Ambigamy

I may still be chewing on it...but essentially I present (focus on) all of the terrible thoughts, feelings and behaviors a person might engage in as a result of a particluar loss or trauma and then present a series of open-ended questions to help guide clients towards their own better choices (not worse, not better, just different) as a means of stablizing their own high and low reactions to life events. (as with manic depression and other major mental illness).
It would seem that over and under reaction to life is central to suffering...I either express or react 'too much' or I supress and express 'too little'...I hold on too long, or I disconnect...I need/want/crave everything...I choose to starve..you get the idea. I think your graph confused me a bit...something about the wording, semantics maybe...being 'fine'...I might call that our harmonious balance...I see many people struggling to be comforable with ordinary, normal...we all romanticize it (an adironack chair at the edge of a dock on a mirror calm lake...that's a $350 chair and who ever actually sits in it? I worked in many resorts in the mountains: No one sits in it...they'd be drunk in the hot tub hitting on each other, or throwing rocks at the bear who comes to the dumpster every night...that old chair, b-o-r-i-n-g! :) but few folks seem to be able to embrace it...I propose people enjoy worrying because it gives them a sense of importance, gets them tons of attention, sympathy and a reason to get involved or have others become involved with them (How are you? Fine. How are you? Fine? .....crickets. How are you? Well, Bigfoot abducted all of my ferral kittens last night and I set a meatloaf on fire! OMG! That's shocking! Let's discuss this for hours, loudly and exictedly! Whooo! Hooo!) I also propose that people are 'made' to feel guilty and/or must cope with the envy of others when they admit to have or apear to have, and do really have, peaceful lives. (How dare you! I hear it all the time; single, no kids, and my apartment is a cool, white, organized and peaceful sanctuary...it is small, but open and practically Oms when I walk thru the door...a massive contrast to my huge, loud, chaotic, cluttered home-life growing up...An intentional, specific, driven and purposeful creation. Anyway...women hate me. Did not that get the memo that they also had choices?)
I'm sure I've lost my point, but I believe if more people stopped and became aware of what they were doing and that they had the right to make different choices....they wouldn't. Every single person is doing exactly what they want/need/choose to do, even if that choice is utter misery. :)

Hi Elizabeth,

If I can comb through for cohesion, you make two points:

Everyone makes the choices they want, so if they're not happy it is their problem. .

They're not so much choices as bets about where to focus attention and there are two kinds of errors, giving too much or too little attention.

One of the first articles I wrote in this series of now 375 articles was on your second point: http://www.mindreadersdictionary.com/career/suffering-and-insensitivity/

Very much in resonance with this that you say:
It would seem that over and under reaction to life is central to suffering...I either express or react 'too much' or I supress and express 'too little'...I hold on too long, or I disconnect...

I've mostly been interested in that question which is why these days most of my work goes into writing a book called Doubt: A User's Guide.

Thanks for staying with me Elizabeth. We realize that you do have a choice of blog bylines ;-).

Jeremy

Hi Elizabeth,

If I can comb through for cohesion, you make two points:

Everyone makes the choices they want, so if they're not happy it is their problem. .

They're not so much choices as bets about where to focus attention and there are two kinds of errors, giving too much or too little attention.

One of the first articles I wrote in this series of now 375 articles was on your second point: http://www.mindreadersdictionary.com/career/suffering-and-insensitivity/

Very much in resonance with this that you say:
It would seem that over and under reaction to life is central to suffering...I either express or react 'too much' or I supress and express 'too little'...I hold on too long, or I disconnect...

I've mostly been interested in that question which is why these days most of my work goes into writing a book called Doubt: A User's Guide.

Thanks for staying with me Elizabeth. We realize that you do have a choice of blog bylines ;-).

Jeremy

Jeremy,
Thank you for finding my thoughts in the above mess...I wrote a very thoguhtful response and then lost it...so I will summerize...I love the word and its meaning: Ambigamy...yes I am. I believe most of know what the good choices are and get stuck on following thru (thus your guide book...I look forward to reading the links)...shame, guilt, fear, rage, trauma (I work with an acute population) I believe, stand in the way of 'us' following thru on making good choices...I'm sure perseverance factors in somewhere and for those with a history of Axis II mixed with pain or loss..well it adds up.
The best example I have is probably Buddhism (though I'm technically catholic)...radical acceptance...The Dalai Lama cracked up when he wished Will and Kate a happy wedding day...a fellow ambigamist (in a nice way)...maybe!
Anyway..lovely thoughts. Thank you.

It is kind like the halo effect - people tend to associate positive things with things they see originally as positive. Also, it is interesting because people even remember past (not only future) experiences more positively or negatively that they actually were. Kahneman writes about experience sampling - a method to check how people feel at the moment of their experiment - and compares it to how people remember the experience and he shows that they actually see more positively.