Duration of good and bad feelings
I forgot about this blog already. I have one job. Find one artifact daily, and post about it. But that's okay. Reading sex with a brain injury: on concussion and recovery by annie liontas. I'm really liking it. What I want to share today: In a chapter talking about regret and retrospective regret and prospective retrospective regret and affective forecasting, liontas says "We struggle with what psychologists call affective forecasting. Brett Pelham, professor of psychology at Montgomery College, Maryland, adds, 'Miswanting refers to the fact that people sometimes make mistakes about how much they will like something in the future. That is, people often mispredict the duration of their good and bad feelings'" p 142. I find that interesting, funny, important. I often mispredict the duration of my bad feelings. Or perhaps I am very good at predicting that I will usually feel bad and the duration matches that. I have spikes in time where I feel okay, so it seems wrong to say that I am bad at predicting the duration of my bad feelings. I think I am particularly bad at predicting the cross product between the duration and depth of my bad feelings. By depth I mean both strength/intensity and flavor/texture because those are all things that can change the impact of bad feelings. When I feel bad, I am reminded that I will feel bad again, which worsens my current bad feelings. Perhaps this is Actually where mindfulness would be helpful. Feeling the bad feelings, allowing them to exist without judgement and without future knowledge that they will return. Maybe I can prod the bad feeling and define what it is in texture, taste, depth, intensity, and tell myself that the badness will never feel the same way again, which is a simultaneous comfort and another bad feeling in itself. Maybe I'll try it and report back. Back to reading. Have the kind of day you would like to have!