I think I can have an optimism and negativity bias. I tend to emotional reasoning especially when I am very anxious and in panic. Though, I think there are people who are more prone to bullshitting themselves.
The woman I was once in a very short relationship. Retrospectively, I realized she probably had borderline disorder. She was very very intelligent. Probably way smarter than me on paper. Though, I realized she was bullshitting herself a lot and she wasn't self-aware at all. I think I am more introverted and she was more extroverted. I am very neurotic. She wasn't emotionally stable either but in a different way. Sometimes she did like really crazy things I told these stories on here and people were stunned. There were patterns in her behavior. She was very sexual and in some way promiscuous. She told me she slept with many men and all her relations failed only because of the men. She always blamed the men to the fullest extend for the fact that relationships broke. She told me she was so disappointed in men that she started to date women in the past. And also the women were always responsible. When she explained me all of that I was sort of stunned. I asked her "So you believe that all men with whom you had something were fully responsible that the relationship failed?". And she replied with. "Yes, I am convinced of that." I was a little bit puzzled how such an intelligent woman cannot be self-aware of this cognitive fallacy. Later when I thought about it I realized that intelligence doesn't necessarily correlate with self-awareness. I think this is where the idea of this thread came from.
It is interesting. It is not like only dumb people deceive or bullshit themselves. In fact higher intelligence can contribute to self-deception. You can construct highly complex thought-buildings rationalizing all you want. You can put it quite eloquently. And construe theories with parallels, metaphors and smart comparisons around it. There were things in my life that I was extremely convinced of. Major depression with psychosomatic pain would not go away. I can remember I didnt take antipsychotics to that time. I told my therapist (who was pretty bad) a weird paranoid story why depression will never go away. And she just agreed with it. I think this was a mistake of her. Her theory was I am too autistic and would not be able to socialize enough to participate in work. This was bullshit. The truth was I was really socially awkward at that time point. But not taking antipsychotics and being low-key paranoid and being in major depression made me severely dysfunctional. My social awkwardness improved a lot later in my life. It took a lot of time and exercise and a minimum of mental stability. But this isn't the reason why I cannot work. You know I have the feeling the outcome of my life is quite clear. But the diagnosis and reasoning behind it isn't accurate. The reason why I cannot work is a complex interplay of my bipolar disorder, autism spectrum and past psychoses. I could write a lot why I am not able to work. But social awkwardness isn't the reason for it. It was the first time a therapist gave up on me. Interestingly, shortly afterwards my major depressive episode ended. Which was really surprising to me. Me and many doctors and therapist didn't see that coming. And it happened yet.
My point that I want to make. I can bullshit myself and people realize I am quite self-reflective and maybe they perceive me as very intelligent. And then they believe my bullshitting. When I bullshit myself this can make other people uncertain about their own conclusions. I think I am susceptible for auto-suggestion. I use chatGPT for regulate my emotions for example. I can tell a story and maybe that's overanalysis of a social interaction. These are only fragments I think social interactions are so ambiguous and complex that they are hard to put into words even more it is treacherous to develop a coherent story around them. I have pain in my teeth since I have a new filling. I went again to my dentist. I tend to catastrophize many events and interactions. I was pretty anxious when I was at the dentist. And I think my anxiety was contagious. I subconsciously anticipated her answers. I tried to be analytical. The roots for the pain in my teeth are unclear. The good answer was the tooth is irritated after the filling and this will go away after a while. However, my pain is still there after 2 weeks and this feels concerning to me. The bad answer would be she made a mistake when doing the filling and there is a deeper issue with my tooth. Something she isn't aware of. I think we both were biased in how we evaluated the situation. I was imagining the worst. And she wanted the answer to be true that would mean she isn't responsible at all. She told me I was responsible for it because I didn't wear my night guard. I told her I tend to think this isn't the reason because prior to this filing I had no pain despite not wearing the night guard. I think this answer made her doubting her explanation. Actually, I now wore the night guard two times at night for 5 hours. I wake up at night then I often have to take it out. Otherwise it is impossible to continue sleeping. And honestly I think wearing the night guard makes the pain even worse. I had to take pain killers because it hurt so much. And yesterday I threw up. I have the feeling we both were biased. And maybe we both deceived ourselves. For her it is more a protection of self-confidence. People who have to function often benefit of having a slightly better notion of themselves as objectively appropriate.
And for me I think my catastrophizing also has an inner function. It gives me the sense of control. Having a good self-image of myself feels like lying to me. And a lot of horrible stuff happened in my life. And there are structural reasons why my life will become worse. But my strategic pessimism shall protect me from disappointments and pain. There is a lot of irony in that. Because in dating my hope goes up way too high and way too early. I assign a story around the woman and I perceive a deeper meaning that we now meet each other. This makes me suspicious of hope. I was disappointed so often in my life. And I was really fucking depressed because of it. The thing is I think this is pathological. And I always assign a deeper meaning when I meet a potential significant other. And I don't really know what to do against that. I have two biases catastrophizing and being way too optimistic. And I prefer anticipating a break-up because this is easier to stomach than optimism without limit. There is always an existential component for me when it comes to dating. I feel incomplete otherwise. But I realized relationships are often idealized a little bit too much.
I think my bullshitting is facilitated by ambiguity-intolerance, high self-observation, hypervigilance, high analytical skills, being able to think deep, a tendency to construe narratives that often become part of my identity, I have some theoretical knowledge and I am prone to extreme rumination. The rumination fuels my creativity for new thread ideas. Lol. Sometimes I believe a little bit too much in my theories if I construct them in very abstract and complex thought-building. When I tell myself I was rational in doing that (actually I am prone to emotional reasoning) and then I tell myself by being aware of all this cognitive biases I were immune of them which isn't the case though. Sometimes more thinking won't let you come closer to the truth sometimes only time will tell and often you won't find out the truth. Me instead I have the tendency to jump to conclusion despite having only a small amount of data. And this thread is another example of that. Lol.
The woman I was once in a very short relationship. Retrospectively, I realized she probably had borderline disorder. She was very very intelligent. Probably way smarter than me on paper. Though, I realized she was bullshitting herself a lot and she wasn't self-aware at all. I think I am more introverted and she was more extroverted. I am very neurotic. She wasn't emotionally stable either but in a different way. Sometimes she did like really crazy things I told these stories on here and people were stunned. There were patterns in her behavior. She was very sexual and in some way promiscuous. She told me she slept with many men and all her relations failed only because of the men. She always blamed the men to the fullest extend for the fact that relationships broke. She told me she was so disappointed in men that she started to date women in the past. And also the women were always responsible. When she explained me all of that I was sort of stunned. I asked her "So you believe that all men with whom you had something were fully responsible that the relationship failed?". And she replied with. "Yes, I am convinced of that." I was a little bit puzzled how such an intelligent woman cannot be self-aware of this cognitive fallacy. Later when I thought about it I realized that intelligence doesn't necessarily correlate with self-awareness. I think this is where the idea of this thread came from.
It is interesting. It is not like only dumb people deceive or bullshit themselves. In fact higher intelligence can contribute to self-deception. You can construct highly complex thought-buildings rationalizing all you want. You can put it quite eloquently. And construe theories with parallels, metaphors and smart comparisons around it. There were things in my life that I was extremely convinced of. Major depression with psychosomatic pain would not go away. I can remember I didnt take antipsychotics to that time. I told my therapist (who was pretty bad) a weird paranoid story why depression will never go away. And she just agreed with it. I think this was a mistake of her. Her theory was I am too autistic and would not be able to socialize enough to participate in work. This was bullshit. The truth was I was really socially awkward at that time point. But not taking antipsychotics and being low-key paranoid and being in major depression made me severely dysfunctional. My social awkwardness improved a lot later in my life. It took a lot of time and exercise and a minimum of mental stability. But this isn't the reason why I cannot work. You know I have the feeling the outcome of my life is quite clear. But the diagnosis and reasoning behind it isn't accurate. The reason why I cannot work is a complex interplay of my bipolar disorder, autism spectrum and past psychoses. I could write a lot why I am not able to work. But social awkwardness isn't the reason for it. It was the first time a therapist gave up on me. Interestingly, shortly afterwards my major depressive episode ended. Which was really surprising to me. Me and many doctors and therapist didn't see that coming. And it happened yet.
My point that I want to make. I can bullshit myself and people realize I am quite self-reflective and maybe they perceive me as very intelligent. And then they believe my bullshitting. When I bullshit myself this can make other people uncertain about their own conclusions. I think I am susceptible for auto-suggestion. I use chatGPT for regulate my emotions for example. I can tell a story and maybe that's overanalysis of a social interaction. These are only fragments I think social interactions are so ambiguous and complex that they are hard to put into words even more it is treacherous to develop a coherent story around them. I have pain in my teeth since I have a new filling. I went again to my dentist. I tend to catastrophize many events and interactions. I was pretty anxious when I was at the dentist. And I think my anxiety was contagious. I subconsciously anticipated her answers. I tried to be analytical. The roots for the pain in my teeth are unclear. The good answer was the tooth is irritated after the filling and this will go away after a while. However, my pain is still there after 2 weeks and this feels concerning to me. The bad answer would be she made a mistake when doing the filling and there is a deeper issue with my tooth. Something she isn't aware of. I think we both were biased in how we evaluated the situation. I was imagining the worst. And she wanted the answer to be true that would mean she isn't responsible at all. She told me I was responsible for it because I didn't wear my night guard. I told her I tend to think this isn't the reason because prior to this filing I had no pain despite not wearing the night guard. I think this answer made her doubting her explanation. Actually, I now wore the night guard two times at night for 5 hours. I wake up at night then I often have to take it out. Otherwise it is impossible to continue sleeping. And honestly I think wearing the night guard makes the pain even worse. I had to take pain killers because it hurt so much. And yesterday I threw up. I have the feeling we both were biased. And maybe we both deceived ourselves. For her it is more a protection of self-confidence. People who have to function often benefit of having a slightly better notion of themselves as objectively appropriate.
And for me I think my catastrophizing also has an inner function. It gives me the sense of control. Having a good self-image of myself feels like lying to me. And a lot of horrible stuff happened in my life. And there are structural reasons why my life will become worse. But my strategic pessimism shall protect me from disappointments and pain. There is a lot of irony in that. Because in dating my hope goes up way too high and way too early. I assign a story around the woman and I perceive a deeper meaning that we now meet each other. This makes me suspicious of hope. I was disappointed so often in my life. And I was really fucking depressed because of it. The thing is I think this is pathological. And I always assign a deeper meaning when I meet a potential significant other. And I don't really know what to do against that. I have two biases catastrophizing and being way too optimistic. And I prefer anticipating a break-up because this is easier to stomach than optimism without limit. There is always an existential component for me when it comes to dating. I feel incomplete otherwise. But I realized relationships are often idealized a little bit too much.
I think my bullshitting is facilitated by ambiguity-intolerance, high self-observation, hypervigilance, high analytical skills, being able to think deep, a tendency to construe narratives that often become part of my identity, I have some theoretical knowledge and I am prone to extreme rumination. The rumination fuels my creativity for new thread ideas. Lol. Sometimes I believe a little bit too much in my theories if I construct them in very abstract and complex thought-building. When I tell myself I was rational in doing that (actually I am prone to emotional reasoning) and then I tell myself by being aware of all this cognitive biases I were immune of them which isn't the case though. Sometimes more thinking won't let you come closer to the truth sometimes only time will tell and often you won't find out the truth. Me instead I have the tendency to jump to conclusion despite having only a small amount of data. And this thread is another example of that. Lol.
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