🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (16 tweets)
"all striving is motivated by fear" lots of people, when asked, reveal that they're awesome at XYZ because they simply AREN'T OKAY with not being awesome at it counter take: plz give me your best examples of striving/mastery that wasn't grounded in fear/trauma
@natural_hazard depends on what you mean by “grounded”- a lot of things that I’m confident and good at can be traced back to having some sort of traumatic origin or catalyst, but the trauma is often no longer a part of it (ie post-traumatic growth)
@natural_hazard @visakanv @Malcolm_Ocean @GeniesLoki @edelwax @mattgoldenberg @QiaochuYuan I think the base rates of trauma + trauma makes you optimizer, natural mode satisficier make it so most mastery will be trauma induced. The other kind of masters will be play-induced.
@nosilverv @natural_hazard @visakanv @Malcolm_Ocean @edelwax @mattgoldenberg @QiaochuYuan I guess the other consideration is what counts as "trauma induced". There's "things that you got good at because trauma made you" and "things you got good at to stop being traumatised" and these aren't really the same
@GeniesLoki @natural_hazard @visakanv @Malcolm_Ocean @edelwax @mattgoldenberg @QiaochuYuan Agreed! But there is a 'i will be the best in the world at [random skill x] so help me god and i will burn everything in the way of that' that i think is a frequent compensatory response
@natural_hazard @visakanv @Malcolm_Ocean @GeniesLoki @edelwax @mattgoldenberg @QiaochuYuan all im doing: https://t.co/fA0IUP8zSo
@natural_hazard my skill at math comes entirely from me enjoying math and natural talent i have never been afraid of being bad at it, never had any difficulty i just did a bunch of math puzzles in my spare time and got gud at stats because i liked pokemon
@natural_hazard Hmm. Getting good at sex has been almost entirely because it's fun and good. Any trauma involved has been detrimental rather than a driver. Plenty of things I got good at because of annoyance, or just interest, but feels like there might be an underlying trauma there.
@natural_hazard I guess cooking and cocktail making are other pure examples where I got pretty good at them out if a straightforward desire to. In both cases though I've stopped well short of mastery because I decided that was good enough.
@natural_hazard I think in lots of cases it's a both/and. Idk if I can think of any of my own strivings that don't have at least a little fear/trauma involved, but in some cases it's pretty minimal. Eg my relationship to music for instance. Mostly there I'm motivated by meaning, ecstasy & play