September 5th, 2023
- do this poll again
- common co-gnosis trap / guru dynamics
- "This behavior in our relationship has hurt me, and made me uncertain if you ever valued our work together."
- (real quote from a spiritual teacher to a student, from an email I read)
- this is super subtle and insidious
- one part of what gives it force is the projection from "I am uncertain" to "I am asserting doubt into our shared reality"
- this is arguably a variant of the mind projection fallacy
- one good response to this is "wow, this is genuinely causing you to doubt our whole history? sounds like splitting bro. why are you seeing things as so binary? sometimes friends hurt each other."
- in essence, since it is (usually) obvious to the other person that "of course I valued the earlier work together", stand in the power of that obviousness
- maybe speak to it directly — sometimes things need to be said even though they feel like they really really should go without saying
- say "I totally valued our work together, and am surprised you could doubt that unless you're making some sort of assumption that I'm not about what that would imply."
- the other part of this whole thing is a kind of renarrativizing the past in a way that others can tell is incomplete