- If you’re getting constant negative conditioning via unhappy thoughts, you’ll develop a reflexive aversion to the subject of those thoughts
- Ugh fields don’t start out as a flinch – start with real, but minor negative consequences
- Negative consequences cause you to develop flinch
- Flinch makes you worse at the thing, which leads to more negative consequences
- Eventually you have trouble doing the thing at all, as your subconscious has taken over making it difficult to even think about the topic
- At this point it’s like the object or activity has developed a repulsion field around it - this is the Ugh Field
- Result of temporal difference learning
- Associate psychological pain with earliest stimulus that led to the pain
- Engage in displacement activity rather than doing the thing that causes psychological pain
- Possible antidotes
- Look for the flinch response – mindfulness
- Visualize how much better your life would be without the Ugh Field getting in your way
- Identify your reactions, write them down, and try to put some distance between yourself and your unconscious reaction
- Explain your problem, in as much detail as you can to a rubber duck and often the solution will just pop out at you
- Sometimes, forcing yourself into the outside view is all it takes