Becoming Eden

Category: Blog

  • Heuristics for Spotting Distorted Thinking: “It Would Be One Thing If… But…”

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    by

    divia
    in

    I have a whole bunch of heuristics I use to notice distorted thinking. I’ve covered some of them here. Today, I wanted to highlight the speech pattern “It would be one thing if X, but Y,” typically used to describe why someone’s behavior is objectionable. The language can vary a little: “I know that she…

  • Your Past is Never the Reason

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    by

    divia
    in

    I’m a huge fan of the Internal Family Systems therapy method. This method involves (among other things) digging into your past to find emotions you never finished processing and sorting them out. I’ve seen this method work very well to shift repetitive thoughts and behaviors relatively effortlessly. Doing the work is often fun and rewarding.…

  • Beyond Rationality

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    Will
    in

    I called this post “Beyond Rationality” because I wanted to move past the unfortunate connotations and bad habits associated with the word “rationality” in our culture. With tongue firmly in cheek, Divia and I often refer to the cluster of ideas I am about to present as post-rationality, and you may well encounter us using…

  • The Promise and Perils of Rationality

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    by

    Will
    in

    In my previous post I laid out what I did and did not mean by the term “rationality”. While I addressed what I consider to be misconceptions around the word rationality and how self-described rationalists would behave, I do think that there are some common problems that real-life rationalists run into in practice. In this…

  • If You Have A Strong Feeling, It’s Yours

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    by

    divia
    in

    I’ve had a plan to blog about something related to personal growth every Monday. I’ve managed this the last two weeks, and I’m doing it again today. I read an IFS book about relationships a couple of years ago that had an articulate explanation of why strong feelings are always about us, never the other person.…

  • Rationality, Unpacked

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    Will
    in

    The word “rationality” carries a lot of historical baggage and cultural misconceptions, enough so that I have considered not using it at all. Yet a substantial portion of my social circle has decided to adopt this label (spoiler alert!), and for better or worse, it is the label that I use in my own mind. First I am…

  • Nineteen Weeks of Lydia

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    divia
    in

    Lydia tuns nineteen weeks old today, and it was a very active week. She’s getting stronger by the day! Sleep Sleep was unmemorable this week, which is exactly where I want it to be! She seems to be past whatever was making her more fitful last week. We have been breaking out the swaddling blanket…

  • Learning Programming

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    Will
    in

    My relationship with programming has a long and sordid past. We got our first computer when I was very young, and I was immediately transfixed by this devil machine. How did it possibly work?? This curiosity got me a handful of vague enough answers to temporarily satisfy me, and I went about playing Dune II.…

  • Your Inner Virtue Ethicist Should Like Self-Compassion

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    divia
    in

    If you haven’t read Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists, I highly recommend it. As I see it, consequentialism is obviously correct, and virtue ethics is how you implement it on human hardware. I’m also a big fan of self-compassion. Today, I was working with someone, and while we did some good IFS work together, we didn’t…

  • O, Fragile Productivity!

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    by

    Will
    in

    As long as I stick to my systems I don’t get sick very often, and thus I sometimes forget what it’s like. Getting enough sleep seems to render me immune to infections, though sometimes I stay up late or wake up too early. If I do start to feel a cold coming on, a complete…