Presuppositions and Passive Agressives
Posted by arjen on June 23rd, 2011
I was just abused, by someone I care about and they live approx 16000 km away. I now have a headache and a nasty stressed feeling. I’m scribbling about it here as a bit of self-therapy to diffuse my anger at this (which in part is being angry at myself for letting me get so affected at a distance), particularly because confronting the person would not be effective. Also, you may recognise this type of incident and find the post of use. Comments are most welcome.
First, let me clarify what a presupposition is. Consider the sentence “Even Fred could pass that exam.” Those proficient in English will note additional information that is conveyed as there are two presuppositions in there:
- Fred gets classified as not being particularly bright/competent
- The exam is classified as easy, not challenging
Consequentially, the sentence is actually quite nasty in particular towards Fred, but also conveys a clear negative opinion about the exam.
Passive-aggressiveness is obviously a coping mechanism. It’s frustrating for others, and confronting it in whatever way tends to (at least in my experience) be a waste of time as it just triggers more of the same behaviour. Since it’s just an observable symptom of something else, it’s up to the person themselves to hopefully figure it out over time and deal with the actual issues. Unfortunately and again very frustrating, you can’t fix other people or their problems, you can only affect your own behaviour or responses.
Did the person phrasing a sentence such as the above actually say something nasty, or can they validly claim innocence? I’ve come to regard being offended as a selfish act, as the person triggering the offense tends to not have spent specific effort on offending you. Makes sense? But even with that in mind, I don’t believe sentences with nasty presuppositions are innocent. If you say stuff like that, you should take responsibility for what it means as well as for what it literally says.
Now, back to my own experience. The email I received went something like this: “Since I haven’t heard from you about the gift package, I’m presuming it didn’t arrive and thus will not send any more gift packages in the future, which is a great pity for X.”
It’s astonishing how many snakes are in there, there’s absolutely nothing I can say or do. If indeed the package hasn’t arrived, future consequences have already been decided, to someone else’s detriment (that tosses a guilt-trip on me, I’m now guilty for X not getting gifts). If the package has arrived, then it’s clearly my fault also (disregarding other circumstances) to not have communicated in the preferred manner (essentially a quick email would not do, a phone call is required taking time zones and other factors in to account). If I object to the message, I’m causing trouble. It’s a complete no winner.
Possibly you see another way to respond or handle this, and I’m quite happy to see suggestions – of course the sentence was simplified, and there are many other aspects as well as a long history in play and it’s not suitable to post all that here.
If you’d like to read more about this type of verbal nasties, see Suzette Haden Elgin’s
Verbal Self Defense home page. Her books are excellent, specifically “The Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense” which while a few decades old now is still very usable. It doesn’t teach so-called put-downs, it really teaches understanding and skills to diffuse and avoid triggering problems.
The just get on/deal with it fallacy
Posted by arjen on May 18th, 2011
I was recently told this – it’s quite common to hear it generically and it ranks high on the list of “very unhelpful things to say to a person with depression”, but I hadn’t had it tossed at me personally in recent times.
The reason it’s utterly unhelpful is that it presumes that a person can just “snap out of it”, “stop whinging” or whatever, and that completely disregards the medical background of the situation. It’s just not how it works. To put it bluntly, it’s essentially denying the existence of depression as a medical condition. And while individuals are entitled to their own opinions, I reckon there’s been enough medical research and experience amassed to safely conclude that depression exists – so I prefer to not get drawn into discussions on that baseline, or be put in a situation where that gets questioned.
I consider myself quite lucky. I’ve always been able to get up in the morning. I don’t necessarily feel so good and my ability to do things during the day may be affected, but I get up. I know that others don’t. Because they just can’t. While that may be very difficult to comprehend for someone who has never been in that situation, a little bit of understanding, compassion and empathy helps.
This is just one example. I’ll soon scribble another post reflecting on what might go on in my head and outside on a day that things are not working so well.
Awareness in the community is important, which is an important reason for BlueHackers’ existence – but those with depression can also take a useful lesson from all this though, because for many of us depression is cyclical – it’s not at the same level all the time, and there are very good periods. There can be obvious negative triggers such as stress, illness, bad diet, lack of sleep (I’ve written about that earlier) some of which you have influence over, and others that we may not know about or can’t directly influence.
If you manage to put things in place during good times, it’ll give you a kind of buffer in bad times. A habit is easier to keep up than it is to get started, that is, change often requires more effort than maintaining the status quo, even though the status quo might be you going for a daily walk. That may seem a bit contradictory at first, but we’re primarily talking about mental energy here, not physical. Now imagine, if you were some able to keep doing that daily walk, that alone may not prevent bad episodes but is quite likely to lower the severity and duration and overall keep you in better shape – in this case literally as well, since it is exercise! But think of a habit of going to bed at a set time, reading a book or doing some relaxation… same applies.
Mind you, I’m not perfect with this – I can be a complete slacker, but every time looking back I can see the results both of doing (some of) this and of not doing it. It makes a big difference for me. So, there we have a possibly useful strategy derived indirectly from an otherwise useless (or even harmful) comment. Naturally, your milage may vary, everybody is different. But perhaps it’s something you can try, starting at the right time. And if you have experience with it already, perhaps you can write a comment!
On growing up as an alien robot among humans
Posted by elspeth on October 31st, 2010
Since tomorrow there’s an awareness campaign about autism spectrum disorders running, it seems an appropriate time to write about my own experiences with ASD.
As a young child, I didn’t really notice much that I was different. I didn’t hang out with other girls much – they were given to playing games like ‘house’ and whatever that I didn’t understand, whereas the boys played hopscotch and tag and hide and seek, which had rules. I played by myself a lot, too, and read books in the library. Looking back, for a child, I was pretty self-directed.
By the time I was around 8, it was becoming increasingly obvious that whatever I was, it wasn’t normal. My reading level had reached an adult level the previous year, although obviously some concepts had no real meaning for me. My language development reflected the fact that I read far more than I spoke – I pronounced words oddly, and my word usage was often very formal and structured. I didn’t really have normal friendships – I was already being fairly heavily bullied within my own grade, learning early the lesson that people are cruel and untrustworthy, especially children. I looked to adults and older children for companionship. My choice of reading materials varied between science fiction (Isaac Asmiov), fantasy (Tolkien – the Silmarillion was my favourite book), the encycolpedia britannica, and dictionaries. I also liked reading about dinosaurs, especially palentological taxonomies, and physics. Looking at the wikipedia article on characteristics of Aspergers – I ticked all the boxes to a greater or lesser extent. I was feeling increasingly out-of-place at school. Add increasing issues at home due to financial stresses in the family, and I began the long fall into depression and anxiety that have since characterised my life to some extent.
The first formal diagnosis was around age 11. High functioning autism, of the particular variety that would probably, today, be called Asperger’s syndrome. This was around 1992 – Hans Asperger’s definitive work wasn’t really accepted as mainstream until about two years later, and certainly didn’t hit the paediatric and psychological professions on Australian shores until perhaps 1998 or thereabouts. The doctor’s recommendations were to get a cat, encourage social interaction, and don’t let me be by myself too much. As we now know, that last one is a recipe for madness. My parents were doing what they thought was right for me – it was not their fault that best practices at the time were very, very bad for me.
I retreated from the world. I would speak if spoken to. I went to classes. Although I kept up my non fiction reading (graduating to simple chemistry, quantum mechanics, and black hole cosmology), my choices also increasingly became escapist – more fantasy fiction, much, much more. I would hide in the book cases in the library during school lunchtimes. At least, until I discovered computers – then I hid in the computer labs instead, getting there when they opened in the morning, and only leaving when I had to. I was constantly buffeted by the consequences of my lack of understanding. Imagine, if you will, a world where the only communication was the spoken word, and that word had all the emotional emphasis of plain text. Where allegory and metaphor were entirely abstract concepts with no basis in reality. Where words meant only their literal meanings to me, which had the effect of making the English spoken by everyone else a foreign language. I had technical proficiency in this language, but I couldn’t make myself understood, neither could I understand the messages that were being given to me. It was much later that I gained this understanding of what was going on – at the time, I literally couldn’t grasp the concept of what was going on. A bit like asking a blind person what colour is like, I imagine.
At age 13, I first became suicidal. I was intensely lonely, as well. There was quite literally no-one in the world who I could talk to – the school counsellor seemed to think that I didn’t have any friends because I didn’t make an effort. I was rejected by every social group except the real weirdos, and the international students. I did well enough academically, but the only real friends I thought I had were my teachers, and by the end of high school, one or two of my peers, who had similarly troubled states of mind. The only thing that kept me alive during those years was the fact of my brother’s illness – I knew for a fact what happened when people around him were very sick or died, he ended up in ICU with a near-death experience. I didn’t want to be responsible for his death as well as mine, so I didn’t try. I also convinced myself that I was a bad person and didn’t deserve such an easy way out. I must be bad, because people didn’t talk to me, and shunned me, and that’s what you do to bad people. In such a state, I graduated high school. I estimate my social skills were, at this time, at the level of most 4 to 5 year olds.
Over that summer between high school and first year university, I was finally told what was wrong with me – what the diagnosis I had received many years ago was. Not being told ‘until I was old enough’ was also a recommendation from the doctor. It was like a nuclear warhead going off in my skull. The first thing I did was read everything I could lay my hands on that had the slightest relevance to Autism, and it was a revelation and a relief. This is what I had been missing all those years. This is what I lacked – and, given sufficient effort, what I could surely develop. The next few months, using the internet, some very sympathetic and patient friends, and a great deal of energy, I slowly observed and learnt to mimic normal social behaviours. The process involved many discussions on why exactly people acted how they did – what prompted a particular behaviour, what thought, what emotion, what associations. I was – and still am, at times – incredibly distressed by the lack of literal meanings in human interactions, by the lack of straightforward relationships between thought and action, and by the sheer inconsistency from person to person. I would estimate that I spent upwards of 40 hours a week focussing on this, and working to improve my imitation of humanity. I have often described it as developing a giant look up table in my head of ‘behaviour -> response’, and that’s a pretty accurate description of how it feels.
It’s twelve years later, and I’m now 29. Even to the professional eye, I generally no longer present as having an autism spectrum disorder. It is perhaps ironic that it is the obsessive focus on minutiae that is a characteristic of the disorder that has allowed me to develop these skills. It has, to a large extent, become reflex to act this way. However, there is still large swathes of social programming that I have simply missed out on, and don’t see value in adopting. I’m more comfortable in being slightly sideways from most of humanity, and on most days, can see myself as being human. I believe I have established solid relationships with other people, and that most of the time, I’m not too difficult to be around, or too opaque. Still, I’m always trying to improve.
(original at Elspeth’s personal blog, reposted with permission)
The Right Lazy
Posted by arjen on June 20th, 2010
You know how you sometimes feel lazy, plus guilty about same?
But when you think about it, I reckon some “lazy” is more than ok… why not optimise some things for convenience, saving time/energy for other things? That’s worthwhile. Example:
- I bake my own bread because it tastes better, my daughter loves it, it doesn’t contain any nasty additives, and as a nice sideline it actually works out much cheaper with more nutrition.
- I use a breadmaker, because I really can’t be stuffed doing all the kneading. Happily lazy there.
- I don’t use bread mix, because putting ingredients in the bread pan takes only a few minutes anyway. The biggest effort is actually cleaning the bread pan afterward so no difference there. I big jars with a few types of flour, a box with various seeds and grains and such that I add to some breads, linseed in the fridge, and dried yeast in the freezer. Easy-as.
CEO’s disease – manic depression and entrepreneurship
Posted by krisb on June 19th, 2010
In an article that dates back to the 1990′s the link was made between CEO’s, particularly CEO’s in emerging industries and technologies and manic depression. [1] You would be surprised how many very successful CEO’s battle with this every day. From my own father, an entrepreneur of the 1980′s and 1990′s, who has now fallen out of the game after a business failure, to my peers in Business SA’s Young Entrepreneurship Scheme that I participated in last year. The evidence that this link exists seems to be constantly re-affirmed in my daily experiences.
Even this last week, I was exposed to the idea again, not through my work as a consultant but, instead though the amazing TED and TEDx presentations that I have taken to watching in my downtime. Maybe this one that discusses manic depression in relation to ADHD, childhood experiences and entrepreneurship may interest you? [2] Grab a refreshment and make yourself 22 minutes to enjoy this segment.
[1] Elsberry, Richard B. (1998) “”Bipolar disorder”: Why are they calling it the “CEO’s disease”?” FindArticles.com. Accessed: 19 Jun, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3726/is_199802/ai_n8798710/
[2] Herold, Cameron (2010) “Raising Kids to be Entrepreneurs” [video] YouTube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCar_sFfEf4&feature=player_embedded
Keep on moving
Posted by paulway on December 28th, 2009
I know when I’m feeling down because this little part of my brain starts questioning why I’m doing anything. Why go out and visit friends when I don’t really feel like it? Why do any exercise when I feel tired? Why get all dressed up to go to work? Why get up at all? Why…
Once I recognise this symptom it’s often difficult to fight. I have a somewhat philosophical nature and I like asking those big questions of “what is the right thing to do” and “where should we be going”. It’s easy to get a kind of choice paralysis when asking these questions, and if one is definitely staring down the barrel of a big question – should I disagree with someone I love, should I say something against a person that everyone else agrees with, should I complain about someone else’s misplaced generosity – then it can be really difficult to feel like you can move on. And that’s when you start questioning why you should get out of bed.
It took me a while to feel like I could just ignore some of those questions and move on. But I finally realised that I couldn’t let everything stall just because I can’t answer a question for which, almost by definition, there is no ‘right’ answer. By getting on with the things we do every day – eating, doing the chores, getting out, exercising – we actually give our brains space to process some of those hard questions. And in the process we almost invariably get some more input that adds valuable information.
By getting up and getting on with things, we are not stalling or putting off the question. We are adding to our perception and improving our ability to choose. Stalling is lying in bed doing nothing. And sometimes things will solve themselves naturally without our intervention. Most importantly, we keep to our comfortable routines, we keep on the move for new opportunities, and we don’t lose the energy and momentum to tackle life’s problems.
We sometimes need to walk around the problem and look at it from another angle, and we can only do that if we keep moving.
Healthy eating (unprocessed foods)
Posted by arjen on November 6th, 2009
The following is from BBC News site: Depression link to processed food
After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic diseases, they found a significant difference in future depression risk with the different diets.
Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods.
By contrast people with a diet high in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those who ate very few processed foods.
Not really surprising (to me, anyway) but interesting to see some research on this. And the difference is quite significant.
The Equation
Posted by arjen on October 31st, 2009
Sometimes you get pretty busy, and what’s the first thing to lose out? The daily exercise, being outside (sunlight) for a bit, perhaps the fruit (see the How-To). Sound familiar?
Depending on how you’re going at the time, you may actually get away with it. But it’s a dangerous track to go on… if you happen to get sick or add a bit of stress, there’s trouble. For me personally, I think it works somewhat like an equation, roughly this:
doing ok = ((exercise + daylight + fruit + sleep) >= (stress + illness))
Perhaps someone would care to refine this further?
(I’ve never coded in Lisp but I always use parentheses to keep math clear without implied rules. I know about operator precedence – heck I’ve written little compilers – but being explicit eases code maintenance and reduces bugs)
By the way, we got some press attention this week, see When hackers get the blues. It’s also November again, and that means Movember: the yearly fundraising drive raising awareness for men’s health, this year focusing on depression and prostate cancer. I’ve added it to the links, if you know of other relevant links please let us know!
Organising the House
Posted by arjen on August 19th, 2009
It has been said that a person’s house tends to be a reflection of their mind… and I think it’s definitely the case that how a house looks/feels affects its occupants. If you have your house pretty much sorted, that is a feel-good factor and something less to potentially worry about.
Basic cleanliness is good of course, but I’m talking more about clutter and really just things that lie about somewhere because they don’t have their own proper spot. The latter may sound a tad anal, but essentially if you store stuff everything has a particular spot to go so by definition that’s how you organise things. Nothing new there. I’m not saying you’ll be labeling each drawer and box, but some people find that handy also. In any case, I think the key factor is storage, since if you don’t have a spot to put something, of course it’s going to end up just “somewhere”. Having storage for stuff makes it easy to not have clutter, so you’re more inclined to maintain it as well.
By the way, I’ve found this works well for kids also. Little smurfs at around age 2 generally love to be very organised, everything needs to have a spot and so on. If you have sufficient (and suitable) storage space for their toys, having them clean up their stuff becomes really easy and natural. In my house my daughter actually now has the master bedroom, simply because it has the most daylight and floor space of all the bedrooms. I don’t need daylight in my bedroom, so everybody is happy and better organised (I don’t mean to start a revolution in other households, you don’t have to tell yours kids about this 
.
In Australia there’s a nice chain of stores called “Storage Space” which I sometimes visit for ideas. I tend to not buy much there since it’s quite costly. My personal favourite place for ideas about storage tricks is IKEA. For instance, I’ve always found shelves sucky for clothes, but it’s pretty easy to build something with storage trays that can be pulled out, as well as smart hanging options (for instance for pants).
In closing, a short story that was told to me at Linux.conf.au back in January: a group of friends got together (some travelling interstate) to help a friend clean up their house, sort things. Now that’s a very tricky thing, not everybody would appreciate such “interference”; but I understand they got it right and it really helped that person well beyond just having their house organised. I hope they’ll pop on here some time and tell the full story directly, as I think it’s a great example of how you can, very practically, help someone get back on track. I also think it’s a brilliant example of true friendship.
Tea; Earl Grey; Hot
Posted by arjen on August 6th, 2009
I drank Earl Grey tea long before Picard ordered it from his replicator on Star Trek. That’s not quite what this story is about, but it is about tea, and how it caused me some major trouble.
Only a few years ago I worked out that I don’t deal well with caffeine. It’s fine at the time, but it causes a serious dip in how I feel the next morning. It’s nasty and not resolved by just ingesting more caffeine. You get the idea. I didn’t drink regular coffee anyway but I cut out mocha (milk based coffee/chocolate blend) and the occasional coca cola (travel, parties, conferences). Tea didn’t appear to cause any hassles, although I am aware that technically a cup of tea can have more caffeine than coffee. Problem solved, until a few weeks ago.
With the cold weather (ok so it’s winter in Australia right now) I’ve been having lots of nice warm tea while I work. For a while it was home-mixed chai which used naturally caffeine-low Daintree tee. It ran out, and because creating a new mix means quite a bit of work (including finely chopping and drying ginger) I temporarily shifted to Earl Grey tea, figuring it’d be ok anyway. Well, I was wrong. I was in a bad way for a number of weeks, until I thought of this angle only a few days ago and of course took immediate action. Much better already!
As we grow (older we all work out “manuals” for ourselves, but every once in a while a new pattern comes up that doesn’t quite fit what you’ve learnt to recognise and deal with automatically. We live and learn…