Unlearning one-shots, >1 year later
People can grow quick when they’re ripe for it.
A → Organizing ridiculous social projects “others rallied around”
An engineer I met at a prediction market conference set a bounty on increasing his social and career agency.
One session in July 2024; he did the take-home work.
Within a month, he was:
Dancing weekly
Choosing more difficult projects at work
Embracing social interactions that used to be triggering
Expressing romantic feelings frankly
Previously he’d done:
I’m choosing to work on problems beyond my capabilities, and get excited about situations where my weaknesses are repeatedly on display.
He continued the work.
6 months:
Every week I’ve had some new ridiculous, fun, stupid project that I had others rallied around. It's exactly the stuff I kind of pictured doing but never really did…
One of my new friends said, “You're so adventurous.” That shocked me
18 months: He says he’s very happy and resilient, has lots of friends (and dates) now :)
B → Laughing at old triggers
Antoine was the first to try. Multiple therapists and modalities had fallen short; “I’ve had anxiety my whole life.”
Unlearning with take-home work, plus another call in month nine. More like a “two-shot” than a “one-shot” but including it anyway.
11 months:
I used to get triggered by very small things that some of the people surrounding me would say or do. Something as simple… “You told me that you didn’t like corn. Why have you bought corn?” These things would incapacitate me for 48 hours, I would have to shut myself in my room. Now I just laugh. —Video
18 months: He says all is well; he has continued the practice.
C → Asking people out
Seven years of meditation and hundreds of hours of IFS therapy hadn’t gotten this AI researcher the results he wanted. He still didn’t ask out women he was attracted to.
After he started asking women out, we continued unlearning for further goals.
5 months after first unlearning (1 month after conclusion), we recorded this reflection.
At 11 months he texted:
Update: They’ve been dating for over a year now. Life is good.
D → No urges
A man man set a bounty on his 20-year porn addiction. He had tried to quit for most of that time.
One session, a little take-home work.
1 month:
“very few urges”
7 months:
“I don’t have the urge at all anymore”
13 months:
18 months: “good”.
An observation
Less unlearning is necessary when the emotions involved are directly accessible. Avoidance patterns, like numbness and some forms of procrastination, have been less amenable to one-shots with take-home work.
The end of one-shots
I saw the data I wanted; one-shot research has concluded.
Now researching: maximum unlearning.
I’ve had some “one-off” successes like this too (sometimes in as little as 30 minutes, though this was in an environment where we had a lot of shared context). A lot of your intuitions about this match mine, and I hadn’t actually made the “anxious vs avoidant” heuristic explicit to myself until I read your account of it, so thank you! Also love the “bounty” idea, and will think about how I might be able to implement it in my own practice.
I'm super curious, I've reread a bunch of your pieces. whaty do tou do in these sessiosn?