How unconscious predictions update
In order to improve an unconscious-driven issue, you must first find the associated predictions in your nervous system.
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Ever wanted to approach someone at a party but stayed glued to the snack table instead? Or hit snooze on your new exercise routine, day after day?
We all have. It’s frustrating and confusing.
Why?
Our nervous systems are constantly making and updating predictions about our future environment, our future observations, and our future selves. These predictions are learned automatically, and are difficult to access consciously. (I’m mostly pulling from the Predictive Processing model of the mind here.1)
These predictions can range from simple physical anticipations, like “If I keep my hand on this hot surface, the pain will increase”, to more abstract social-emotional forecasts, like “If I express my true feelings in this situation, then other people will respond negatively”.
It shouldn’t be surprising that a nervous system running a prediction like that last one might constantly seek approval from others. And because these predictions are mostly unconscious, that person most likely doesn’t even know how this prediction is influencing their feelings and behavior. As such, they won’t know how much they could grow if that particular unconscious prediction (and likely a few others like it) updated.
To be clear, I don’t believe unconscious predictions are the only possible cause of emotional issues, but they’re the intervention I usually find most helpful to focus on in my practice.
What other approaches miss
Many attempts at causing growth often fall short for several reasons.
Most commonly, they fail to recognize how ‘issues’ often have an immediate payoff. For example, social anxiety might be protecting you from perceived rejection, even if it’s limiting your experiences.
I’ve also seen these other common failure modes:
They only target your conscious mind, while the real drivers of your behavior are unconscious. For instance, consciously telling yourself to “just say Hi” at a party often fails because it doesn't address the underlying unconscious predictions creating your hesitation.
They attempt to tell you what to believe, which is usually ineffective when dealing with deeply unconscious predictions.
They target only visible symptoms, not realizing it's supported by a web of hidden predictions. For example, addressing only the visible anxiety ignores the underlying beliefs about social interactions.
They focus on negative symptoms, instead of focusing on what you do want and working backwards.
The unconscious is essentially a massive parallel computer, constantly making predictions across trillions of neural connections. It’s not one thing, but a billion. In order to improve an unconscious-driven issue, you must first find the associated predictions in your nervous system.
This is why simply trying to change our behavior through internal coercion (aka “willpower”) often fails — these efforts are almost never aimed properly.
We need an approach that directly engages with unconscious predictions.
How I get unconscious predictions to update
Rapid growth often requires getting unconscious predictions to update.
Here’s an example of how I’ve done this for some of my own problems:
I noticed that I was somewhat emotionally numb, and I wanted to feel all of my feelings. The common advice for this is often "just try to pay more attention to your feelings" or "just accept them!" But these suggestions miss a crucial point: if we’re not feeling our feelings, it’s because there’s a payoff to rejecting them.
Here’s a sketch of the process I used:
1. I chose what I want: In this case I was already very clear on it: I wanted to be aware of my feelings in my body.
2. I found unconscious access: I needed to gain access to some unconscious representation of the thing that I wanted. In this case I looked for how what I wanted feels in my body, and fortunately I wasn’t blocked on that, but if I were there are other methods I know now that I could’ve used instead.
In my case, in felt like a certain expansiveness in my chest.
3. I found unconscious blocks: I asked the expansive feeling I wanted to feel in my chest, “What bad thing happens if we’re aware of our feelings?”
I heard:
"Being aware of my feelings will make us less productive"
"Expressing negative emotions will make others angry!"
"Negative feelings will be harmful!"
Oh!
4. I chose wanted instead, given those blocks: Was there a way I could feel my feelings and get more of the benefits and less of the harms? In this case:
I wanted feeling my feelings to mean increasing my productivity and point me at what’s meaningful.
If my negative emotions were repelling others, I wanted to leave those situations.
I wanted negative feelings to be good not bad.
I repeated the process from step 2 as needed. In this case… How does what I want feel in my body?
And ever since then, I feel a lot more.
See another example of how I do this with my clients:
Conclusion
Ever since then, I feel a lot more. I must assume this is because the unconscious predictions updated, and no longer predicted as much harm in feeling my feelings.
I’ve also used the same process for many other issues:
After experiencing unrequited love and significant suffering, a skilled counselor helped me find the unconscious prediction: "I won’t be able to feel loved unless she loves me". We questioned it, and after that one session I nearly never suffered from that incident again.
Likewise for my depression, chronic neck pain, and self-loathing.
Ultimately, the plan is to make growth quick and easy, cheap and scalable.
Thanks to Stag Lynn, Kaj Sotala, Damon Sasi, Brian Toomey, Epistea Residency, CFAR, Anna Salamon, Alex Zhu, and Nolan Kent for mentorship and financial support.
See what I’m up to now.
A reference I like: Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty | Slate Star Codex. Also Kaj Sotala’s Multiagent Models of Mind series. Kaj mentors me (but has not reviewed this exact post).