[praveenperera]

Sounds like you’re agreeing with Epictetus

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters”

In your case the cockroach didn’t change, you found a different way to frame the cockroach. In turn you react to it differently.

[steve_adams_86]

I agree with Epictetus purely because I can’t change what happened to me, but I can make decisions about how to respond to what happened.

I originally had a hard time with this idea because people have used this “your response is your responsibility” excuse when being unkind to me, but the thing is, this mode of thinking doesn’t mean no one can hurt you and no one should be accountable for being unkind. It just means at the end of the day, you won’t benefit from dwelling on it and practicing seeking solutions instead is purely beneficial.

Once I separated the idea from the strict context of responses to what people did to me but anything the world could throw at me, be it bad weather or getting a great sleep or being given a gift or tripping myself down stairs, I realized it’s quite easy to apply and think about. It made a lot more sense without the loaded emotional, interpersonal context overlaid.

I figured I’d externalize this in case it helps anyone else, not trying to over-explain simple concepts to people :)

[cjohnson318]

This struck a chord with me. As a baseline, I irrationally feel like people can't stand me, but when I get pissed about something fall into what can only be described as resentment-spiral. The prospect of making up and moving on doesn't outweigh the resentment, and I just spiral down more.

Rationally I understand that me feeling bad and being resentful only has a negative effect on the situation and other people, but it's hard to break out of the spiral.

TL;DR What you wrote helped me out. Thanks.

[steve_adams_86]

> it's hard to break out of the spiral

Don't ever doubt that, it's incredibly hard. But it's something that deserves the hard work it takes to get out of it, I think. I've been realizing a lot of these kinds of challenges in life demand a lot from us, and it can be so daunting, but the reward of taking on that challenge is really immense. Imagine learning to get out of the spiral early - that one day you can just say no and focus on better things. You absolutely could, I bet.

> What you wrote helped me out. Thanks.

Thanks for saying so, that really makes my day.

I've had a similar experience and something that caught me by surprise was this technique called fear setting. I thought it was the cheesiest nonsense ever, but through some turn of events I ended up trying it. I applied it to a problem like what you're describing one day and ended up just writing, in the plainest, simplest, most honest terms why I fell into so much resentment. I'm sure it's different for both of us, but the experience was a revelation. Not all negative emotions are driven by fear, but the resentment certainly was in my case. So I wrote out why, what it does to me, what I can do to address that.

The key discovery was a sort of nested fear. It was like the immediate issue wasn't the real fear, or the thing driving my resentment. This should have been obvious I guess, because the superficial problems never justified the amount of resentment. No, ultimately I was afraid of addressing the superficial problem; the broad implications, the confrontation, the unknowns. I kept those tucked away so well and used that resentment to distract and convince myself that the REAL problem was the superficial once. It was really bizarre to realize that once I stopped to dig, the real fear and discomfort was right under the surface all along. Out of sight and out of mind, I guess.

Writing it out felt really stupid the first time. Like, I must know all of this already - why do I need to write it down? It's sort of like rubber ducking a problem though. You put it out there in plain sight and just go "OH... Oh.", and there it is. Now what do you do with it?

Tim Ferris talks a lot about fear setting. I don't know much about him, but he makes some sense on this topic. https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/

[mqrs]

I haven’t read Epictetus and I can’t tell exactly what he meant by that proverb, but the nuance that I can only react to cockroaches differently under conditions perfect to me must not be lost. That nuance is what’s lacking in the article and his judgmental explanation for the causality of the women's reactions.