Internal Conflict and Non-Coercion Resources
Parts work, integration, being undivided, dealing with internal conflict, self-compassion, self-love, shadow work, self-coercion, others-coercion, wu-wei, non-doing, non-dual awareness, having fun for shits and giggles, we've got it all!
This page is a list of the most useful resources I've interacted with on these topics, organized in no particular order. Shout out to all the people who have put writing out in public that's helped me on my journey ❤️.
If you found this page, it's likely I know you personally. Reminder that I love you, I'm hyped for how amazing your life can be, and if anything on this page even slightly helps you figure things out, I'll be ecstatic :)
General
@askyatharth great mega-thread describing self-coercion
@askyatharth great mega-thread on self-love and how it relates to all this
@natural_hazard exploring the physical analog of "having a light touch"
@mattgoldenberg thread on Non-Coercive Habit building
@xuenay thread on "why might emotions and feelings be stored in muscle tension?"
@mattgoldenberg thread how oscillations and hype-cycles of productivity systems straightforwardly fall out of certain orientations to making yourself do things.
@daemonhugger thread of threads on therapy and emotional work in general, not just non-coercion stuff
@malcolm_ocean thread on lessons learned from hunting for blindspots
@nosilverv shouting at you
A whole playlist of videos from @visakanv talking about this
Unlearning Coercion - Playlist
@natural_hazard what sort of thing is self-trust, what light does that shed on what gaslighting is?
@reasonisfun thread exploring how what "feels right" isn't always what you need, and how that squares with the idea of non-coercion.
@visakanv on leaning into his ADHD and not trying to force himself, and channeling the energy into something that still serves him (several great sub-threads).
@reasonisfun on self-love, how authority is anti-reason, and the insidiousness of needing to "justify" yourself
@natural_hazard collection of thoughts on The Inner Game of Tennis
@s_r_constantin Excruciating detail into what is actually happening in minds when they use a "should", and the impossible paradox at the heart of certain sorts of shoulds that inevitably leads to suffering.
@m_ashcroft on the origins of the Alexander Technique and how it's all about non-doing
@m_ashcroft on Doing and Non-doing
Errors vs Bugs and the end of stupidity is an amazing post that explores the difference between seeing humans as black boxes that stochastically "fail" and need to be shaken until they work again, vs seeing all "mistakes" as having a logic behind them which needs to be understood to have any hope of change.
Malcolm Ocean has several posts on these topics:
Transcending Regrets, Problems, and Mistakes, on the subtle and sticky ways very reasonable sounding ways of thinking about "mistakes" aren't grounded in reality.
Building self-trust with self-referential motivation, on the mechanics of building self-trust, rooted in tapping into the fact that having a working motivational system feels good and internal conflict feels bad.
Towards being purpose driven without fighting myself, as advertised :)
@xuenay on how keeping yourself miserable is a strategic end of coercion (start at top)
Integration Focused Therapy Models
@mattgoldenberg thread overview of Memory Reconsolidation
A longer series of posts by Matt about the ins and outs of Memory Reconsolidation.
A book review by Kaj Sotala of "Unlocking the Emotional Brain", a book about Coherence Therapy.
The Curse of the Counterfactual, a post by pjeby about how we
The Bio-Emotive framework is aimed at emotional processing and integrating one's feelings. Here's an introduction video to it by Doug Tataryn on the Stoa.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a well-known parts work therapy model. Here's a brief outline of the model, and here's Kaj Sotala describing how such a therapy works into is broader understanding of the mind.
Internal Double Crux is inspired by Internal Family Systems, and is less a whole therapy framework and more a technique to be tried when running into internal conflict.
David McIver has a post on how sometimes what IFS calls "exiles" might be better thought of as "prisoners".
Not really a therapy model, but the phrase "shadow work" gets at the whole menagerie of investigating the parts of yourself that you hate, are shamed of, dislike, reject, and ignore, with the aim of coming to terms with them and realizing "it's all just you". David MacIver has a post, The Inner Game of Celeste, and a really long thread full of pointed questions that will poke you into learning things about your shadow.
Malcolm Ocean has been assembling his own frame for dealing with internal and external conflict called the Non Naive Trust Dance (NNTD) or Internal Trust Dance depending on which you're dealing with. This post is the basic pitch and this post draws out the logic of the name more.
Non-coercion in the Wild
@xuenay on reading books completely
Malcolm Ocean has posted two transcripts of sessions where he worked with a client using his Internal Trust Dance frame
Internal Trust Dancing case study: scheduling and cancelling dates
Internal Trust Dancing case study: EA & relaxation
@natural_hazard reflection on a year of going full tilt at non-coercion, what I gained, what I missed, what's the next thing to try.
@natural_hazard figuring out how to relate to discipline and strength in light of I've used them to hurt myself in the past.
@theorangealt has a great blog freedom.brick.do chronicling his explorations in being free and doing what he wants. Some highlights are "The best self-improvement trick so far: a giant board", a specific technique he came up with for making his life better which, critically, involved not forcing the doing of tasks (now he's working on a webapp that captures some of this structure).
Koans
@malcolm_ocean
@malcolm_ocean
@natural_hazard
@natural_hazard
School/Parenting
@madeincosmos thread on implicit lessons taught in school
Vivek Patel has a youtube channel where he talks about his radical approach to parenting. I found it through a thread @reasonisfun made about some her fav videos of his.
@askyatharth great exploration of how trying to teach something through yelling or forcefully emphasizing, or general "stern seriousness" makes the teacher a more immediate problem to the student then the actual lesson
Edges of Non-coercion
before then [bio emotive, Coherence] I was functionally trapped in something structurally analogous to "coerce yourself into doing non-coercion", even though the group was aware of that trap. a more precise description of the structure of how it was showing up for me was that I was trying to do the non-coercive mindset (what we called "collaborative mindset") instead of the coercive one, but with an attitude of distrust of whatever in me was generating coercions, judgments, blames, shames, etc...... instead of an attitude of welcoming.
— @Malcolm_Ocean
@chanamessinger asking twitter "where's the bounds of this idea?"
@mattgoldenberg on "who is this actually a good idea for?"
@malcolm_ocean reminder to honor your distrust
@diviacaroline on the murkiness you find when trying to grasp the boundaries of "coercion"
@amelapay Pushing back on people going "oh fuck I need to not self-coerce!"
Convo about how addiction does or doesn't fit into all this
Assorted Books
- The Tao Is Silent: frustrating and insightful book on the Taoist perspective on all this
- The Inner Game of Tennis: exploring of non-doing and non-coercion in the very concrete realm of tennis.
- Po: Beyond Yes and No: escaping yes/no dichotomies, jumping out of the frame.
- Knots: book of poems that outline the destructive paradoxical nature of some of the interpersonal knots we tie ourselves into.
- Unlocking the Emotional Brain: the book on [[Coherence Therapy]]
- The Fear Book: amazing little book exploring the dynamics of fear, taking a very compassionate hard-line stance on the ways that fear is not serving you and how fear seeks to preserve itself.
- The Book of Five Rings: book by a long dead master swordsman, an oblique view into 'the way' via the martial arts.
- Focusing: book on Eugene Gendlin's Focusing technique for investigating and exploring your feelings via paying attention to felt senses in your body.