Miguel

Journals
4

Here is a draft of a potential article derived from the posts John - #46 by Miguel and John - #62 by Miguel

Besides the welcome opinions, I will be grateful if you can point out any language errors I may have (or bizarre/weird expressions, typical of me writing in Spanish with English words).
I will make corrections and successive revisions by modifying this very post, indicating the date of the last version/update.

LAST CHANGES: November 8, 2022

Do I want to feel good?

In my experience there is an oversimplification about wanting to feel good (or, at least, better) but not being able to (not succeeding). It is often expressed as follows: “If you want to feel good you will feel good; if you can’t feel good it is because you don’t really want to or don’t want it intensely enough; not because you can’t.”

Even supossing this assertion is always true (I’m not saying it is), the simplification I want to point out consists in taking desire/wanting as an indivisible whole, preventing the analysis of possible coexisting conflicting desires.

Incidentally, it is not superfluous to point out that whoever asserts this rarely conceives of the possibility that someone might attribute to impossibility (to not being able to) their not wanting —or their not wanting it intensely enough—:

  • “I am not able to want to feel goood/better [but I wish I could]”.

  • “I am not able to want to feel good/better intensely enough [but I wish I could]”.

“I am not able to want it/I am not able to want it intensely enough” can be translated as “it doesn’t happen to me to want it/it doesn’t happen to me to want it intensely enough”; and I do not know why.

I will share here some of the results of investigations that allowed me to discover why I did not want to feel good/better —or did not want to feel it intensely enough— (or, according to the other interpretation/perception —common in those of us who have had certain levels of depression, but also possible in people who have not— why I could not want to feel good/better —or could not want to feel it intensely enough—).

Often in a sentient being coexist different wants/desires that can oppose, contradict, obstruct each other:

  • I want to have A and I also want to have B which implies not having A.

  • I want to relocate because of A but I don’t want to relocate because of B.

  • I want to feel A but I don’t want to feel B which is associated with feeling A.

  • I don’t want to feel A because of the detriments, but I want to feel A because of the benefits.

  • I don’t want to feel A, but for that I must feel B which feels worse than A.

This mixture can even lead us to “not knowing what we want”.

So, wanting to feel good can be vitiated/obstructed. I will consider the two most general ways I detected in myself:

  • “I” may want to feel good as a resultant/imagined pleasant state BUT at the same time “I” may not want to feel intermediate unpleasant states necessary to get to feeling good.

  • “I” may want to feel good but AT THE SAME TIME want to continue to feel bad, revealing that “I” MUST get some kind of pleasure/benefit/utility coexisting with the displeasure.

This is what I discovered many years ago for example with anger: wanting to stop feeling angry because of its unpleasant hedonic tone BUT AT THE SAME TIME wanting in certain circumstances to continue to feel angry for providing me with utility and/or a pleasant hedonic tone (I was glad then when I found it analyzed by Richard at http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listdcorrespondence/listdsrid2.htm. Right there he mentions “glee” as another feeling of mixed hedonic tone -that “malicious satisfaction” or “merriment or delight, often caused by someone else’s misfortune”-).

It is important to emphasize that although I speak in past tense, OF COURSE it still happens to me not wanting to feel good/better even AFTER knowing the causes/whys due to instinctive automatisms, weakening/disconnection of the pure intent, etc.

I hope this introduction will help to better understand some of the causes/whys of not wanting to feel good/better, which I list below (in capital letters) illustrating them with some examples.

Avoidance

Example: discomfort from having to do X.

I wanted to feel good/better BUT at the same time:

  • I wanted to avoid (did not want to) feel for an indefinite time a MORE displeasant hedonic tone if I followed the “keep my hands in my pockets” suggestion (observing, not expressing or repressing what one feels and thinks).

  • I wanted to avoid (did not want to) adding OTHER associated or resulting feelings of a unpleasant hedonic tone. In the example, it was common that if I managed to feel the feeling more fully, if I could observe its details, etc., it would emerge behind/under that discomfort fear or shame at the prospect of doing X.

  • I wanted to avoid (did not want to) investing energy in the process of change.

Avoidance also exists in several of the causes/whys that follow, but I separate them because they have more specific characteristics which are more useful to analyze.

Victimization

Example: sadness.

I wanted to feel good/better BUT at the same time:

  • I did not want to lose the pleasant hedonic tone produced by showing myself sad to others, eliciting their expressions of empathy/compassion, etc.

  • I did not want to lose the pleasant hedonic tone produced by OTHER feelings resulting from being sad, such as self-pity or pride/vanity generated by the appreciation/admiration of others (or myself) due to “the things I had to live through”, “my very special perception of existence”, “my superior sensitivity”, etc.

  • I did not want to accept before others and myself that I had more power/agency to be less sad than I was. So, to reduce sadness would make it more difficult to blame “what happened to me”, luck, society, family, government, etc., losing part of the pleasant hedonic tone produced by blaming.

Moral obligation

Example: anger/indignation.

I wanted to feel good/better BUT at the same time:

  • I didn’t want to lose the pleasurable hedonic tone produced by the pride/vanity of intimately aligning myself with higher values, fulfilling a duty, etc.

  • I did not want to lose the pleasant hedonic tone obtained by the approval/empathy of third parties (“Any decent person would be angry/indignant about that”; “How could you not be angry/indignant about what he did to you if it violates a minimum of decorum?”; etc.).

  • I did not want to lose the pleasant hedonic tone obtained from trying to educate/convince/change the other regarding an idea or act that I considered wrong/perjurious.

Example: recurring sadness over the loss of a loved one.

I wanted to feel good/better BUT at the same time:

  • I did not want to feel the unpleasant hedonic tone produced by the feeling of disloyalty/betrayal/guilt generated by the possibility of feeling good despite their absence.

Punishment

Example: feeling offended.

I wanted to feel good/better BUT at the same time:

  • I didn’t want to lose the pleasurable hedonic tone that I got from the other person seeing me upset, with the goal of punishing him/her (assuming/knowing that at some point I could make him/her feel bad, could produce guilt, make him/her “reflect”, etc.).

Consequences

To summarize, I may have wanted to feel good/better because of the unpleasant hedonic tone that a feeling produced in me, but at the same time:

  • I didn’t want to feel worse temporarily by having to experience it fully, observe it, do nothing for or against it, etc.

  • I did not want to feel the unpleasant hedonic tone of other underlying/associated feelings.

  • I wanted to retain pleasant hedonic tones coexisting with the unpleasant ones.

Since the resulting NET hedonic tone was still unpleasant, in order to reduce it even more (or, depending on the circumstances, barely to maintain it at certain levels) I resorted to unspecific/general acts/activities that generated a pleasant hedonic tone. In my case and according to the times (without hierarchical order): video games, reading, movies, TV, music, masturbation, company of various kinds, food, pills, cigarettes, work, study, etc. (some activities were incompatible/impossible depending on what was the bad feeling, the trigger, the cause of not wanting to feel good/better, etc.).

Other actions/acts that generated pleasant hedonic tone were context specific. Taking the example of the discomfort of having to do X:

  • Rationalize that there was really no rush to do it, that it didn’t really need to be done, that I could substitute it with doing Y, etc.

  • Justifying the feeling (“How can I not be annoyed; it is natural”, “How can I not be annoyed by wanting to have the future time free”, “How can I not be annoyed about Z having put me in the situation of doing X”).

How to want (or be able to want) to feel good/better

Little by little I began to:

  • Dispose/Expose myself to feeling worse temporarily to experience the feeling more fully, observing it, doing nothing for or against it, etc.

  • Dispose/Expose myself to feel the unpleasant hedonic tone of other underlying/associated feelings.

  • Dispose/Expose myself to observe and not feed the pleasant hedonic tones related to the unpleasant ones.

While all of this contributed to feeling good/better and being happier, the last point contributed especially to being more naive and harmless.

I reiterate that although I speak in the past tense to highlight how I managed to progressively become more and more unstuck, not wanting to feel good/better (or not being able to want to feel good/better) continued and continues to happen even AFTER learning about the above mechanisms. However:

  • Frequency of occurrence of each of the causes of not wanting to feel good decreased (as a consequence, the periods during which I felt good/better increased).

  • When any of the above-mentioned causes appeared again, the amount of time of the displeasant hedonic tone caused by the feeling was decreasing, due to being more and more willing to feel worse temporarily, willing to feel the displeasures of the associated feelings, willing to feed less the related pleasures (plus other elements resulting from investigation).

  • Even when I could not feel good, these mechanisms were part of what allowed me to eventually feel better/less bad ( the level of discomfort/displeasure produced by the same feelings tended to diminish).

  • All this reduced the need to resort to thoughts (rationalization, justification, etc.) and activities (games, internet, etc.) aimed at maintaining/decreasing the displeasure felt.

LAST CHANGES: November 8, 2022

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