research update: it’s working. therapy-resistant insecurities continue to prove unlearnable

> Most people can't stop disliking themself until they feel safe enough to be disliked by others.

In conclusion, someone should rewrite TCTBD to make it more accessible. For those interested in attempting this, my complete thoughts on TCTBD, a link to the full text of the book, and my contact info can be found here:.

Improvement #4: Validate the rewrite on real people!. Self-help gurus rarely seem to care whether their content helps the people with the issues they aim to address. If I rewrote The Courage to be Disliked, I would test to see if the instructions had their intended effect.

Improvement #3: Present better skill trees. This book implies that you should work on Level N skills (separating tasks, being present) before you have Level N-1 skills (having the courage to be disliked, feeling secure). If I rewrote the book, I’d flesh out a better skill tree

Improvement #2: Add emotional and somatic guidance. A rewrite of The Courage to be Disliked that incorporated something like Coherence Therapy or Gendlin’s Focusing (or better) would go so hard!

Improvement #1: A less triggering explanation of teleology. Drop the term "teleology." Stop focusing on what doesn't exist (ie "Trauma doesn't exist"). Focus on what does exist: emotional issues with hidden functions.

Now with that out of the way. Part 2: How I’d rewrite The Courage to be Disliked.

Claim #7: You can choose to be present. I think here the book is making the same mistake it did with separation of tasks. It’s claiming you can choose to be present, when in reality you probably can’t

Claim #6: People need to feel like part of a greater whole. The most important takeaway from this section of the book is that humans thrive when they believe “my effortless existence benefits the group.”. But you have to take this belief on faith.

What the book fails to mention is that your intellectual understanding of “separation of tasks” is powerless against strong feelings of insecurity. You need to feel secure before you can separate tasks. You can’t just choose to separate tasks.

Claim #5: Separating tasks will improve your relationships. The book claims separating tasks “is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically.” I actually think this is both very wrong and misleading as it reverses causality.

While this seems straightforward, the book’s description of how to separate tasks is so muddled that I entirely missed it the first 4x I read the book!. Their explanation is also difficult to apply to real messy relationships, especially when strong emotions are involved.

Claim #4: You are autonomous, and so are other adults (Separation of tasks). In other words, you can only control your own behavior and read your own mind, not anyone else’s.

The problem with this is the authors don't acknowledge that learned helplessness is often teleological!!. Many people feel like outgrowing their issues is a subtly bad thing. Your “choice” to not grow could be serving a function!.

Claim #3: Whether you outgrow your issues is your choice. Growth follows from the belief in growth. And if you believe you can't grow, you probably won't.

This is the idea behind the most popular post on the Locally Optimal blog. Essentially, most people can't stop disliking themself until they feel safe enough to be disliked by others. My own research has proven this to be true over and over.

Claim #2: All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. While I don't believe ALL relationship problems are interpersonal, many (if not most) problems seem downstream of disliking yourself. Ie: the most common strategy to avoid interpersonal conflict

While teleology is the most important concept introduced in TCTBD, it’s explained extremely poorly!. Worse, the explanation needlessly triggers many of the people who’d benefit from the mindset. In part 2 of this thread, I'll give my own explanation for this framework that's

Claim #1: Emotional “issues” often have hidden functions. TCTBD introduces an idea called teleology. It's a framework for understanding the logic behind your emotions by evaluating their use in the present

In the first part of this thread, I'm going to evaluate the core claims of the book. Then I'm going to rewrite them to be more effective. Let's start with the claims:.