I would like to not be so worried about being “wrong.”

January 14, 2022 2:10 PM

I have a fear/intense dislike of being or feeling “wrong” or “bad.” I would like to temper this and live more calmly.

I (female, mid-50s, northeast US) come from a family where my father, who passed away a few years ago, loved me and took care of me in all the usual ways but would argue for fun, had a very long memory, and never apologized or admitted that he was wrong until I was an adult. Therefore when I was a child, if we ever disagreed I was, by definition, wrong. My mother (still alive, and we are in regular contact) focuses a lot on the past. She has always done this to some degree, and does it more as she ages. She will still occasionally refer to something from 20 or 30 years ago and expect me to be the same way (e.g. “I know you don’t like X”), or talk about how my father was the way he was because of something from his own childhood. I have picked this up, and have to remind myself that yes, people do change.

This leads to me as an adult…

(1) reacting, in the present, to things from the past that may or may not be relevant - including offhand comments or complaints my partner of 10+ years made ages ago, or reactions someone had long ago that I on some level fear may apply in a similar-but-not-the same current situation, sometimes even involving a different person.

(2) behaving in ways that try to avoid being “wrong” or not trying something/being perfectionist, so I don’t have to deal with the bad feeling and anticipated fallout of failing at something, displeasing someone, or having them disagree with me, and

(3) getting upset at minor disagreements or requests that I do something differently (especially from my partner), because it makes me feel like I am “wrong” or “bad.” This can be instantaneous and visceral.

Sometimes, but less often, I also (4) behave like my father did i.e. get caught up in trivial arguments and insist on being “right.”

These are all impinging on my life, and especially on my relationship with my partner.

I would like to (1) not be so concerned with not being wrong/not upsetting anyone and (2) stop being so focused on my past, or letting my past color my present. These are not the same, of course, but they feel related, and I would guess that they both go back to family-of-origin stuff.

I have had years of therapy and for various reasons am not interested in doing more at the moment. I feel like I should be able to CBT my way out of this, but I haven’t - the process feels mechanical and formulaic and just doesn’t help (this includes one CBT therapist and a fair amount of reading/worksheets on my own). I have a lot of time right now and am exercising more and re-starting meditation* in hopes of calming the “monkey mind.” I feel like info on family dynamics or similar could be helpful too. What resources (especially books or podcasts) might help me approach these issues?

*I keep seeing meditation touted as the solution to over-thinking, over-reacting, and living in the past or a hypothetical future. I have done meditation on and off for a few years without it actually helping much. Is meditation really all that? If so, how long does it take to help change my mental habits? And do you have any particularly good resources?

posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz might seem like an odd recommendation (it’s an analysis of all the ways everyone is wrong all the time in multiple ways), but as someone who also hates being wrong, I found it reassuring.

Favorite bit: she asks people what it feels like to be wrong and they give her all kinds of embarrassed answers. She says no, that’s what it feels like to find out you’re wrong. The odds are we’re all wrong a lot of the time.

Feel free to disregard but it works for me to understand that being “right” is pretty rare.
posted by Peach at 2:54 PM on January 14, 2022 [10 favorites]

getting upset at minor disagreements or requests that I do something differently (especially from my partner), because it makes me feel like I am “wrong” or “bad.” This can be instantaneous and visceral.

You don't have to answer this in the thread but if you're someone with ADD, you might want to look into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria which can make small negative things seem FLOODINGLY BAD. I get it sometimes with teasing, like most of the time I can just roll with things but sometimes someone will say a funny thing that hits me wrong and I can get almost immediately WHAT THE FUCK MAN which is, not great for me, not great for whoever said it. That article I link to talks about how there can be some good CBT treatments (among with medication for ADHD) that can help, but sometimes it's just useful to know that that feeling is, or can be, a known thing.

And just to your question about meditation. I've had a morning meditation practice for maybe five years now and the main thing it helps me with is have a little space between a feeling and a need to immediately do something about that feeling. This can be helpful. The downside, of course, is that sometimes you're just sitting with a bad feeling and can't really do a thing but this can sometimes be a useful practice for people(like me!) who can sometimes be impulsive about reacting to things.
posted by jessamyn at 3:19 PM on January 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

Late 50's male, very similar father to yours, similar results in me. An acquaintance in my late teens (a JW as it happens) suggested I sit back from conversations, and just chip in to keep the flow (it may have been a magazine article he'd highlighted and given me, I don't remember), but that got me on a healthier path.

Part of my friend's thinking (I think) was that my dominating-the-conversation approach could give more life to a relationship than it would naturally contain, resulting in hurt when a perceived friendship ends. It has taken me a long time to fully learn this, as I want to be friends with people, but I've learned to let those things happen - as my natural state is very INTJ*.

This holding back sometimes results in people asking me how to do/say/behave which is much better, and has helped me ask others how to do/say/behave and generally be more open.

I have also found the above, plus informal and formal NLP training Sue Knight is very good for book learning, plus a lot of solo travel, very helpful.

My spoken English is very, very good and I was taught to be pedantic, but I learned early on never to correct, especially partners. Just let it ride. I have a colleague/friend who comes up with the most amazing mispronunciations and to correct would be deeply offensive.

* (Myers is a great example of "all models are wrong but some are useful").
posted by unearthed at 3:28 PM on January 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seconding that you may want to look at “rejection Sensitive dysphoria”. Even without the ADHD, it can be comforting to know that this is a thing people struggle with - it’s not just you.
It sounds like you have good awareness of this reaction in yourself. Is this an after-the-fact awareness, or are you able to identify & label this strong gut reaction in the moment? If you can, the first step is to figure out how to say to your partner “this is sending me into the red zone, can we pause for now?”, then go journal/scream into a pillow/have a vigorous walk, then try again. Maybe you can write back and forth instead of talking?
posted by dotparker at 4:36 PM on January 14, 2022

I have similar issues and while I haven't worked through all of them, I'm definitely much less afraid of being wrong than I used to be. I also did not find CBT to be particularly useful for working through issues like this because I couldn't really "believe" the completely rational decisions it would lead me to. Yes, of course I know that things are fine when small things go wrong, but just knowing that doesn't fix my automatic reactions. I think CBT is much more useful for understanding yourself and why you react the way you do, but once I felt like I understood all of my neurosis it kind of stopped helping. I have also find mindfulness-style meditation to be similarly unhelpful for actually changing anything about myself. It has helped me be more patient though, which definitely helps with other approaches.

I've come to believe that for issues like this I need to do something to resolve them, instead of just understand them. There are a LOT of different ways to resolve conflicts like this. I can pretty easily separate my issues into Now problems and Past problems. Sometimes being wrong is a Now problem, if it's about something important, and it needs to be resolved by talking to someone else or changing my own approach. But like you, most of the time my negative reaction to being wrong is a Past problem, and I can't actually resolve it by fixing something in the present day. The bad thing happened like 20 years ago, and I can't argue with my step-dad about it any more. So how do you resolve internal conflicts related to the past and change how you react to triggers?

The approaches that seem to work for me involve "opening up" the memory in a known safe environment, directly addressing it in some way, and then acknowledging that you have made a change. For instance EMDR therapy involves using repetitive motion to create an emotionally safe environment, working with a therapist to bring up troubling memories, and then using techniques to address those triggers. Coherence therapy, which I like personally, involves trying to embrace memories of conflicts from the past in a safe environment and then working those conflicts out with deliberate statements. Informal things like journaling or creative works can help via the same basic path: reference something negative from the past but harness it into a different form that can be positive. I think there are a lot of different ways to take this same concept (Memory Reconsolidation is a related neurology term) and utilize it to try and resolve issues like this. Even insight-based therapy can work via the same mechanism, classical psychotherapy is probably wrong in that all of our problems are not explained by simple rules from our past, but those perspectives can be used to recontextualize the memories into a form that's easier to react to. Anyway that's just what's been working for me, and good luck with your efforts!
posted by JZig at 4:44 PM on January 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have found that making a practice of doing low-stakes activities that I am objectively bad at is really useful for accepting my wrongness in situations that are more important to me.

I hesitate to make specific suggestions because what is low-stakes for you and I might be different, but dancing/martial arts, doing a new cheap craft, letting typos stay without fixing them, and playing silly rhythm video games are all things I’ve used before. Feedback on my errors (automated or human) is especially mortifying, but it being the reason I’m spending my time on it in the first place helps to flip the feeling a little. It gives me the chance to really let myself feel it and discover it’s not fatal. And it has helped me be less brittle in situations that touch more directly on my self-worth.
posted by tchemgrrl at 8:38 PM on January 14, 2022 [7 favorites]

Maybe it helps to reframe errors as something not only inevitable but also necessary. Not for nothing "Creating an error-friendly learning environment" is all the rage in modern pedagogy. This is why I never dock points for errors during the practice-stage, all I want to see is a good faith effort - at this point, errors are a feature, not a bug (also a sign that you actually tried to solve the problem yourself and didn't just copy from the A-student in your class). Because every error you make before the exam is one error you are less likely to make during the exam. I tell my students how I would always keep a notebook listing all the errors I made in the practice exericises, and if I hadn't filled one or two pages I would feel ill-prepared for the exam. Learning is trial and error, not making errors means you aren't learning. If you never stop learning, you will never stop making errors. (or, according to Goethe "humans err, as long as they're striving"). No longer making errors is a sign of stagnation.

Of course the whole process only works if people actually give you that margin of error - a chance to get it right the next time. How much margin of error people will give you can be a matter of all sorts of privilege. Maybe people in your past have not given you enough margin of error to use mistakes as learning opportunities. So it can be hard to trust that people in your present/future would. But they very well might! And maybe they already do. Maybe you get a way wider margin of error than you think. But you need to give yourself a wider margin of error too, if you want personal growth.
posted by sohalt at 2:03 AM on January 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Adding: I was once given an award by my old (highly competitive) high school and invited to give a talk to the students. I spoke on the subject of how important it is to fail. The students were enthralled and delighted, and the head of school was very disapproving. I have failed catastrophically and been utterly wrong much of my life, and to that I attribute most of my success. There’s waaay too much emphasis in society on getting things right the first time.
posted by Peach at 6:57 AM on January 15, 2022 [1 favorite]