Expected Pain Parameters

A better pain scale: https://i.imgur.com/S2R4pzI.png

What I mean is more like "if someone is suggesting that you do something painful, they should present you with a model of why and how that pain is okay". This doesn't rule out misappropriation - I'm sure cult leaders and certain brands of interpersonal abusers do it handily, especially if they're weaponizing guilt - but it's at least robust against generic, opaque commands to "suck it up", and if you go in with that expectation you'll have an opportunity to notice something is wrong if someone tells you that you shouldn't be in pain and your pain is invalid (they don't have a model that describes the thing you are in fact feeling, so they don't have a good model of the situation as a whole).

What makes you think that different people experience the same kind of pain the same way? One thing that produces a kind of pain is to go swimming in a river in spring. Depending on how your body reacts when you touch the water that experience can be both healthy or unhealthy and I don't think that's a simple matter of degrees of pain.

When Taber Shadburne teaches Radical Honesty he often makes the point that an essential part of Radical Honesty is to become a connoisseur of pain who can tell different kinds of emotional pain apart the way the proverbial wine connoisseur can tell apart the taste of different wines.

A wine connoisseur usually doesn't simply judge a wine on a one-dimensional scale and the one-dimensional nature that's implied by the "how much apologizing will hurt" isn't a useful way to think about the emotions either.

Taber also used a Yoga metaphor where experienced Yoga practitioners need to be able to tell apart different kinds of pain. The pain of stretching a muscle is an essential part of Yoga and welcome while the pain from overturning an ankle is bad and has to be avoided.

I talked about this with one LW'ler who does Yoga and the person said that they are able to tell 7 different kinds of pain apart in their Yoga practice.

So how could I possibly give someone advice on how much apologizing will hurt? If they're the type of person who takes embarrassment super seriously it will be totally different than if it's not big deal.

It's not so much "how much will this hurt" as it is "how much should this hurt". In other words, "how much does it have to hurt before I reconsider". In the running case, for example, you can't know before their run if they'll experience mild muscle soreness of if they'll step on a nail. You want them to know that if it feels like they've stepped on the nail, this isn't what you're talking about, and you shouldn't try to run through that.

There is a distinction between "this is how intense the sensations might be" and "this is the thing they signify, and how bad it is". A lot of the subjective experience of "pain" has to do with the meaning attached to it, and the reaction to that meaning.

In jiu jitsu for example, beginners are often not taught heel hooks in part because the sensation of a knee ligament about to rupture doesn't always stand out as a big deal, and so people will sometimes hurt themselves because they don't notice the warning signs. At the same time, you can get people screaming in pain once their foot is turned the wrong way because all of a sudden the meaning has changed and they no longer feel "okay". Other people can have the same thing happen to them and just kinda look at it like "oops, I screwed that up" because they simply aren't overwhelmed by the idea that their ligaments just tore and their limb isn't pointing the right way anymore.

When you're talking to someone who is in pain (or needs to do something which will be painful), there's two things you want to communicate. One is that it's okay, even though whatever the bad thing is that happened, and the other is what the bad thing is. When you can do those two things, their entire experience can change dramatically.

The same principles apply to emotional concerns. For example, if someone is going to feel embarrassed by something to a degree which seems appropriate and okay, then all you are going to need to communicate is "Yes, this is going to be embarrassing. It's okay". If they're going to be way more embarrassed than is called for (in your opinion), then you *also* want to be communicating that the damage isn't as severe (or call for such an extreme aversion) as it seems. It's the "this sensation means your knee is about to explode" training in reverse. In this case, you aren't just saying "embarrassment is okay", you're also saying "it's not even that embarrassing". Be prepared for people to not just take your word on this, of course, but that is the point of contention.

One way to deal with it is to actually paint them a picture of what it's like from your perspective so that they can see that it's not that big a deal (if they find your story convincing). Another is to just show awareness that it seems super horrible and worth being embarrassed over, and that you don't expect them to be convinced, but that you actually don't think it's that big a deal, for what it's worth. If your opinion means something to them, this can still have a significant effect.

As I read it, the advice Alicorn is giving here relates to the part where you don't want to miss the fact that someone might perceive an embarrassing event as way worse than you do (accurately or not) and then tell them "you should put up with it so that you can do X" without noticing that you might be asking them to endure a much bigger perceived (and maybe real) cost than you actually think it's worth. For example, you might want to say "I'd probably apologize to them if I were in your shoes. And yeah, it's kinda gonna suck. I wouldn't be smiling about it for sure, and I might have a hard time being in a good mood for the rest of the evening, but it's not like it's worth traumatizing yourself over. If it feels like something you can't handle, then that's fine too. It's not the end of the world if this person doesn't get their apology".