Why We Spiral

As a person with long experiences in trauma responses, I see this sort of behavior pattern everywhere. There’s so much “trust your gut!!” advice when the gut can be deeply wrong especially when it comes to identifying interpersonal threats. We don’t educate people in how to process their feelings in a healthy manner and to differentiate what they feel is happening and how they should behave. This results in anything like saying someone has “bad vibes” to be a reason to exclude them, to actively covering for someone with a known pattern of harming people simply because they are charming.

I think a big part of maturing professionally is how I’ve gotten a better handle on not trusting my gut.

He’s here to take my job. The VP knows him and hired him directly. There’s so many signals each week that say I’m right. He’s trying to take credit for a decade of my hard work. He’s going to exploit me and everyone will believe him and not me.

The more likely reality: he’s new here and I’ve been here for a decade. He was hired to basically replicate my success for sibling teams. He’s feeling immense pressure. He’s probably terrified of failing. I probably make him feel threatened. My defensive posture makes this worse. I give him signals all the time that he probably reads as me wanting him to fail or not liking him.

> He’s here to take my job. The VP knows him and hired him directly. There’s so many signals each week that say I’m right. He’s trying to take credit for a decade of my hard work. He’s going to exploit me and everyone will believe him and not me.

I think this is where it’s important to know yourself.

If you’re having a constant stream of anxiety inducing thoughts and light paranoia, learning how to silence those and introduce a more objective view is helpful.

It can be taken too far, though. I had a friend whose company was showing all of the warning signs of financial problems, yet he was on a positivity kick and chose to substitute an “everything works out eventually” mentality. Instead, he rode the company right into their inevitable shutdown and missed some good opportunities to take other jobs along the way because he thought ignoring his gut was the right thing to do.

Even then shutting down the anxiety and paranoia is a good idea. You're friend didn't know how to process reality without feeling negative, maybe. But it can be done and they should probably learn how to do that. A calm & confident person can still see if a problem is coming, the real world isn't determined by the feelings of the viewer but by actual evidence present and a very fine sliver of basic world modelling. The difference is a well grounded person will just note it and feel pretty good about the whole process as they brush dust of the resume and start job hunting. Did their best, had a good time, made some friends, exciting new opportunities, etcetera.

Nobody has to be a pessimist to make accurate forecasts. It doesn't even help. The more your emotions and personality influence the forecast the worse a forecast it is, the future does not rewarp itself because the viewer feels positive or negative.