How to not let bad experiences radicalize you and make you bitter?

[UpperMaster]

When you get  abused by some black migrants for the 6th time, how to not become racist?

If your wife cheats on you, how do you not become bitter, and adopt harmful ideologies like redpill and blackpill? 

When you get betrayed by a friend continuously your whole life, how can you continue to trust people?

 

Recently I've been thinking about how people get radicalized, and I don't know how to prevent this happening to me. Someone I know and who I take general life advice (because he is older) from got cheated on with his wife, and now is very bitter (I can feel it). He gives me advice like, "long distance relationships never work, if you leave your woman in another town she WILL cheat on you. That's how it is. Always." with full conviction. Honestly, I can see where he is coming from, I'd be heartbroken from his shoes too.

 

I doubt that this is actually the case. My parents are together, I don't think either of them ever cheated, and they worked through a lot to keep their marriage going. 

The thing is, I don't want to be radicalized like this just because I have a bad experience or something. I am scared I am vulnerable to such radicalization. 

How do I prevent this from happening? It seems to be a very common thing for most people when they get hurt.

 

 

 

Edited 21 hours ago by UpperMaster

[Jacob Morres]

i think it's entirely down to how you respond to hurt. like instead of developing hate or faulty belief systems, using healthy coping mechanisms like mindfulness, processing emotions well, forgiveness exercises, cognitive reframing etc. there's a lot of effective approaches 

Edited 21 hours ago by Jacob Morres

[UpperMaster]

@Jacob Morres thanks for the response.

 

I just spoke to a friend, one thing that might help with this is get an experience that counteracts the bad experience. Likee if you got abused by a black guy, your less likely to be racist cuz u  already have black friends that prove to you that black people are nice. 

 

But that's kind of difficult to do with relationships because to try that out you have to prepare to make yourself vulnerable again. and if your not prepared to be vulnerable, you'll just be toxic and not have a good relationship.

 

Edited 20 hours ago by UpperMaster

[Leo Gura]

That is solved by a commitment to genuine truth-seeking.

If your focus is to get your epistemology right then you will see that:

1) Negative emotions come from the ego's needs, as a form of survival, and do not lead to truthful perception of reality. Just because you are in pain doesn't make your view any more true.

2) Overgeneraliziation from a few anecdotes to entire classes of people is untruthful. The truth is that there is a huge diversity of different people in the world and no simplistic pattern of which of them are good or bad.

It is true however that long-distance relationships will almost always fail. Because if you really cared about the relationship deeply enough you would change the situation to make it short-distance.

Edited 17 hours ago by Leo Gura

[trenton]

I considered racist beliefs like those before in the fifth grade. I was being bullied by a group of black kids for being white and gay. I thought about those racist ideas for about 12 seconds and decided that everybody gets one chance. I later found out that apparently members of the ku klux klan believe this too. This perplexes me because it might be a surface cover for racism meaning I haven't fully undone my deeper initial judgement baser on bad experience.

At the end of the day adopting these kinds of prejudices will only worsen your pain. These toxic believes will make these groups hate you more. Even if you tried being racist for a day you would probably notice that it doesn't actually help you. You would probably make enemies and it would worsen your peace of mind.

Good luck

[Buck Edwards]

I disagree with what Leo said in this thread. Leo is taking the beta approach here, I will take the alpha one. His response claims that negative emotions and overgeneralization lead to untruthful perception of reality. However, negative emotions can sometimes point to very real problems. For example, if someone is feeling angry all the time, it might be a sign that they are being treated unfairly. Additionally, generalizations can sometimes be based on truth. At least partially true. If the same experience repeats, there's a pattern there either in your behavior or in the encounters and you probably need to use that as a context for your future behaviors and fine tune your future behaviors to your survival. For example, the generalization that "most dogs are friendly" is generally true, even though there are some exceptions.

Leo's response also claims that long-distance relationships will almost always fail because if you really cared about the relationship deeply enough you would change the situation to make it short-distance. However, many long-distance relationships do succeed. There are many factors that can contribute to the success of a long-distance relationship, such as good communication, trust, and a commitment to making the relationship work.

While I agree that it's important to be aware of our emotional biases, I don't think it's fair to say that negative emotions never reflect reality. Sometimes, negative emotions are a sign that something is wrong. 

There are lessons to be learned from negative experiences rather than being radicalized by them. You have to find the middle road. Part of the negative experience can make you bitter and you have to avoid becoming bitter but at the same time you shouldn't lose wisdom and you should take the lessons you learned seriously and not allow such experiences to be repeated in your life, the experiences themselves are teaching you how to protect yourself from their outcome in the future. This is the alpha mindset. 

It's great that you're reflecting on these issues and seeking to understand how to avoid negative patterns of thinking. 

Now coming to the OP's main context —

It's completely valid to feel hurt or betrayed after negative experiences. Acknowledging your feelings is the first step in processing them without letting them define your worldview.

Seek understanding, not generalization.  Individual experiences do not represent entire groups of people. Just because you've had negative encounters with certain individuals doesn't mean that everyone from that group will behave the same way. Try to focus on people as individuals rather than making broad generalizations.

1. Learning from these experiences —Instead of allowing negative experiences to breed bitterness, try to extract lessons from them. What can you learn about boundaries, trust, or communication? This can help you grow rather than become resentful. Leo doesn't talk about this very often. 

Here I would state Andrew Tate (although I don't like him at all) but his alpha mindset is sometimes true, though riddled with some epistemic biases. 

Andrew Tate video. I agree with Tate in this clip. 

2. Surrounding yourself with positive Influences. Engage with people who have a balanced and positive outlook on life. This can help counteract negative narratives and provide a more nuanced perspective on relationships and trust.

3. Practice empathy — Understand that everyone has their struggles and experiences that shape their behavior. Practicing empathy can help you maintain a compassionate view of others, even when you've been hurt.

4. Focus on personal growth — invest time in self-improvement and personal development. This can include therapy, reading, or engaging in activities that promote emotional resilience. Building a strong sense of self can help you navigate challenges without becoming bitter.

5. Challenge negative thoughts — When you find yourself thinking in absolutes (e.g., "all relationships end in betrayal"), challenge those thoughts. Look for evidence that contradicts them, such as your own experiences or those of people you respect. Also not everyone is going to have the same experience. 

6. Set healthy boundaries — this is the most important of all. This is exactly what I learned from my own negative experiences and by far this is the exact thing that has helped me the most or I would have landed in a psych ward by now dealing with chaotic situations and unnecessary drama with other people bringing their problems in my life. It's okay to protect yourself from potential harm by setting boundaries in relationships. This doesn't mean you have to close yourself off from others, but rather that you can be discerning about who you let into your life.

7.Stay open-minded — Life is full of diverse experiences. Keeping an open mind can help you appreciate the complexity of human behavior and relationships, reducing the likelihood of falling into radicalized thinking.

By actively working on these areas, you can cultivate a mindset that is resilient and open, allowing you to navigate life's challenges without becoming bitter or radicalized.

Side note — this thread was/is personally important to me. I learned a lot from my bad experiences without being too bitter. Thank you. 

[UpperMaster]

5 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

Now coming to the OP's main context —

It's completely valid to feel hurt or betrayed after negative experiences. Acknowledging your feelings is the first step in processing them without letting them define your worldview.

Seek understanding, not generalization.  Individual experiences do not represent entire groups of people. Just because you've had negative encounters with certain individuals doesn't mean that everyone from that group will behave the same way. Try to focus on people as individuals rather than making broad generalizations.

1. Learning from these experiences —Instead of allowing negative experiences to breed bitterness, try to extract lessons from them. What can you learn about boundaries, trust, or communication? This can help you grow rather than become resentful. Leo doesn't talk about this very often. 

2. Surrounding yourself with positive Influences. Engage with people who have a balanced and positive outlook on life. This can help counteract negative narratives and provide a more nuanced perspective on relationships and trust.

3. Practice empathy — Understand that everyone has their struggles and experiences that shape their behavior. Practicing empathy can help you maintain a compassionate view of others, even when you've been hurt.

4. Focus on personal growth — invest time in self-improvement and personal development. This can include therapy, reading, or engaging in activities that promote emotional resilience. Building a strong sense of self can help you navigate challenges without becoming bitter.

5. Challenge negative thoughts — When you find yourself thinking in absolutes (e.g., "all relationships end in betrayal"), challenge those thoughts. Look for evidence that contradicts them, such as your own experiences or those of people you respect. Also not everyone is going to have the same experience. 

6. Set healthy boundaries — this is the most important of all. This is exactly what I learned from my own negative experiences and by far this is the exact thing that has helped me the most or I would have landed in a psych ward by now dealing with chaotic situations and unnecessary drama with other people bringing their problems in my life. It's okay to protect yourself from potential harm by setting boundaries in relationships. This doesn't mean you have to close yourself off from others, but rather that you can be discerning about who you let into your life.

7.Stay open-minded — Life is full of diverse experiences. Keeping an open mind can help you appreciate the complexity of human behavior and relationships, reducing the likelihood of falling into radicalized thinking. 

This is an amazing list. thank you for the value you are providing. I didn't think of the importance of setting healthy boundaries at all. This is like a preventative step almost. 

 

5 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

 

Side note — this thread was/is personally important to me. I learned a lot from my bad experiences without being too bitter. Thank you. 

I can see by the effort you put on this post. I appreciate it. And thank you!

[UpperMaster]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is solved by a commitment to genuine truth-seeking.

If your focus is to get your epistemology right then you will see that:

1) Negative emotions come from the ego's needs, as a form of survival, and do not lead to truthful perception of reality. Just because you are in pain doesn't make your view any more true.

2) Overgeneraliziation from a few anecdotes to entire classes of people is untruthful. The truth is that there is a huge diversity of different people in the world and no simplistic pattern of which of them are good or bad.

It is true however that long-distance relationships will almost always fail. Because if you really cared about the relationship deeply enough you would change the situation to make it short-distance.

 

Thank you for the reply. So from what you said, intention for finding truth is the main weapon against radicalization. So there's no easy way, you have to feel the cuts of betrayal and still try to find truth. 

 

About the long distance thing: Yea I can see what you are saying.

I miswrote slightly my message, this person who I was talking about wasn't saying like long distance relationship, he meant that you'll get cheated on if you have to travel for two months for work or something. That's why I thought it was a bit excessive. 

[UpperMaster]

@trenton thanks for response! Cool how you had experience with this and found that radicalization actually doesn't help you. I think it's a bit more difficult when a close friend betrays you but I get it.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It is true however that long-distance relationships will almost always fail. Because if you really cared about the relationship deeply enough you would change the situation to make it short-distance.

It's not that it's impossible to mantain these types of relationships for a certain ammount of time (not unlimited tho), it's that having them is pretty lame, uninteresting and inferior to a normal short distance relationships. It's also pretty unnatural, only really made theoretically possible due to technological progress. Therefore it's completely logical for them to break up due to their inner lame nature

[NoSelfSelf]

100% accountability for your actions/reactions...

[UpperMaster]

@NoSelfSelf I disagree with this. Or maybe I just din't understand this part of Leo's teaching. But 100% accountability can be dangerous. 

I had some traumatic experiences as a child, and for the longest time, I blamed myself for the experiences I went through. I told myself that I was responsible, that I shouldn't have associated with the people I did, that I should have enforced boundaries. This self blame just caused me infinite pain.

In the end what helped me was recognizing that I was the victim in that circumstance, I was a child, I couldn't possibly know any better. If it was a younger child going through the same thing I wouldn't hold him responsible that's retarded, he's a kid he cant know better. I was a victim, and admitting that brought peace. 

And saying "you shouldn't blame yourself but you should take responsibility" seems to me to be just word games. Blaming someone is holding someone accountable for a result. It's the same shit. 

When someone betrays your trust, blaming yourself for it seems to be even more counterproductive. 

Edited 3 hours ago by UpperMaster

[Sugarcoat]

The fact you’re aware of your own process of potentially radicalizing and show fear around it is for me something that is going to lower the risk for you to become radicalized. So that’s a good thing. One tips I could give is to practice “zooming out” so looking at the world from a bigger more global perspective. Zooming out and thus seeing how what occurred to you is within a minority. Yes there are women who cheat but are they the majority? Yes there are black people that attack but are they the majority? And trying to have an objective view . What factors could have potentially led to those events? Maybe more black people are under poor socioeconomic circumstances due to history so the risk of criminality is higher? And being mindful of the content one consumes that can shape one’s world view. And also not dismissing one’s feeling, it is natural to sometimes feel a little prejudice towards certain groups because of things that have happened. To not suppress those feelings because that could potentially cause more trouble for oneself. But to acknowledge it as a natural reaction but then placing it into a more “zoomed out” and larger perspective again. 

[NoSelfSelf]

55 minutes ago, UpperMaster said:

@NoSelfSelf I disagree with this. Or maybe I just din't understand this part of Leo's teaching. But 100% accountability can be dangerous. 

I had some traumatic experiences as a child, and for the longest time, I blamed myself for the experiences I went through. I told myself that I was responsible, that I shouldn't have associated with the people I did, that I should have enforced boundaries. This self blame just caused me infinite pain.

In the end what helped me was recognizing that I was the victim in that circumstance, I was a child, I couldn't possibly know any better. If it was a younger child going through the same thing I wouldn't hold him responsible that's retarded, he's a kid he cant know better. I was a victim, and admitting that brought peace. 

And saying "you shouldn't blame yourself but you should take responsibility" seems to me to be just word games. Blaming someone is holding someone accountable for a result. It's the same shit. 

When someone betrays your trust, blaming yourself for it seems to be even more counterproductive. 

Thats different scenario, im talking to an adult right now, so you as an adult should see that its on you for creating everything in your life.Even if you blame yourself you created it and should take note and own your experience.If you are traumatized,mentally ill thats another thing...

[UnbornTao]

You assume the only option here is being at the effect of circumstances, whereas in actuality you are the one responsible for your thinking and actions. You yourself get radicalized and bitter; external events might contribute or trigger certain reactions within you but they can't do it for you.

Edited 6 minutes ago by UnbornTao

[Leo Gura]

56 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

You yourself get radicalized and bitter; external events don't do it for you.

Too reductionistic. If you were tortured, abused, raped, bullied, robbed, or had chronic illness you would get bitter.

You're not some mind in a vat disconnected from environment and circumstance.

Edited 1 hour ago by Leo Gura

[Ishanga]

@UpperMaster Focus and Identify with Now, and not past/memory..

If You suffering past/memory in any way, bitter, guilt, depression, it means Your too identified with it, and past/memory does not even exist, only NOW exists, so our culture is controlled by something that does not even exist, so its a sickness of sorts within the Culture, via identification with it.

Just start little by little, notice simple acts of breathing, simple cores Your doing Now, simple experiences that happen within the NOW, then let it grow, to the point where You Realize all there is is NOW, that takes time and striving.. Acceptance of What is helps in this manner too...

 

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Too reductionistic. If you were tortured, abused, raped, bullied, robbed, or had chronic illness you would get bitter.

You're not some mind in a vat disconnected from environment and circumstance.

And yet, it doesn't change the principle that, in the end, it is you who does it -- you just might have had some help in one way or another. To be clear, this isn't about blaming oneself, or another, for that matter. It's just recognizing oneself as the one in the driver's seat. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not doesn't change that it is true and has always been.

Regardless of the occasional validity of feeling victimized, you can do things. Speaking of hypotheticals, you can not get robbed, abused, etc. You can take action to prevent that. Even if it occurs, you can trace back the actions that you took preceding the event that led to that "unfortunate" end. Again, this isn't about self-blame, just noticing your role in the play. 

It's not: "I'm bitter because I was bullied." Rather, it's more like: "This is the relationship I've unconsciously adopted towards a past factual event remembered by me as X or Y (not the facts that were involved but what's subjectively added by you)." Even then, notice that two people may interpret the same event in entirely different ways, leading to different views, reactions, and so on.

I suspect that this viewpoint still stems from a mindset of "the world does it to me, and I'm just a passive observer." As if. 

Here's a fun experiment: What if you took a minor painful experience from the past, such as stubbing your toe on a piece of furniture, and turned that into a relationship where, from then on, you approached every piece of furniture with a bitter, angry, defensive attitude?

Edited 45 minutes ago by UnbornTao

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

doesn't change the principle that it is you who does it in the end

In the end you ain't doing shit. God runs you. And if God deems you to be bitter you will be bitter over a glass of spilled milk.

[integral]

20 hours ago, UpperMaster said:

When you get  abused by some black migrants for the 6th time, how to not become racist?

If your wife cheats on you, how do you not become bitter, and adopt harmful ideologies like redpill and blackpill? 

When you get betrayed by a friend continuously your whole life, how can you continue to trust people?

People that fall into these traps have already lived their whole life very unserious and uninterested about making sense of anything in a deep way. They do not care or have any habits built to deeply understand something. (excluding Jordan Peterson)

If you want this not to happen you need to build habits and motivation for trying to understand everything about the world around you as deeply as you can. It's also called intellectual integrity.

Eventually you'll build enough defense against your own self-bullshit.

Edited 1 hour ago by integral