The omnipotent brain learning dysfunctional perception strategies

I am currently doing the “Perfectionism Trauma” course with the wonderful Thais Gibson.

She mentions several dysfunctional strategies in there, for example “never enough” components (“I’m never going to be thin enough / big enough / rich enough / clever enough / … “, no matter how much energy I put into.)

On the other hand I am also doing a machine learning course on Coursera. (With the excellent Mr. Ng).

There I have learned that artificial neural networks can be made to represent any function.

Putting this together: we, as humans, can learn any strategy – and yes, this includes dysfunctional (self-)perception strategies.

This makes so much sense! People reacting very hurt to normal communication -> they have learned to perceive things with a strong negative bias, and amplify ambiguities into very negative perceptions.

These are meta-algorithms, so not necessarily beliefs about “women” or dating, etc. – but at a higher level than that, they are cognitive filters – also built out of experience and modelling by parents, peers, lovers, …

Essentially we have learned something which twists reality in a painful way for us. Which is disconnected from reality … where, again in reality, we have a choice of how to perceive this.

Only, with our programmed brains, we do not – we make the choices automatically, and interpret the sense data + situational awareness + past memories to mean negative things about us, about other people, about the world.

We feel that we are unsafe, possibly – or that our authority is being questioned.