[Related to: Beware of Other-Optimizing; Generalizing From One Example; What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?]
This post does not contain new material; everything I say in this post is said in the above-linked posts. But it’s important, and particularly important at the beginning of a sequence that gives advice, so I’m going to say it anyway. Bear with me, people who have been around here for a while.
Everyone is different. This is a platitude. You hear it in elementary school classrooms and workplace presentations about diversity, and for that reason it can be hard to understand how important it is.
Everyone is different. There are lots and lots of ways in which everyone can be different. Some people are extroverts; some people are introverts. Some people worry constantly; other people shrug off a cancer diagnosis. Some people can get along with anyone; other people refuse to give anyone a second chance because they already know they dislike the person so why would they give that person another opportunity to be disappointing? Some people have studyblrs full of beautiful photographs of their neatly color-coded notes for all twelve of the college classes they’re taking; some people made a studyblr, got distracted by discourse and memes, and haven’t posted anything to it except a list of the fancy pens they fully intended to buy from Amazon. Some people love beautiful things and museums and daydreaming and poetry; other people… actually I have no idea what low-openness-to-experience people do all day, sorry guys.
We have barely begun to map out the number of ways that people can be different.
What this means is that the advice that works for one person often utterly fails for another person.
We see this in all areas of human endeavor. One person writes in the morning; another in the evening; another gets a hotel room and churns out a novel in a single feverish week. One person finds that running lets them be alone with their thoughts; another likes how yoga connects them to their body; a third finds the social aspect of sports very motivating. One baby thrives with cosleeping, while another needs to cry-it-out, and a third does well with no-cry sleep training.
A further complication is that we don’t have words for all the ways that people can be different. Sometimes scientists have the word but laypeople don’t: many people who have no sense of smell have never heard the word “anosmia.” Other very real distinctions are ones no one has learned to make yet. (There has been little study about what factors cause a person to prefer writing in hotel rooms.) If we don’t know how people differ, then we can’t have any sense about for whom the advice works.
Depression is a condition about which there has been a good deal of research. There are accepted evidence-based therapies (CBT) and medications (SSRIs, MAOIs, tricyclics). But you’ll find formerly depressed people swearing by mindfulness, CBT, DBT, behavioral activation, SSRIs, antipsychotics, MDMA, LSD, nootropics, exercise, yoga, vitamins, finding a partner, breaking up with a partner, cuddling a pet, walking outside in nature, acupuncture, green smoothies, and lighting herbs on fire near your toes. All of these treatments likely alleviate depression for some people. (…Maybe not lighting herbs on fire near your toes.) All of these treatments will likely fail to treat depression for other people. And for none of them do we have a good sense of what populations they are likely to work for. All you can do is keep trying things which seem likely to work and have an acceptable risk profile until you aren’t depressed anymore, and try to avoid the “my depression was caused by a vitamin deficiency, therefore SSRIs are a LIE and everyone should take Vitamin D” assholery.
There has been almost no research into scrupulosity and dysregulated guilt and shame, and there are no best practices which I am aware of. Therefore, when I write about my scrupulosity, it is merely one person’s description of what worked for me. It is as credible as one depressed person saying “I became less depressed when I started taking regular walks in nature.” Certainly a useful anecdote; perhaps helpful to some depressed people trying to narrow down the enormous list of things they could theoretically do about depression; absolutely not a universal cure.
Although I hope this is not the case, it is possible my recovery was entirely due to the beneficial effects of time, that I am attributing causality where there is none and this series is the equivalent of the depressed person writing that lighting herbs on fire near their toes cured their depression. That is always a possibility when a person is describing what worked for them.
I believe that what I write will be useful for some people; I believe it will be useless for others, and perhaps harmful. But if the things that work for me don’t work for you, that’s okay. That’s normal. That’s how brains work. People are different. Test everything yourself, and if something doesn’t work, toss it away without a further thought.
Deiseach said:
If it’s any help…
I’m low openness to new experience. I really, really hate change and am bad at it (I think this is linked in to anxiety including agoraphobia and social anxiety but don’t quote me on that, I have nothing approaching any kind of diagnoses) and have to be dragged by the scruff of the neck kicking and screaming from the comfort of my familiar rut.
I too love museums, art, music, beautiful things, poetry, daydreaming. Now, if some blazing meteor of talent bursts on the scene, overturns all the conventional pieties and rips up the rule book in their art – well frankly yeah, I’m probably going to be one of the stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies over there huffing and puffing about “This isn’t art!!!!!”
Give me time to get used to it. If it’s any good, it’ll last and I’ll have time to catch up with it. If it’s just a trendy fad, it’ll die as soon as the Spirit of the Age chases the next new fad, and since I haven’t rushed into putting all my social capital or psychic energy into the dead fad, I still have it to spend on the next Amazing New Thing That May Or May Not Indeed Be All That.
Being low-openness-to-experience means I’m a snail, not whatever fast speedy animal isn’t a snail (I don’t want to use the tortoise and the hare because the tortoise wins in that one and I’m not trying to say tortoises are better or hares need to slow the heck down). I’m dragging a lot of baggage on my back and I was never very fast in the first place, but I’ll get there in the end if you give me time. I just won’t be casting off my shell and dashing off from one shiny new thing to another in the nip 🙂
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tcheasdfjkl said:
On days when I feel lower openness-to-experience I like to do things that I’ve done many times before and found pleasant. The go-to thing, for me, is listening to podcasts while making an omelet. Other things can be watching TV, doing crosswords, doing routine kinds of work; following a preset schedule rather than asking myself what I want to do at any given time.
(On other days I instead want to learn new things and go to new places and try new foods and stuff. This thing, like a number of things, varies for me a lot over time.)
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ozymandias said:
“Openness to experience” is a confusingly named personality trait! Some of its facets include imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, and attentiveness to inner feelings, which you seem to have.
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Nancy Lebovitz said:
Gee, and I thought the intro was leading toward the idea that shame issues had something to do with failing to understand normal differences and therefore holding oneself to an irrational standard.
It still might, at least for me.
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Recall said:
“There are accepted evidence-based therapies (CBT) and medications (SSRIs, MAOIs, tricyclics).”
Also ECT, which is the best thing ever.
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gazeboist said:
Can cause memory issues, unfortunately.
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Tempest said:
>I have no idea what low-openness-to-experience people do all day, sorry guys.
Well, today I spent like six hours playing Fortnite. That’s an example.
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Sophia Kovaleva said:
Stare into the screen mindlessly, being unable to gather enough concentration to watch a video longer than 15 minutes or read a single book, which is why 5 books per year is a good year.
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CharlesF said:
>I have no idea what low-openness-to-experience people do all day, sorry guys
In my case it largely boils down to: predictable, practicable and familiar.
Wrestling, dancing, playing music, playing video games, cooking, reading fiction are some good examples for me.
Museums fail on familiarity (I don’t visit museums so I don’t want to visit museums) and practicability (what would getting better at going to museums mean, anyway). Poetry fails on predictability. Daydreaming is actually fine but I would guess it looks somewhat different/boring compared to a high-O person’s daydreams.
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vaticidalprophet said:
With the exception of the last guy, I’m not sure any of the ‘low-O’ people who replied to you are actually low-O in the relevant sense.
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Lambert said:
You can check here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ipipneo120.htm
For the record, I’m 74 openness. Higher than anything else except neuroticism (yay.)
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vaticidalprophet said:
Yeah, I’ve tried various internet Big Five tests. The consistent result is that I’m around the human ceiling for everything but Emotionality, and around the human floor for Emotionality, which is a fun combination.
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AG said:
I used to uphold Moloch as the best of Scott’s post, as many do, but I’ve since switched to “All debates are bravery debates” as the most important idea that people could stand to learn, and as stated at the beginning of that post, it was written largely thanks to you, Ozy.
I also see this idea reinvented pretty frequently on Tumblr, by any side of a debate, but of course only in favor of themselves and never extending that charity to others’ statements.
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