Submitted by TheNerdyAnarchist in Prisons

...or, maybe more accurately, how do you suppress that so-called "lizard brain" reaction that sometimes lingers in the back of your mind that leans toward retribution? When someone wrongs you and/or does something particularly heinous, how do you shut out/rid yourself of the voice in your head that demands payback or punishment?

It's something I continue to struggle with in order to not view myself as being at odds with my abolitionist viewpoint, and I was hoping others could help.

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tuesday wrote

(really long comment, so sorry)

i was taking a first aid class when i first learned about the bystander effect (not super related but bear with me). the prof said that the best way to avoid the bystander effect was to recognize what an emergency looks like and decide your course of action before the emergency. this way when you are going through the cognitive process after seeing an emergency your brain already has an answer ready.

a little later i was reading a lot about implicit biases and cognitive biases and enculturation. and then i was thinking about the dbt stuff i did in therapy and a light went off. there was this common theme of following this process through literally everything:

  1. make a decision about how you will react to a given situation
  2. recognize the situation as it happens without moral judgement
  3. implement the decision you've made beforehand

it got me thinking about how many other situations i can make informed decisions about, beforehand, that would help me out of situations where i'm acting on instinct. turns out it's a lot and not only in like bad situations either. like i made a decision to tell my friends i love them when they say or do things that make heart go brrrr and now i tell my friends i love them all the time.

but with regard to your question, i also made the decision that if i had anything stolen from me, unless i needed it for like my ability to live, then i was just going to let it go.

before the start of covid i was setting up a communal house with some local activists and ended up not moving in because i'm immuno-compromised. without getting into boring shit they basically stole like a grand from me. when i recognized what was going on i started to get really mad. that's a lot of money for me. and even if i didn't need it personally i could help a lot of people with a thousand dollars. i have a couple of friends that i help financially when i can because they live in really horrible conditions. that's money that can support them for a couple of months, you know?

but then i remembered that i'd made a decision to let it go. and i had to have a real long conversation with myself about how this money wasn't stolen for funsies, it probably wasn't intentional. like maybe when they got money from me they were in a bind so they used it instead of paying the landlord with every intention of paying that money back and now they're embarrassed and ghosting me because they don't have the money? does it super matter that the money that i don't really need went to people that i didn't agree to help if it helped them anyway?

i'm still annoyed about it, but less about them taking the money and more about them not having faith in me as a comrade and not being upfront at the onset.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

it got me thinking about how many other situations i can make informed decisions about, beforehand, that would help me out of situations where i'm acting on instinct. turns out it's a lot and not only in like bad situations either. like i made a decision to tell my friends i love them when they say or do things that make heart go brrrr and now i tell my friends i love them all the time

I was going to o comment this when I read the first paragraph. Tho my uses of this technique are far less wholesome. I.e. SA, being attacked, crime, when to stand up for yourself verbally and just doing violence in general. Very good post I appreciate u sharing the incredibly useful info.

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tuesday wrote (edited )

it's never too late to make wholesome decisions too!

i made a new one the other day to do a little belly rub every time i walk past my dog, who magically is constantly able to be inconveniently situated in the middle of where i am and where i want to go. this has been super annoying, and i don't like being annoyed with her for being a good girl, you know?

so i made the decision that walking past her is a little belly rub time and i've been way happier when i see her laying exactly where my foot wants to go.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

it's never too late to make wholesome decisions too

Oh I didn't mean it that way. Just that I didn't use that technique itself for wholesome stuff. I'm not exactly the nicest person irl but no where near horrible asshole. Tho I think sometimes I make myself sound that way lol.

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tuesday wrote

i'm inviting you to be wholesome with me!

i've been accused of being so "scary" irl that people stopped organizing with me (wish i was kidding).

i'm trying to be a person that is less :| and more :]

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

I've never believed we have free will so I've never really thought punishment for its own sake made any sense. Internalising that since I was a kid seems to have made it easier for me. I don't know if that's helpful at all, but that's how it turned out for me.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

This is actually solved by a technique essential to anarchism that anarchist don't really talk about. How to deal with unconscious thought.

I've been getting kinda good at it tho it took me some years. Most notably in greatly widening my attraction to unconventionally attractive people and being far more wide in my gayness. Yes these are very similar

For this and many other thoughts such as racism abeilism ect. I would recommend trying 3 steps.

  1. Acknowledge the thought sand correct them. Example you misgender someone in your head so you correct it, explain why it's bad then have the same thought the correct way.

  2. Play pretend in your free time and kinda roleplay the situation in your mind. Example: You think about someone who treats you like absolutely shit and does something you would often have the punitive mindset. Then imaging yourself having the reaction you want not the punitive one.

  3. In free time think about why you don't like the punitive mindset. Get out a pen and paper and make a column of how the punitive mindset helps you and a list of cons how it hurts you or is unhelpful.

I fee like I'm missing some stuff but I still am kinda new to this so I'm not sure how to explain it. Dealing with less conscious thought and changing it I really weird and hard to explain how you change it. Mostly it's challenging it over a long enough time. By changing your behavior, values and correcting yourself for thoughts u don't like over a longish period.

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Fool wrote

Reflect upon what you think would be most appropriate if you were the one who had wronged another. What do you think would be most beneficial in preventing a reoccurrence?

Chances are loss of autonomy wasn't something you considered as a learning aid.

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