Indulgent asceticism is a common but horrible vicious cycle that primarily affects people who are trying to change something they dislike about themselves.
I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I think the issue is more precisely with the shame than the goal. Cold turkey goals can be great so long as you acknowledge up front that you will likely fall off and you make sure that you have a plan to pick up where you left off. I've heard this referred to as not failing with abandon: https://mindingourway.com/failing-with-abandon/
I've heard some teachers say that it's better to take precepts that you know you'll break because they provide a reference point. This is basically the spirit behind my username too: it helps me orient myself despite knowing I'm not a full renunciate. I think a key part of growth is managing your shame and fear so it's at just the right level: too much, and failure leads to indulgence. Too little, and you have nothing stopping you from indulging. The ideal is to set conditions where you'll have enough shame from failure that it becomes something you avoid, but if you do fail, it will be a learning experience and not a spiral. Over time, that bearable level of shame leads you to think "look, if I do this again, I'm just going to feel bad. It won't be the end of the world, so I can go ahead if I want to, but why would I want to do that to myself?" That leads to the sort of self-compassion you mention. The middle way of shame, I guess!
Now that I think about it, that’s actually more in line with how I tend to act nowadays. I've heard this concept referred to as limit testing, particularly in games and sports, in which you try something that try to do something that is supposedly beyond you current capabilities just so you can calibrate your perceptions of effort and competence. I think I just have a bias against going cold turkey from years of trying and failing, especially when compared to chiller approaches to self-improvement.
That's a cool phrase, makes me think of some ways I used to do something similar with music. I guess in some sense this version of cold turkey I'm talking about isn't really cold turkey, it's more like...intentional cold turkey? For example, let's say you're going vegan, and you know you're going to fail without a cheat day each week. Instead of making the intentional frame "vegan 6 days a week", you make it "vegan", but accept that you will likely fail. Then that one day of non-vegan eating becomes a sort of reinforcement period where you say "okay, I planned for this failure, this is the mistake I need to learn from, let me take a look at what's really happening here". Framing it as a sort of feedback period, in a way. Kind of like you got the question wrong on the test, you don't make excuses, but you learn from it.
Posts like this are why I love substack. You've defined something that we all struggle with but aren't usually aware of. I can see this happening with my very young children. Everything is so black and white for them, and it's so humbling to realize I often have the same issues.
Wow thank you for the kind words! And yes, I used to struggle with this even more as a middle- and high-schooler. I benefited greatly from the emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills I learned from the little bit of Dialectical Behavior Therapy I did in high school (though this is not a blanket "everyone should try this!" recommendation) and I think a large part of growing up for me was trying to truly understand the whole "judging myself for judging myself will lead to infinite recursion" thing. I'm glad this was helpful!
This resonates a lot with me! I've come to think of it as, in some sense, desperation borne out of a need for control in a space that feels so inherently out of control. And it necessarily fails because I am never going to be in full control of how I feel and make absolutely perfect choices without life happening in different ways.
As another commenter mentioned, shame is a really important part of it, which makes the vicious cycle much more vicious (the feeling of "this thing makes me bad and I must be kept on a tight leash" is only reinforced the harder you lean into the asceticism). And it's also why it's striking, especially with a problem like social anxiety - which I've struggled with, an inherently relational problem - that the instinct is tragically to withdraw and grip harder when the only real way might be to let go and share more. I don't think I've ever found the solution to shame in a room alone by myself, only by sharing something and seeing it accepted/reflected by another person. And the asceticism makes everything harder by compounding the shame, even if it makes some progress with the problem on the surface.
Yes! That's where the bit about wanting to be perfect (or at least not be imperfect) comes in, I think.
Also, I've had a post on fear of cringe (and so indirectly social anxiety) in the works for a while now, but what I'll say for now: the single most interesting thing I've heard about social anxiety is that it largely consists of an inability to laugh at oneself and/or be the butt of the joke. Hopefully I'll be able to get it out soon.
Well said! A vital lesson. Weirdly I think we should all take a sort of Chesterton’s fence mindset with respect to our habits. They’re all necessary to some degree or we wouldn’t have them. Wanting to change is good, of course. Still, sometimes the thing you need to change is your perception that something you need is bad for you! If “improvement” is about feeling better, freer, rather than meeting an abstract standard, sometimes the change you need to make might be to accept and love of the way you are, without instrumentalizing that love to catalyze a change. Maybe the change will come, but in the mean time you will still be on the right track :)
Yes! And if you identify the need for a fence, you can at least take down your spiky fences and replace them with nicer fences that serve the same purposes but don’t hurt you as much in the process.
I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but I think the issue is more precisely with the shame than the goal. Cold turkey goals can be great so long as you acknowledge up front that you will likely fall off and you make sure that you have a plan to pick up where you left off. I've heard this referred to as not failing with abandon: https://mindingourway.com/failing-with-abandon/
I've heard some teachers say that it's better to take precepts that you know you'll break because they provide a reference point. This is basically the spirit behind my username too: it helps me orient myself despite knowing I'm not a full renunciate. I think a key part of growth is managing your shame and fear so it's at just the right level: too much, and failure leads to indulgence. Too little, and you have nothing stopping you from indulging. The ideal is to set conditions where you'll have enough shame from failure that it becomes something you avoid, but if you do fail, it will be a learning experience and not a spiral. Over time, that bearable level of shame leads you to think "look, if I do this again, I'm just going to feel bad. It won't be the end of the world, so I can go ahead if I want to, but why would I want to do that to myself?" That leads to the sort of self-compassion you mention. The middle way of shame, I guess!
That's a really good point!
Now that I think about it, that’s actually more in line with how I tend to act nowadays. I've heard this concept referred to as limit testing, particularly in games and sports, in which you try something that try to do something that is supposedly beyond you current capabilities just so you can calibrate your perceptions of effort and competence. I think I just have a bias against going cold turkey from years of trying and failing, especially when compared to chiller approaches to self-improvement.
That's a cool phrase, makes me think of some ways I used to do something similar with music. I guess in some sense this version of cold turkey I'm talking about isn't really cold turkey, it's more like...intentional cold turkey? For example, let's say you're going vegan, and you know you're going to fail without a cheat day each week. Instead of making the intentional frame "vegan 6 days a week", you make it "vegan", but accept that you will likely fail. Then that one day of non-vegan eating becomes a sort of reinforcement period where you say "okay, I planned for this failure, this is the mistake I need to learn from, let me take a look at what's really happening here". Framing it as a sort of feedback period, in a way. Kind of like you got the question wrong on the test, you don't make excuses, but you learn from it.
Yeah I think I'm going to have to write an update post about better ways to go cold turkey (or maybe just link to the failing with abandon post)
Sounds like it could be a cool post. Your post gave me the idea to write one called "Optimizing for Shame" or something like that
hell yeah ping me when you post it
Posts like this are why I love substack. You've defined something that we all struggle with but aren't usually aware of. I can see this happening with my very young children. Everything is so black and white for them, and it's so humbling to realize I often have the same issues.
Wow thank you for the kind words! And yes, I used to struggle with this even more as a middle- and high-schooler. I benefited greatly from the emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills I learned from the little bit of Dialectical Behavior Therapy I did in high school (though this is not a blanket "everyone should try this!" recommendation) and I think a large part of growing up for me was trying to truly understand the whole "judging myself for judging myself will lead to infinite recursion" thing. I'm glad this was helpful!
This resonates a lot with me! I've come to think of it as, in some sense, desperation borne out of a need for control in a space that feels so inherently out of control. And it necessarily fails because I am never going to be in full control of how I feel and make absolutely perfect choices without life happening in different ways.
As another commenter mentioned, shame is a really important part of it, which makes the vicious cycle much more vicious (the feeling of "this thing makes me bad and I must be kept on a tight leash" is only reinforced the harder you lean into the asceticism). And it's also why it's striking, especially with a problem like social anxiety - which I've struggled with, an inherently relational problem - that the instinct is tragically to withdraw and grip harder when the only real way might be to let go and share more. I don't think I've ever found the solution to shame in a room alone by myself, only by sharing something and seeing it accepted/reflected by another person. And the asceticism makes everything harder by compounding the shame, even if it makes some progress with the problem on the surface.
Yes! That's where the bit about wanting to be perfect (or at least not be imperfect) comes in, I think.
Also, I've had a post on fear of cringe (and so indirectly social anxiety) in the works for a while now, but what I'll say for now: the single most interesting thing I've heard about social anxiety is that it largely consists of an inability to laugh at oneself and/or be the butt of the joke. Hopefully I'll be able to get it out soon.
Well said! A vital lesson. Weirdly I think we should all take a sort of Chesterton’s fence mindset with respect to our habits. They’re all necessary to some degree or we wouldn’t have them. Wanting to change is good, of course. Still, sometimes the thing you need to change is your perception that something you need is bad for you! If “improvement” is about feeling better, freer, rather than meeting an abstract standard, sometimes the change you need to make might be to accept and love of the way you are, without instrumentalizing that love to catalyze a change. Maybe the change will come, but in the mean time you will still be on the right track :)
Yes! And if you identify the need for a fence, you can at least take down your spiky fences and replace them with nicer fences that serve the same purposes but don’t hurt you as much in the process.
100%
callout post
You should read Franny and Zooey by Salinger. You'd like it
Will add it to the list!