wouldn't?
Yet the thought doesn't hold your attention.
And either way, there's no conflict. No two separate desires. Just a congruent choice coming from a decision you had not made before.[7]
At least, that's what it'd look like if this naive approach to solving irrational fears actually worked. In the next post, we'll go over what actually happened when my friend came to me asking for help with her irrational fear of heights.
E.g. Pavlov "anchored" anticipation of dinner and the associated responses to the sound of a bell.
Notice how this only works if it's coming from someone you respect? If you don't, this sounds like silly shit you probably don't intend to take very seriously.
"You sound like some wannabe NLP kook!"
NLP's "collapsing anchors" falls out when people are secure enough to face a decision but need explicit help noticing and bringing together the relevant experiences that inform that decision, because they didn't realize there was something they weren't doing.
In the Gendlin sense.
I wish I had a reference to cite here, because a lot of this is taken fairly directly from Joe Fobes's "What Do You Want?" protocol. Essentially, he noticed that by refusing to validate the desire to eat ones cake and have it too as a reason to get stuck, you can actually resolve such issues quite effectively.
It was his insight that the issue is fundamentally that of conflicting desires and an undecided mind, that the resolution involves seeing the realistic option as one thing, and that this entails wanting the probabilistic bad outcome too. I think he even used the example of a dog bite when teaching it to me. His methods were quite crude at the time, basically pretending to not understand and just annoyingly repeating WDYW? until people would get fatigued of fighting for what can't have and make up their mind, but it was still surprisingly effective and was a great proof of concept for this key insight.
Where he went next with it is a direct improvement as it doesn't require pretending to not see the desire for both, and as a result is more effective. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this protocol when I have gotten stuck, and it is exactly this protocol, applied to pain, which led me to see first hand how pain actually is just information -- that matters to us. Rereading now, there's clear bits of this acknowledgement routine shining through too, actually.
The insight that a lot of apparently irrational behavior actually has fairly valid reasons of which we are unaware is not unique to me, and is a recurring theme in lots of therapeutic schools of thought.