On being always upset

[posic]

Jordan Peterson says in a Facebook video -- https://www.facebook.com/reel/25103275009331698 :

"I'm always upset. I'm angry all the time." What are you angry about? Well, that's a huge question. What are you angry about? Well, you can make the person to list: What are you angry about? "Here's 30 things that I don't like about my marriage. Here's 15 things I don't like about my job." It's like, okay, those are all micro domains that we could learn to tackle. How could you make a case for making progress in these domains? How do you make a case to yourself? How do you make a case to other people? How do you start the process of micro negotiation, and what can you offer the other person in return? And that can all be practiced out in the psychotherapeutic session. And you can do that on your own, if you want. You know, it is nice to have someone to lay these things out with, but you can do that. List out everything that makes you angry. And then if each of those things is too big to tackle, then differentiate them. And then start tackling them one by one.

***

Isn't it obvious that that's exactly the wrong approach?

The correct approach is: quit the damn job. Leave the damn marriage. Find a better one, or do without.

And that's the reason why I consider the psychologists/psychotherapists to be useless. Because the decision/ability to quit a bad job and find a better one is not a matter of psycho-something.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Isn't it obvious that that's exactly the wrong approach?

The correct approach is: quit the damn job. Leave the damn marriage. Find a better one, or do without.<<

I'm delighted to see someone else saying that.

Okay, all jobs have parts that suck and no person is perfect. Happiness consists of finding a job and a partner whose annoying parts you can tolerate, and that is amenable to working on the relationship over time to improve it.

If you have one or two problems -- say, you struggle with time management or argue over finances -- then it might make sense to get help working on that bit. But if you're at the stage of "angry all the time" with a big list of problems, then it's time to cut your losses and leave.

>>And that's the reason why I consider the psychologists/psychotherapists to be useless. Because the decision/ability to quit a bad job and find a better one is not a matter of psycho-something.<<

Bear in mind that the vast majority of them aren't trying to help people whose life is a mess. They're trying to maintain the status quo, to make that person fit in a role. It's especially strong with jobs. With relationship counseling, sometimes they do address the issue of whether or not to leave, but not all of them do that. They're very prone to absconding with people's choices, often by force. Just to get in the door you have to sign away your privacy, which is a dealbreaker for me. I wouldn't necessarily consider the whole industry worse than useless, but a lot of it is. To get anything useful you'd have to shop very carefully.

[posic]

https://posic.livejournal.com/3528281.html

[posic]

> What if I am (part of) the problem? Then divorcing, resigning etc. could make things seriously worse not better.

"The problem" is a nonexistent thing. You have your problem, you spouse has her problem, your employer has their problem, those people who would have to support you in your loneliness and unemployment (relatives, taxpayers, doctors, ...) have their problems, etc. Which of those problems is the psychotherapist supposed to solve? Whose interests is he serving? That is the main issue, as my next blog entry points out.

The question which of the conflicting interests are more legitimate and more worthy of protection does not belong to the domain of psychology. It is a moral issue, not a psychological one. The parties involved might be well advised to look for a moral (e.g., religious) authority to consult with, if they have or can find such a moral authority that both of them recognize and respect. In most cases in the contemporary world, such a commonly recognized moral authority figure cannot be found. The psychologist is a very bad substitute for one, particularly for as long as he pretends to be doing psychology/psychotherapy rather than moral judgement, which is actually the case.

Otherwise, any decision involves its distinctive set of risks. It is risky to divorce or resign; it is also risky to stay in a bad marriage or bad job. If the psychologist were good at estimating risks, he would work in finance, not in psychology/psychotherapy. As the saying goes, "Young man, whatever decision (to marry or not to marry) you make, you will regret it dearly". You have to decide which regret you prefer.

I left my family and quit my Moscow job, and never regretted it even though my life was not easy in the subsequent years. If I decided on asking for opinions instead, there would be more than enough people around, psycho-somethings including, who would say very confidently that I was the problem. I decided that those people were a part of my problem, and I couldn't care less about whatever their problems might consist in. 12 years have passed, and now people can just say that I was lucky.

[posic]

Notice what Peterson does in this video (which is published in his account). He describes a huge problem ("I am always upset, I am angry all the time"), and proceeds to never even mention the main issue of what may be the important underlying reason(s) for that. Why is this happening? Who is in the right, and who is in the wrong? He completely ignores the underlying cause issue and the moral issue altogether, and instead advises to cut the huge problem into small pieces and negotiate them one by one. This is offered like a universal approach to all problems, independent of any understanding of the nature of the problem involved.

This is like me complaining that the other party wants to force me to eat shit, and the psychologist advising me to cut my big serving of shit into many small pieces and eat them one by one. Almost a quintessential example of completely useless and counterproductive "psychological" advice, wholly motivated by the psychologist's desire to be relevant to everything without actually understanding anything.

[posic]

There are all kinds of possibilities. It is even possible that neither party is in the wrong, but they just do not fit. At the end of the day, they may both benefit from ending the current relationship and looking for new ones. Or both the parties may lose.

Furthermore, the following situation must be very common, I think. My previous comments emphasized the moral dimension of the conflict, but generally speaking, the market value dimension may be more relevant, particularly in the context of employment. The typical reason for the employee-employer conflict is that the employee's estimation of the market value of his labor is very different from the employer's estimation.

In the perception of the employee, the employer mistreats him by refusing to offer good working conditions. That is what makes the employee so upset and angry. In the employer's opinion, the current working conditions are all that the employee deserves with his skills and work ethic. Generally speaking, this is not a moral issue: no one is entitled to good working conditions (certainly not in my book). It is the issue of misaligned estimations of the employee's value on the labor market. The employer pursues his rational self-interest by not offering the employee any better working conditions than his contribution deserves. The employee, in deciding whether to resign or stay, pursues his rational self-interest as well.

The employee believes his work to be highly valuable. The employer disagrees. In such a situation, the employee may be completely right and the employer may be mistaken, but chances are that the employer's evaluation of the labor market conditions is not entirely groundless. The employee's current position is likely to be a kind of local optimum. To improve his situation, the employee would have to make somewhat radical steps: acquire new skills, change the profession, move cities, move countries, etc. Such steps are expensive and risky. It may take years before such decisions bring the expected benefits of improved working conditions for the employee.

This is how I interpret the story of my employment at MF VShE and the subsequent emigration/resignation. My evaluation of my perspectives on the labor market was very different from that of the effective administration of the Math. Faculty. I contemplated changing profession at several junctions, but eventually chose to move countries instead. It worked out very well, I am very happy with the current outcome.

Once again, it is also possible (though perhaps less likely) that both the employee and the employer are correct: the employee's contribution may be potentially highly valuable, but not to this particular employer.

Of course, no psychologist has any way of knowing what the labor market value of a person might be in a different city or a different country. Which is another way of making my main point: the problems people encounter in their lives are not "psychology". It is not "psychology" but substantial life problems that makes people upset and angry, or depressed, or whatever.

Re: Thoughts

[posic]

My point is that, particularly with changing or keeping jobs, the psychologists/psychotherapists are just not qualified to offer that advice. Whether the person would or would not be able to find a better employment is not a matter of "psychology", and the psychologist cannot predict that. I am discussing this at greater length in the comments here -- https://posic.livejournal.com/3528281.html , published also as a separated blog entry here -- https://posic.dreamwidth.org/3523996.html .