Nexus State Theory

The key to understanding this book is alexithymia. Wikipedia says:

“Alexithymia, also called emotional blindness, is a neuropsychological phenomenon characterized by significant challenges in recognizing, sourcing, and describing one’s emotions. It is associated with difficulties in attachment and interpersonal relations.

I suspect I have alexithymia to a degree, although I have not been diagnosed. It’s an extremely tricky thing to guess about myself. Here are a few examples of events that have made me think this:

1. I took an online test for alexithymia and received a fairly high score on it.

2. I have trouble describing emotions. Recently, for instance, I was in a situation where I had a negative feeling – but I couldn’t pin down which negative feeling. Sadness? Guilt? Disappointment? I could identify some sensations related to the emotion, but couldn’t describe them. Were they blue? Spiky? Cold? No words came to mind.

2. The Animi app on my phone helps me to identify my emotions. It shows a grid of different emotions to choose from, depending on whether I am feeling good or bad, energized or de-energized. These two axes are called valence (good-bad) and arousal (energized-de-energized). For example, excitement is good + energized, fear is bad + energized, contentment is good + de-energized, and sadness is bad + de-energized.

When I pick from the grid, it’s often challenging for me to name the right emotion. I can say whether I feel good or bad, energized or de-energized, but even with the grid naming the possible emotions to choose from, going beyond that can be hard. Again, is my somewhat negative feeling coming from disappointment, regret, or sadness? I can try to figure it out from context (what just happened to me? What kind of emotion do people feel when that happens?) but I don’t necessarily know intuitively.

3. When reading about psychology, it is easier for me to read about “logical” accounts than emotional accounts. So in William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, the description is highly emotional. In contrast, in books by, say, Joseph Henrich, the descriptions of psychology are more rational or logical, using words like “individualistic,” “analytic thinking,” and “holistic thinking.” It is much easier for me to read the logical-style psychology descriptions than the emotional-style psychology.

4. An emotion is, for me, intertwined with a thought. So if I am angry at someone because I feel attacked, it might be hard for me to say “I feel angry.” It’s easier to say “I feel attacked” and easiest to say “I feel like you’re attacking me.” But the last example just amounts to saying “I think you’re attacking me” and is not precisely an emotion. When these things are conflated, it can be hard to realize that the person might not actually be attacking me.

5. Sometimes, when there’s a significant challenge in my life, I have negative valence emotions; but I don’t automatically know that the challenge is the source of the emotions. I might think that the emotions are caused by a more minor, proximate problem. But actually, I think, it is due to the deeper problem.

6. When describing complex emotions, I might use simpler words, together with a thought. Thus, when I recently had to describe the word “demoralized” I said “it means they are sad, and thinking they won’t succeed.” Whereas others came up with “feeling” words like “beaten down.”

I still have emotions! Sometimes, I may not realize I was having the emotion until afterwards, or until someone points it out; but I do feel something. Some emotions may be easy to detect and name while others are not. Sometimes I know for sure that I have a specific emotion – other times I merely deduce it.

I am fully aware that I can be angry, sad, happy, anxious, and so on. And yet, some detective work suggests that I do not recognize these things in the same way that others do.

It is a little like being red-green color blind: one may retain some ability to distinguish the two colors, but it’s harder.

I will not often refer to alexithymia in the book, because I think I tend to overuse labels and categories. I do not want to imply that these ideas apply only to alexithymics. However, my sense is that it would help some non-alexithymic people, who have never experienced the condition, to understand the book if it is mentioned explicitly here.

When I say “I might do X because Y,” I am generally making a hypothesis or guess. I may not know myself well enough to know if I do X because Y, but I say it because it seems plausible.

The Glossary

Here are some of the terms in this book, and how they relate to alexithymia. If the terms don’t make sense out of context, the reader could return back to this glossary after reading the other sections of the book.

Value: a value is usually a person, group, or idea that is important to a person. Values must feel positive to the person who holds them and must help – or at least not harm – the person and others.

On the Animi app, emotions are characterized in terms of valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low). It may be easier for me to know that I “value” something with positive valence, high arousal (or any other combination) as opposed to getting more nuance about the exact nature of the emotion. That is, “positive + high arousal” is easier to say than “excited.”

It’s clear that we have emotions for people – such as love or care. Can we have emotions about abstract values, such as truth or compassion? I’d argue that we can, and that having emotions about (let’s say) compassion is central to what makes compassion a value. Values, like people, can be objects of emotion; one can love truth or desire justice.

Hard value: this is a value that feels positive valence and high arousal. It’s a positive experience and makes us feel energized. Examples of emotions like this include excitement, joy, enthusiasm, and pride. To me, justice and loyalty feel like hard values. Fear is hard, too, but is not a “value” by my definition.

Soft value: this is a value that feels positive and low arousal. It’s a positive experience but does not carry as much energy. Examples of emotions like this include contentment, relaxation, peacefulness, and satisfaction. To me, compassion and tolerance feel like soft values.

Nexus state: “a state in which values coexist in a dynamic balance.”

It’s harder to balance values if one doesn’t easily feel the subtleties in the emotions. Thus, imagine that compassion feels absolutely positive, yet others perceive the same compassionate act negatively. Perhaps you are giving them assistance, but they feel that the assistance is clumsy or patronizing. Then it’s important to perceive that slight, negative emotional pull even when you are trying to be compassionate. Otherwise, it can be extremely difficult to balance different values.

The Universal Map: the infinite set of all possible values.

The universal map reminds us that we cannot assume others experience value in the way we do. Just because I like Star Wars doesn’t mean that someone else does. If we can’t directly feel others’ emotions, it’s tempting to logically infer their values based on ours. We must remind ourselves that we cannot do it – values are infinitely different. It may be important to rely on empathy, even when it’s hard, rather than leaning solely on logical analysis.

Universal helpfulness: the illusion that some particular pattern of behavior is always helpful.

If we cannot easily detect others’ emotions, then we are tempted to fixate on particular patterns that we think “always help.” For example, we might think that smiling or complimenting others will always lead to more connection. But there is no pattern that always helps; it’s important to cultivate empathy, and to question our assumptions about the patterns that always help.

Conditional helpfulness: This means recognizing that a given pattern is not universally helpful.

Mu-helpfulness: This is valuing our own positive valence, even when we cannot tell, rationally, if something is helpful. It can sometimes be hard to detect or trust my own positive feelings. That is, I don’t necessarily have an intuitive feeling that my compassion is good.

The Mortality Problem: Humans often seek high arousal emotions (excitement, boldness, curiosity) even when those emotions may not be practically helpful to themselves or others. Why do people do this? I may not understand others’ behavior, because it can be hard to trace emotions back to their origins. Understanding why high arousal is so compelling can help explain why emotions have such a powerful hold on people.

Death anxiety is a possible explanation. Humans may pursue high arousal experiences as a way of defending against mortality awareness. This perspective is linked to Terror Management Theory, an established field of study. Under this view, certain values, such as self-esteem or conformity, can serve as a buffer against existential fears.

Perhaps no special explanation is necessary – humans might naturally be drawn to high arousal states without any deeper cause. But even if the death anxiety explanation is only partially true, it highlights how deeply emotions matter to people, which is a lesson that may be helpful for me.

De-energizing (relaxing) can also be important to people, but I suspect this has a different function and is unrelated to the mortality problem.

Value Addiction: This is a kind of addiction to positive valenced, high arousal states. It just means any strong emotion that feels positive, where we act is though it is an unconditional good. For example, an addiction to conformity might mean failing to recognize that conformity can ever be a bad thing. It may be hard for me to relate to other people’s value addictions (or even my own) or to recognize that such an addiction is harming people.

“Ink mode” / dereification: This refers to the ability to see thoughts as “just thoughts.” (Just as writing on a page can be viewed as “just ink.”) That is, if we have the thought “so-and-so is angry at me,” we can realize that this thought might not really reflect reality. Dereification is much easier, I suspect, if one can notice that the thoughts are generated by an emotion. One says “that was just my anxiety.” If one can’t recognize anxiety as anxiety, thoughts seem like reality.

Zell: This is a metaphor for emotional communication. It’s there to remind us that body language and emotion are valid forms of communication; that they sometimes convey information just as surely as words do.

Contingency: This means responding appropriately to others. If we are unaware of our emotions, it may be harder to respond appropriately.

Embedding: The feeling of being stuck in a thought. This happens because I can’t tell that the thought comes from an emotion, and so I can’t see why I should let go of it. This is the opposite of “ink mode.”

Categories: In this book, I suggest letting go of categories, especially categories of people. For example, there is limited utility in categorizing people as “introverts” and “extroverts.” It is possible that I tend to categorize people as a way to render it unnecessary to know about their emotions. I think I don’t need to know how they feel about something, because I know their type.

Partial truth: I may have trouble with the relativity of truth, for the reasons mentioned under “ink mode / dereification.” That is, I may have trouble recognizing that a given truth has limited applicability, because it’s my emotions that should signal that limitation. The idea of “partial truth” serves as a reminder that truths have limited applicability.

Axial Age / philosophy: Philosophy is interesting because it is often less emotional and more thoughtful. Toward the end of this book, my analysis of the Axial Age (c. 800 BCE – 200 BCE) argues that war was associated with an addictive high arousal (strong emotions around conformity, loyalty, authority, and aggression), and that philosophy helped to soften or reduce that, replacing it with more thoughtful behavior.