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so: 1) if you move the stuck emotional energy behind a crush it changes flavor. gets less frantic, dissipates, or deepens 2) very clear example of how a potentially "negative" experience that you're supposed to enjoy can be made enjoyable *by that expectation*
consider by contrast a hypothetical society in which crushes were regarded as a kind of mental illness. "someone help, i am plagued with unwholesome thoughts about this woman, they will not leave me be"; there's an initial experience and then a lot of *secondary* suffering
this is part of a broader point i'd like to make in a lot more detail in its own thread, but: basically i think this kind of secondary suffering is happening whenever we use "mental illness" as a concept, with its associated baggage of medicalization and pathologization
i keep trying to write about this and it keeps not quite being fully cooked, but just like... something wild happens when you use an ontology that was designed for the needs of a *bureaucracy* in order to *understand and explain yourself to yourself and others*
the story you tell about yourself is *important* and it *changes how you feel*; depathologizing a "mental illness," really, actually (as in not only you but the people around you are not regarding it as something bad or wrong) could shift a large fraction of the symptoms
depathologizing is v related to this point about accepting whatever is arising as a key component of emotional care; pathologizing is a strong form of rejection https://t.co/tOIzaXHyXi
depathologizing also comes up in this post from richard schwartz, the IFS guy, about depathologizing borderline: https://t.co/lD8VnCWJCn
richard schwartz, the IFS guy, has this lovely (and very poorly formatted) article about working with borderline clients, where he describes making things worse by *hardening his heart* against them; he had to reopen his heart to make progress https://t.co/TfbaYIRXrT https://t.co/SkvmPu92al
@QiaochuYuan FWIW a friend of mine* once had a celebrity crush that he experienced this way. I think it's easy to pathologise crushes even in non hypothetical societies if they feel out of your control or excessive * Not code for "me" an actual crush
@ssica3003 @QiaochuYuan Hmm I don't think this is true. Misattribution of arousal can get you a long way, and it definitely sometimes works to reframe anxiety as excitement, but positive vs negative valence really is a thing.
@DRMacIver @QiaochuYuan So yep, I would count the context of this specific tweet from QC as a “useful to do so” context. I used eternal language here (“x is y”) which is not technically always correct BUT we know that and your replies here being picky over precise definitions feels draining & unhelpful
@ssica3003 @QiaochuYuan I'm sorry this came across as unhelpful. I think your characterisation of my response is significantly worse TBH, and I don't think you get where I'm coming from, but this doesn't seem like a conversation it would be useful to continue via tweet.
@QiaochuYuan my frame: a crush is a micro-version of celebrity idolatry in practice, the fan typically *needs* and *wants* that sense of distance between themselves and their idol. closing that distance would disillusion them. they like the illusion enjoy your illusions responsibly