There is another way to look at the issue I have with not having the right box in my brain when it comes to quality of regard from other people.
I got my master’s in science and that involved working with a lot of statistics, especially on my thesis project. I’m thinking about this box issue in more statistical terms right now.
Suppose you are someone I have some kind of attachment to, which for the purposes of this essay simply means I care what you think of me, and you and I have had one hundred interactions.
Ninety-nine of these interactions have been positive and you’ve let me know either directly or indirectly that you hold positive regard for me, and one of those interactions was a conflict we had in which you felt the need to tell me about something I was doing that was either wrong or simply bothered you. Let’s pretend that interaction was a bit messy and didn’t go super well.
So… ninety-nine positive interactions and one negative interaction.
My scientific cognitive mind would tell me in analyzing the “data” that the ninety-nine positive interactions represent what is truly going on in our relationship and that the one negative interaction would be an outlier. Most things involving real life are going to have outlier data points. Depending on the situation sometimes we reject the outliers outright and other times we acknowledge them but don’t let them sway the trend the rest of the data is showing.
But I have an issue with the box in my brain, so emotionally my brain analyzes the data differently, and in a decidedly nonscientific way.
My brain spits out an analysis in which the one negative interaction represents the truth, while the ninety-nine other data points are the outliers! That’s my box problem right there. As long as there is even one negative interaction, it doesn’t really matter how many positive interactions there are. They’re all outliers.
From the moment that negative interaction took place, my Crusader part is activated and is always looking for ways to prove myself, explain myself, make you understand that really, despite that negative interaction I’m still a very good person, one you should continue to think highly of, one you should continue to love, one you should definitely not abandon.
I think the problems that come from this faulty analysis are obvious. If you’ve largely forgotten about the negative interaction you might be wondering why I suddenly seem to have an axe to grind with you. To date, I haven’t exactly clearly communicated my intentions when it comes to these attempts to vindicate myself! In general, I can see this fueling an impression of me as being too intense, annoyingly so. All I’m trying to do is make sure you know I’m really an OK person. But you may be feeling criticized and possibly even manipulated. This might among other things result in future negative interactions, which then further reinforce my contribution to this dynamic and likely yours as well.
But there’s another interesting problem, and that has to do with the fact that in my twisted box analysis, one data point concerning a negative interaction is as good as twenty-five or fifty or a thousand. After all, that negative reaction represents the “truth” and it’s not like truth needs a ton of repetition, or really any.
So let’s say you and I still have ninety-nine positive interactions and one negative interaction. And then I have this other “friend” where we’ve had twenty positive interactions and eighty negative interactions. That relationship might simply not be a good fit, or it might be downright toxic. Either way, the problem is that in my box analysis, those eighty negative interactions carry the same weight as the one negative interaction you and I had. This means that I’m trying just as hard in both cases to vindicate myself in the other person’s eyes.
But in both cases seeking to vindicate myself is the wrong thing to do. In the case with you and me, it’s totally unnecessary and likely destructive to our relationship. In the case with this other “friend,” it’s likely futile. We’re just not going to get along, and maybe that “friend” is truly toxic and in that case there’s no justifying or vindicating myself. In either case, Crusader’s efforts are not warranted.
But the instructions come from somewhere. It’s from the box that views negative regard as the truth and has no place to file positive regard. It spits out faulty data most of the time, and even when the data is accurate (in the sense of yes, that other person indeed has a low opinion of me), I still can’t tell the difference between the accurate analysis and the faulty one, so it’s not exactly useful.
That’s another way of describing my box situation.
I really, really do need a better box, and am looking forward to getting that upgrade very soon.