Just one more exposure bro
post by Chipmonk · 2024-12-12T21:37:07.069Z · LW · GW · 4 commentsThis is a link post for https://chrislakin.blog/p/just-one-more-exposure-bro
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“Just expose yourself to more social situations!” — Ah yes, you felt anxious the first 100 times, but the 101st will be the breakthrough!
“But exposure works!” people yell from across the street. “Like for fear of snakes - you know, those things you see once a year!”
Uh, it’s pretty rational to fear things you have little experience with. But social anxiety… you interact with people everyday! Why would anything change after the first 100 attempts?
I don’t doubt that a couple of exposures can often reduce anxieties. However, if you still feel anxious even after hundreds of social situations and years of trying... then maybe your fear is actually doing something presently useful and you should reconnect with your intuitions.
At a 100% eye contact workshop I led earlier this year, most people became comfortable quickly with essentially a guided meditation.
But one guy was still struggling. I had him tune into his feelings and ask them: “What bad thing happens if I feel good about eye contact?”
To his own surprise, “heartbreak” was the word that came out.
He felt it out: "We make eye contact… we fall in love… we break up."
This guy could’ve easily spent years forcing himself to make eye contact without discovering that he needed to make heartbreak safe. Had he just followed the standard advice — "Just expose yourself more!" — he likely would’ve gotten hurt!
So once he found a way to make eye contact with heartbreak being safe, for the rest of the night he effortlessly maintained continuous and unbroken eye contact just like every other attendee of the workshop.
This is what I mean when I say emotional issues are often locally optimal strategies — they're often serving a kinda reasonable purpose, even if you don’t “know” it.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/49wHLSvotiJSYwGX6/locally-optimal-psychology [LW · GW]
Another person I helped had dealt with social anxiety his entire life [LW · GW]. Before talking to me, he had tried “1 year of actively seeking exposure to scary situations” and “8 years of talk therapy”.
Instead of more exposure, in a long conversation I helped him locate and reconnect with the strategies of his anxiety (in this case it seemed to be unconscious predictions that if others disliked him, it would be bad). Once he learned to feel okay regardless of others’ reactions — which he determined was safe in his life circumstances (which isn’t the case for everyone tbc) — then he didn't need the “social anxiety strategy” anymore.
Over the next month, he practiced this new way of relating to his social anxiety. When difficult situations arose, he would tune into both the anxiety and the feeling of unconditional okayness:
I had a discussion with another co-worker where he made me feel quite stupid and I left kind of dreading our next interaction. After noticing this I used the technique I had learned of holding both my embarrassment/dread and the emotion I wanted to feel instead, excitement, together 'in my body.' I rid myself of the dread in a couple minutes, and came back the next day eager to talk.
This is the kind of “exposure” that I endorse: trying on the feelings you want in everyday life to discover where you’re blocked. But again, it only worked because he was intentional about it! “The technique I had learned of holding both my embarrassment/dread and the emotion I wanted to feel instead, excitement, together 'in my body.'”
A month after we spoke he sent this update:
I'm actually feeling excited about entering social situations where the chances of things going worse than I would want are high.
He also sent $3,000 as thanks [LW · GW], and hasn’t asked for another (free) session since. We plan to record a 6-month reflection podcast soon.
I'm pretty sure that more exposure alone wouldn’t have helped him get better.
Thanks to Stag Lynn and my clients for support.
Links mentioned:
https://chrislakin.blog/p/100-eye-contact
Locally optimal psychology [LW · GW]
Pay-on-results personal growth: first success [LW · GW]
4 comments
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comment by Viliam · 2024-12-13T08:35:50.302Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I guess you could do both kinds of mistakes: more exposure when what you need is an insight, and more insights when what you need is exposure. Among the nerds, the latter is probably much more frequent. But yes, if you tried more exposure and it didn't work, what you may need is the right insight.
comment by AnthonyC · 2024-12-13T16:46:54.525Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
“But exposure works!” people yell from across the street.
Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch.
In some ways, that's my fully general response to being given Standard Advice(TM). The giver may not know the Deeper Magic.You may not either, and you may not have been there when it was written, but if it doesn't sound right to you, you can look before deciding whether to buy into it.
In this case, that may be the layperson's standard advice, but it's definitely not the professional's standard advice, which can't be condensed to a single short phrase. Five Words Are Not Enough [LW · GW], because "exposure" and "works" are both so underspecified.
Replies from: Kaj_Sotala↑ comment by Kaj_Sotala · 2024-12-14T13:03:49.903Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What's the long version of the professional's standard advice?
Replies from: AnthonyC↑ comment by AnthonyC · 2024-12-14T17:23:58.925Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm also not a professional, so my version is also very incomplete, but at a bare minimum, exposure therapy needs to be done kinda the way building up tolerance for poisons or allergens is done - carefully, in risk-minimizing contexts, with support systems on standby if things go wrong.
To quote SSC, I think accurately despite being in a very different context:
Psychotherapists treat arachnophobia with exposure therapy, too. They expose people first to cute, little spiders behind a glass cage. Then bigger spiders. Then they take them out of the cage. Finally, in a carefully controlled environment with their very supportive therapist standing by, they make people experience their worst fear, like having a big tarantula crawl all over them. It usually works pretty well.
Finding an arachnophobic person, and throwing a bucket full of tarantulas at them while shouting “I’M HELPING! I’M HELPING!” works less well....
There are two problems with its approach. The first is that it avoids the carefully controlled, anxiety-minimizing setup of psychotherapy.
The second is that YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.
If a person... doesn’t want psychotherapy, then even as a trained psychiatrist I am forbidden to override that decision unless they become an immediate danger to themselves or others.
Although, in another SSC post:
Exposure therapy can also be useful for panic attacks or specific phobias. This is where they expose you to the thing you’re scared of (or deliberately initiate a panic attack) and keep doing it until you stop being scared and start being bored. According to a bunch of studies it works neither better nor worse than cognitive-behvioral therapy for most things, but my unsupported impression has always been that it’s better at least for panic disorder. Cognitive-behavioral therapy seems clearly superior for social phobia.