Curious how you fit together the Deep Okayness Sasha writes about and the premise of achievement beyond comfort you write about. I can see a way, but without its articulation the idea of striving in discomfort *and* feeling genuinely OK with where and how you are seem incompatible.
Also:
(1) Oof: “or physically age past your point of optimum maturity”
(2) Lol: “You do *not* want to find yourself on the business end of exponentiation.”
I think my essay is describing a general phenomenon, and Sasha's essay is describing a concrete instance of that phenomenon in one domain. His whole essay is about moving through psychological discomfort to pull his psychological baseline to a much higher place. As far as I understand it, he's exactly describing the same thing I am when I talk about the equilibrium tug of war. I was going to hit send on my Substack yesterday, but then Sasha's essay came out and I thought "I want to link to this, but I need to sit with it for at least an evening."
Within the domain he explores, he also hit on the same things I described generally. My version: "Many fail because our culture, prizing comfort above discomfort in almost all domains, does not lay out proper default paths for everyone to follow. So those who do want to be fit, think better, eat well, love with passion, and disagree with equanimity, must figure out how to do it themselves from scratch, often in an environment that actively works against them."
Sasha's domain-specific version: "The way I attained Deep Okayness has nothing to do with what normally happens in a therapist’s office. And that is of concern to me. Deep Okayness should be commonplace. We ought to make this possible for as many people as possible. I stumbled upon the possibility accidentally and pursued it haphazardly, and that’s very nice for me, but that simply will not do."
And I describe comfort as a false good—if you aim for comfort or bad discomfort, you will just get bad discomfort and a lower equilibrium point. You must aim for good discomfort, and by regularly embracing it you will move your equilibrium point to a much better place. I think that's what Sasha is describing here, in the domain-specific way:
"Our current thinking around mental health is broken. The dominant paradigm, as far as I can tell, is that you’re basically either unwell or you’re okay, and our job is triage. You’re fucked up and depressed, so you do some therapy, and/or take an SSRI, and then you don’t kill yourself. The goal, the thing to expect, is homeostasis. You’re fine, life sucks but you know whatever. Maybe, at peak, you’re #blessed, things are going well right now. Occasionally, you have things like panic disorder or clinical depression that can’t be healed, and you’re in maintenance for the rest of your life.
I would like to replace it with the following paradigm. There is a spectrum of background mental states, from “suicidal/dissociated/freaked out” to “abiding peace, happiness, and energy.” Nearly everyone can get pretty far up that spectrum. Nearly everyone can experience profound healing and become thoroughly Okay. It is your birthright.
Getting up that spectrum, and staying there, can be accomplished with a number of different psychotechnologies."
Curious how you fit together the Deep Okayness Sasha writes about and the premise of achievement beyond comfort you write about. I can see a way, but without its articulation the idea of striving in discomfort *and* feeling genuinely OK with where and how you are seem incompatible.
Also:
(1) Oof: “or physically age past your point of optimum maturity”
(2) Lol: “You do *not* want to find yourself on the business end of exponentiation.”
I think my essay is describing a general phenomenon, and Sasha's essay is describing a concrete instance of that phenomenon in one domain. His whole essay is about moving through psychological discomfort to pull his psychological baseline to a much higher place. As far as I understand it, he's exactly describing the same thing I am when I talk about the equilibrium tug of war. I was going to hit send on my Substack yesterday, but then Sasha's essay came out and I thought "I want to link to this, but I need to sit with it for at least an evening."
Within the domain he explores, he also hit on the same things I described generally. My version: "Many fail because our culture, prizing comfort above discomfort in almost all domains, does not lay out proper default paths for everyone to follow. So those who do want to be fit, think better, eat well, love with passion, and disagree with equanimity, must figure out how to do it themselves from scratch, often in an environment that actively works against them."
Sasha's domain-specific version: "The way I attained Deep Okayness has nothing to do with what normally happens in a therapist’s office. And that is of concern to me. Deep Okayness should be commonplace. We ought to make this possible for as many people as possible. I stumbled upon the possibility accidentally and pursued it haphazardly, and that’s very nice for me, but that simply will not do."
And I describe comfort as a false good—if you aim for comfort or bad discomfort, you will just get bad discomfort and a lower equilibrium point. You must aim for good discomfort, and by regularly embracing it you will move your equilibrium point to a much better place. I think that's what Sasha is describing here, in the domain-specific way:
"Our current thinking around mental health is broken. The dominant paradigm, as far as I can tell, is that you’re basically either unwell or you’re okay, and our job is triage. You’re fucked up and depressed, so you do some therapy, and/or take an SSRI, and then you don’t kill yourself. The goal, the thing to expect, is homeostasis. You’re fine, life sucks but you know whatever. Maybe, at peak, you’re #blessed, things are going well right now. Occasionally, you have things like panic disorder or clinical depression that can’t be healed, and you’re in maintenance for the rest of your life.
I would like to replace it with the following paradigm. There is a spectrum of background mental states, from “suicidal/dissociated/freaked out” to “abiding peace, happiness, and energy.” Nearly everyone can get pretty far up that spectrum. Nearly everyone can experience profound healing and become thoroughly Okay. It is your birthright.
Getting up that spectrum, and staying there, can be accomplished with a number of different psychotechnologies."
Also, definitely oof.