Why we create our suffering
Locally optimal strategies
2022.
I couldn’t tell you what I did for five months. I watched my friend’s dog and drafted some posts I never published... but where the rest of the time went? I don’t know.
I remember wondering: “Why am I withdrawing from everything? Why are my emotions so irrational?”
Social interactions weren’t going as I wanted: I couldn’t make friends, crushes ghosted me, and whenever I set boundaries with others they got upset.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but interacting with others felt tremendously unsafe.
Naturally, when I’m withdrawn and low on energy, I don’t want to interact with other people much.
...so, if interacting with other people was unsafe, then one way for me to not have to interact with them and be safe was to... be withdrawn.
I thought my problem was the withdrawal. But really withdrawal turned out to actually be a solution to a different problem.
So I unlearned the lifelong insecurity that made social interaction feel unsafe. I haven’t needed to be withdrawn since.
Incidentally, while I was withdrawn, I had moved to the middle of nowhere. Conveniently miles away from anyone I might’ve wanted to talk to. But within three weeks, I moved back to a big city and had about 10x as much social interaction.
After noticing this pattern—the problem wasn’t the problem, it was a solution—I started seeing it everywhere.
A different way of understanding suffering
Any persistent issue can be understood from two different points of view:
In the Classical view: Past experiences “caused” the present state. “My withdrawal is an unfortunate consequence of previous trauma or bad experiences, which I have no control over.”
And the Locally Optimal view: My state is incentivized by what my nervous system is currently acting to avoid. Withdrawal isn’t random, it’s strategic.
In the classical view, you look backwards: the past caused the present issue, and the past can’t be changed… so rest in pieces I guess.
In the locally optimal view, you look forward: your present state is shaped by the futures you want to avoid and the futures you want to achieve.1
The locally optimal view is a hopeful view: your suffering isn’t random, it’s functional.
My withdrawal wasn’t globally optimal. It sucked. Even so, it was the best strategy I knew.
Locally Optimal
So it seems my emotions weren’t “so irrational” after all…
V2. 2024 Nov 23 – 2025 Oct 22.
It’s like the efficient market hypothesis but for emotional issues: “If there were zero downsides to resolving this issue, then why hasn’t it resolved itself already?”