How to Be Nicer

Today’s letter writer, “Trying to Be Nicer” asks Lori Gottlieb for help in overcoming a bad habit. Already, it’s a step in the right direction. 

Thinking of mental health problems in terms of habits is far more constructive then thinking of them as expressions of unresolved mental conflicts. Many people have wasted a great deal of time trying to figure out what their bad habits are trying to say. They have forgotten the basic lesson, derived from Aristotle, that habits are not really saying anything. Or better, that knowing what they are trying to express will do nothing to change them. Got that: nothing!

TTBN explains her problem:

I’m a 23-year-old woman with some bad habits that I need to learn how to undo. I am critical, demanding, judgmental, and eager to correct people on technicalities. I have a hard time being proved wrong or considering alternate viewpoints. I’m emotionally withholding, cold, distant, and don’t open up. I’m rigid and have a hard time changing plans. I’m jabby. I was the kid who corrected the teacher and said, “Well, ACTUALLY …” constantly.

Everyone I’ve dated and many of my friends have told me this. I do it the most to people I’m closest with, but I’ve done it to tons of people in my life.

Stuff pops out of her mouth. It’s almost an automatic mechanism. But it is interesting as a reflection on a major philosophical issue: do we think before we speak or does stuff just pop out of our mouths? Does a mental act precede the physical act? If the first is true, then we are going to end up fighting our inner demons and struggling with our speech. If the latter, it is far more difficult to step back and reflect. My own view, following Wittgenstein and TTBN, is that stuff pops out of our mouths.

In her words:

I’ll say something and then immediately realize how awful it sounded. That’s growth, because in the past I wouldn’t have realized how hurtful it was … yet realizing isn’t the same as changing, and I still said it.

It is not surprising that TTBN suffers from social anxiety and has difficulty connecting with other people.

It’s odd because I also have social anxiety and often feel lonely. Going off of that, you’d think I’d be kinder to the people I do have in my life, and yet somehow, I’m not.

I want to be kind and warm with the people I love. And I want it to come from an intuitive, relaxed place. I don’t know how to get there from here.

Gottlieb’s first response is on point and on the money. She explains that insight is basically useless:

As I read through your letter, TTBN, one of my favorite maxims came to mind: “Insight is the booby prize of therapy.” Meaning, you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don’t change out in the world, the insight is worthless. This seems to be the crux of your dilemma, too: I know what I do, but I keep doing it anyway.

One would have been even happier if Gottlieb had not tried to explain why TTBN has the problem. That is, offering up several dollops of insight. We, however, understand that concocting a narrative that explains it in terms of childhood traumas or developmental glitches will not solve the problem.

Like most therapists, Gottlieb offers some insight into the problem. It’s a bad habit that many therapists have. They think that there is some value in asking why this happens. There is not. Actually, it lures patients into thinking that once they understand why they have the problem it will dissipate. When it does not, they become demoralized. Not a good therapeutic result.

To her credit Gottlieb also offers some ideas about how to change habits. They come from Marsha Linehan, a much admired therapist from Washington who developed a highly useful cognitive approach to borderline personality disorders.

Gottlieb explains:

So now that you have the “what” and the “why” — the insight — how do you move forward? You practice. From birth, our brains are making connections, forming circuits that function automatically in response to triggers and are activated by our fears. When your brain gets the signal that somebody might come close to you — even if that person is a virtual stranger — the circuit that gets activated makes you create distance through the various behaviors you describe.

But you can disrupt the circuit, first by noticing the behaviors afterward (as you’ve begun doing), then by noticing as they happen (taking a breath in that pause of recognition will interrupt the circuit). At first, you may still say or do what the circuit has long been programmed for, but every time you interrupt the circuit you start to rewire your brain. It happens gradually, like a painstaking internal renovation. And when the rewiring is complete, you won’t have to consciously go through this process.

The circuit will travel along a different pathway, one that doesn’t signal danger. What feels foreign to you now will eventually feel natural. And you’ll invite people in from, as you say, “an intuitive, relaxed place.”

I have no problem with this. If it works, all the better. Since it aims at changing a bad habit, it is clearly pointing in the right direction.

And yet, as Aristotle pointed out, the only real way to overcome a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. If TTBN wants to be nicer to people, she might consider being nicer to people.

She can follow the recommendations of Jennifer Trew and Lynn Alden, research psychologists in British Columbia, and make a habit doing good deeds, making nice gestures toward other people. This means, getting a cup of coffee for an office mate. Sending a link to an article that might be of interest. Helping someone carry a heavy bag of groceries. Trew and Alden want you to think in terms of small courtesies, the kind that reprogram the brain to think of what you can do that is nice for someone else. It is more effective than tormenting yourself over the rude and obnoxious remarks you made.

Trew and Alden showed that this habit countered social anxiety, perhaps because it made other people less threatening and perhaps because they were more likely to reciprocate. Also, you find yourself thinking and planning before you act... when you have the luxury of doing so.

Besides, even if this method is not a panacea for social anxiety, what harm could you do to start thinking of ways you can reach out and be nice to someone?