This is also a stub to be expanded over time.

Narcissism is a form of learned helplessness.

It is a conditioned pattern of taking care of one’s emotional needs.

Most of what are called “personality disorders” are emotional. They are the result of inadequate emotional health and fitness.

They are similar to inadequate physical health and fitness, comparable to high blood pressure, lack of cardiovascular fitness, or lack of mobility or strength.

And similarly, full health can be restored by addressing the causes, not treating the symptoms.

Another placeholder to revisit and expand later.

We need to start talking about emotional health the way we talk about physical health and mental health. More accurately we need to separate emotional health from mental health. But all three are distinct and interconnected.

People have started using the term “emotional health” but we need to go a lot farther. Much of what is called mental health is really emotional health.

They are three different things because our physical, emotional, and mental selves are separate parts. Most importantly, they are nurtured and developed and healed in different ways.

Our emotional, mental, and physical health connect and influence each other.

There are plenty of stories about emotional health affecting physical health. We know the inverse is true.

The term “mental health” as commonly used applies more to emotions than the thinking mind. Yet thinking has a health and fitness of its own as well.

We need to say mental health much less often (it belongs more in math departments) and start talking about emotional health instead.

For starters, building emotional fitness is closer to how one builds physical fitness. And healing emotional disorders is closer to how we heal physical disorders.

The marvelous Kahneman book Thinking Fast and Slow has a section discussing System 1 vs. Expert Intuition. He refers to an running debate with another scholar which became a collaboration. This debate isn’t fully described, but seemed to start with the contrast between the flaws and biases of System 1 and the power of expert intuition.

As Malcolm Gladwell described in his seminal book Blink, the power of expert (conditioned) intuition is so extraordinary it is hard to overstate. Observing and celebrating intuitive skill is one of great primary entertainments as humans. We adore great skill in every endeavor from art to sport to basic daily tasks.

I don’t think Kahneman wrote about expert intuition simply being a trained System 1 (I do need to review that section of the book).

System 1 is trainable.

System 1 learns by conditioning, through repetition. It is actually being trained constantly and cannot help being trained. System 1 learns anything we practice and makes that action unconscious. And we are practicing all the time. We are what we practice (1).

In fact, many of System 1’s flaws arise from conditioning earlier in life, particular in our formative years. Often this training was a remarkably successful adaptation to the environment we lived in. Years later in different environments System 1’s automatic adapted behavior gets us into trouble (2).

This isn’t just true for “unhealthy” environments in our formative years. Even if we have the most healthy, secure, balanced family life, System 1 develops habits which can be limiting later in life.

System 2 has a version of this conditioning. It develops mental models which become unconscious and can be limiting if we don’t update them, or if we fail to see they do not completely fit the present situation.

Final note: probably need to revise the picture with the elephants in captivity.

———

(1) Strozzi Institute of Embodied Leadership teaches, 1) we are what we practice, 2) we are practicing all the time, 3) do our practices serve us?

2) David L. Bradford, Stanford Graduate School of Business, “In my experience, people get into more trouble from over-using their strengths than from their weaknesses.”

Notes for work in progress. alternate title? Accountability: the 6th Pillar

Accountability is a fundamental quality of emotional intelligence.

It goes much farther than that. Remarkably, accountability turns up in many places. A fundamental part of accountability is accepting what is.

Turning towards = acceptance

A significant portion of John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged is actually about accountability: accepting “A equals A.”

This is a fundamental part of the Serenity Prayer, and the first of the Twelve Steps. It is remarkable that Twelve Step programs have any success with the difficult problems they address. The technology they apply is used by the healthiest and most empowered of people.