Unlearning is Underrated.
I used to have immense trouble with flirting, saying ‘No’, and “self-acceptance”—and now I don’t. The anxiety evaporated. I didn’t “learn how to flirt”, I didn’t “expose myself to more conflict”, and I didn’t “practice self-acceptance”. Instead, I unlearned what was in the way.
There are two broad strategies for dealing with insecurity: The first is learning a bunch of techniques to subdue its symptoms every time they arise; The second is unlearning the insecurity so it triggers vanishingly less often.
They’re the two ways to grow: Learning and Unlearning. adding and subtracting:
Learning is acquiring new skills: “learn” to flirt, “learn” to say ‘No’, “learn” to self-accept… It’s adding code to your mind.
Unlearning is removing harmful skills: deleting romantic insecurity, removing conflict anxiety, stopping self-rejection… It’s deleting code from your mind.
We need both.
When I first started working on my symptoms, I learned too much. The same has been true for those who have worked with me.
But the abilities we desired weren’t bottlenecked on doing more learning. They were bottlenecked on unlearning.
