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. Same with my clients before working with me.
But the abilities we desired weren’t bottlenecked on doing more learning. They were bottlenecked on unlearning.
