Before March 8th, a comment appeared in our Telegram channel thanking me for micro-doses of disapproval, which prevents them from being enchanted by me.
There’s a saying: “To avoid disappointment, don’t get enchanted in the first place.”
The higher we place someone on a pedestal, the more painful it is when we later knock them down with our own hands, and the more negativity we pour out towards that person.
This gratitude described a story that caught my attention. I want to share my reflections on the idea that deep down we have a subconscious belief: if we like someone or something, we must agree with them on everything and align with them completely.
Is that really true? And what is the echo chamber effect? Read on in the article.
Liking = 100% alignment = agreement
Measuring everyone by your own yardstick is a major trap of the mind.
It eliminates a crucial factor — it violates the cosmic Law of Free Will and Choice, which states that everyone has the right to be mistaken, everyone has the right to choose what to believe, and everyone has the right to learn from their own mistakes.
This sense of belonging and camaraderie, which many people seek, manifests in a way that we automatically divide people into two groups: aligned — not aligned.
And pain arises when you start to diverge on something.
There’s an inherent assumption that we should all be the same, but that’s simply not true.
How can you acknowledge your own uniqueness, your specialness, your irreplaceability, if there’s a fat cockroach of a belief inside you insisting that everyone should be the same? And not just the same, but the same as you.
See also: The Need to Be Good. What Happens If You Keep Holding Onto It
The Echo Chamber Effect — Real Support or Just Agreement?
There’s a concept called the echo chamber, which many communities quickly fall into.
The smaller the community, the faster you slide into it.
People gather, united by a common theme: cooking, gardening, something spiritual. A sense of camaraderie quickly develops.
And this echo chamber effect easily shows up in situations where everyone is patting each other on the back — everything is fine. But heaven forbid someone says something contrary, something that doesn’t match the community’s consensus, and the “you’re with us or against us” syndrome kicks in immediately.
From the very beginning, this whole structure is built on a dualistic principle of division and opposition: you’re either with us, meaning you’re like us, you think like us, we must all be the same in this, or you become an enemy, ending up on the other side, meaning against us.
We practiced this syndrome very well since childhood. With one best friend, everything is fine. When there are two, the division begins — are you with me or with her?
In more mature life, this echo chamber appears where everyone is smiling, everything is so beautiful and sweet, and heaven forbid you say something that doesn’t match the general opinion.
Only one opinion is accepted here. If this community has a leader, that opinion will be theirs, and everyone must share it.
That’s why it’s called an echo chamber — when one person speaks, the echo spreads, and everyone repeats the same thing, without changing anything.
Often when something bad happens in life, we go to our best friend. After all, everyone wants to talk, to share, and to have the other person agree and chime in: “Your husband is a jerk!” “Yes, he’s such a jerk, you have no idea.”
Instead of, from a state of observation where you are not inside the situation and therefore look at things more objectively, drawing attention to something the person doesn’t see. Instead — there is agreement and stroking, which works to the person’s detriment. This is called feeding the victim.
Instead of helping a person, reaching out a helping hand, lifting them up a little, supporting them not in the sense of agreement which works against them, but in the sense of emotional support, empathy, and compassion: “I’m going through this with you, I hear you, I’m listening to you carefully, I understand you.” Instead, in our distorted society, we get 100% the opposite.
And as a result, the person’s victim state becomes even more entrenched, because you are strengthening it in that moment.
See also: Evaluating yourself through the prism of others’ opinions, or How healing traumatized parts happens through other people
Evolution to the level of “spiritual human.” Our reactions and hormonal system, genetics
When a child develops in the womb, they have gills there; we have a part of the lizard brain, the monkey brain. A person goes through different stages in the womb.
We’ve been walking around in human bodies for so long, yet we are still burdened and influenced by the hormonal system of a monkey or the reaction of a lizard.
This exists somewhere inside only because the embryo goes through such stages, and for some people, these reactions get stuck for a long time.
Moreover, the spiritual human does not appear right away. A spiritual human means a person with 4th-dimensional consciousness.
If we go by this classification, then in 3D people, animal consciousness prevails: eat, sleep, have sex.
That’s why in all spiritual classifications, the spiritual human begins at the 4D level, because you are capable of empathy, compassion, and experiencing love without demands. This is an advanced level. Most people don’t reach it yet.
Therefore, community matters.
In the book “Woman of the Third Millennium” by Antonio Meneghetti, the discussion is about women and our strange reactions, about how our hormonal system is tuned for how things were millennia ago.
The world changes, the psyche changes, but what the body is made of does not change.
And then we wonder where we get thousands of fears and phobias. In the past, fear was a real threat to life, and reactions embedded in the hormonal system would kick in: freeze, flee, fight.
When a saber-toothed tiger is charging at you, you either hit it, run away, or become paralyzed with fear and freeze. And we’ve gotten to the point where any critical psychological situation triggers paralysis and numbness.
There are places in the world where it really is dangerous, for example, for a woman to walk alone. But our hormonal system works as if everyone lives in such places.
All that’s left is to dig within yourself, untie the little knots, to get to the core. Each of us has layers upon layers of this. For the most part, it’s all acquired and superficial, because along the way we scoop it all up into ourselves.
How easy it is to be deluded — I must agree with everything.
See also Why it’s so hard to free yourself from the influence of others’ opinions
Why I don’t often share controversial material
I don’t share controversial material very often; I’m good at filtering.
I can take an author with whom I don’t conceptually align, don’t align particularly on the level of values, but if there’s a grain of truth there, I take that grain and leave the rest out of the picture.
The main thing here is not to fall into judgment.
It’s impossible to see everything, to understand that everything is known to you. How else can you expand the zone of the unknown? Through such elements.
I don’t share such authors because the omnivores will consume everything and fall into even greater confusion, either because they won’t be able to filter out the unnecessary or because they don’t understand what their value is. And then negativity comes pouring down on me.
I periodically share Lee’s forecasts, but I have no idea what he does for a living. I don’t attend his broadcasts, but his forecasts have a very clear vision of the current energies. But that doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says somewhere.
S. Dobrovolskaya and I have been friends for many years, we communicate often, visit each other, and align on the level of values. But that doesn’t mean I can subscribe to everything she says and that she must subscribe to everything I say.
What’s important for us is that we align on the main thing, on values, on the path we are walking, but that doesn’t mean we have to be the same.
All of this is logical, but in life, for some reason, it’s different for us. Abstractly, somewhere far away, it exists on its own, but as soon as we encounter situations with loved ones, for some reason, none of this works.
Immediately it kicks in — they need to think the same way I do. And right away we get the backlash.
Self-worth and evaluation. How to distinguish between “I feel” and “I evaluate”
The desire to align is connected to self-esteem, self-worth.
I separate these two concepts. Self-worth is how I value myself, it’s about feelings. And how I evaluate myself is about the mind.
The body feels, the mind evaluates; they are different entities. Who loaded the parameters into the mind, based on which it evaluates?
Most people don’t define their parameters. And there are parents, society, and exes. And there you are supposed to measure up, but most often you don’t. By default, you don’t measure up. It’s impossible to meet such a huge chaotic list of demands from everyone and everything.
But value you feel.
It’s impossible to imagine your value because the mind imagines, but you feel with your body, heart, and different places.
After all, no one is surprised that my hand grabs objects well, but my foot not so much. But it’s the same here: the mind thinks, the heart and body feel. It’s like arms and legs — different functions.
Emotions are about the past. There are certain actions, deeds in my life for which I cannot accept myself.
I don’t allow myself to make mistakes; I believe everything is carved in stone, and if I acted that way once, now I have to repent for the rest of my life. The fact that everything flows, everything changes, nothing is permanent, somehow doesn’t get applied to ourselves and doesn’t get applied well to others.
The fact that a tree one year has certain leaves and a specific number of fruits is normal, but when a person changes over the years, we don’t tell them about it and we don’t really notice it ourselves.
And if you dig deeper, we always end up at the same thing — the fear of being seen as unacceptable, rejected, somehow not good enough, and so on. This is where codependency, the desire to be recognized by other people, and people-pleasing come from.
How often have you encountered the echo chamber effect in your life? What do you automatically agree with other people on?
This article is based on a live broadcast from the #разговор_на_диване #148 Micro Doses of Rejection series.
P.S.. We invite you to the new course “Acceptance Workshop”, to free yourself from self-flagellation, negativity, and start accepting yourself.
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