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When I feel like people aren't being reasonable/rational then my mind often starts to treat these people as objects and obstacles. I start coming up with autistic machinations that are often dark and anti-social.
Normally, I'm a very polite and cooperative person that tries to see people's good intentions. Sometimes I'll encounter a situation that is very frustrating where my normal approach doesn't work.
Do you have any advice or tips on how I can avoid ruminating on dark/anti-social thoughts when I encounter challenging situations where cooperation doesn't work?
The pattern seems to be something like: I encounter a frustrating situation then I start brainstorming a lot of ideas on how to solve the situation without any ethical filters. If any of the ideas seem like they might work then I continue thinking about that idea even if it is dark/anti-social. At some point I realize the thought is dark/anti-social and that I shouldn't think of such things. Then I try to avoid the thought, but part of me gets obsessed with thinking it all the way through. If I ignore it then the idea will manifest itself again if I can't find a better solution.
Although I don’t know your exact situation, my mind immediately goes to the elements of harmony and the levels of relationship.
First, identify the level of relationship with the person you’re trying to have cooperate. Acquaintances share attributes, Friends share experiences, Ohana share purpose. (Ohana, Hawaiian for family, is the name I’ve chosen for the category of people who go in together on ventures, such as marriages or businesses, or who rely on each other for survival such as brothers in arms. Best friendships, our closest confidants, are here too, as are intimate lovers. They hold our hearts and hopes, and a betrayal from Ohana hurts more than anything else.)
Identifying the level of the relationship can help you to see what you’re asking from their perspective; do they consider you to be their acquaintance, friend, or Ohana?
An analogy is a house. Acquaintances get basic hospitality; they can come into the living room, the dining room, the den, the backyard, and the bathroom. Friends can come into the kitchen and get snacks from the refrigerator, get asked to help with the dishes, can hang out in personal spaces occasionally, and can borrow books from the shelves. Ohana have a free bed whenever needed, can leave stuff in the house indefinitely, can share resources, may even be asked to do laundry.
Next, consider the elements of harmony and where the other person stopped being an “us” and started being a “them” to you: are they being unkind, untruthful, disloyal, ungenerous, too serious, or under-involved?
If not, it’s not a relationship issue but just someone not modeling the world as you do. Being neuro-atypical myself, this is my everyday life; I have to make people see things the way I do by starting from their perspective and working toward mine. It’s difficult and requires patience, coming to an understanding with people who don’t see the same structures of importance and imperative when they look at the world.
Thanks for the response, the way you explained it makes a lot of sense to me.
In the triggering situations I almost always find what I believe is strong evidence of the other person being unkind or untruthful. I realize that they will never value me like they value the other relationships in their life. My model of them suggests they view me as a “them”, and there is nothing I can do to change this.
In many situations I just accept this and move on to doing other things, but sometimes the trigger is very strong and I start going down the path of dark/anti-social thoughts. It is like I find the triggering situations are a significant injustice and therefore I’m allowed break social norms in order to make things right.
The problem is I don’t want to go down the path of dark/anti-social thoughts. Even if I can find some unorthodox solution to the injustice it is almost always a case of winning a battle, but losing the war. The dark/anti-social thoughts also start bleeding over to other situations where they don’t apply.
In that case, I recommend checking this chart (PDF link) to see how many codependent characteristics you currently have. You should know that this was made for a vaguely theistic 12-step recovery group designed by and for neurotypical people.
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Can you give some examples of when people were uncooperative or irrational?
When my bicycle was stolen and nobody provided useful assistance.
When my rent went up a over 15% and my landlord refused to negotiate even though I’ve been a good tenant. They claimed their expenses went up that much but I did the math on the publicly available property taxes and determined their costs did not go up anywhere near as much as they raised rent. They ended up causing a lot of tenants to leave and then had to offer new tenants lower rates.
When I was in a job that was paying me below what they would pay a new employee for the same position. I had good reviews and they expressed appreciation for my work, but they couldn’t negotiate salary due to HR policies. I'm pretty sure they ended up paying a new employee more than I was making when I eventually left.
LSD and MDMA being schedule 1 drugs (no currently accepted medical use) when they both were being successfully medically used at the time of scheduling. I believe MDMA or psychedelic assisted therapy would be beneficial to me but people have made it illegal for me to participate in it.
Those are all terrible situations with no good solutions. I'm sorry you had to deal with them, and I think it can be normal to respond to powerless scenarios with power fantasies. But that said, I understand why you want to avoid anti-social thinking, and I would consider two contexts.
The first is that you aren't treating these things as mere objects or obstacles. You are expressly thinking of them as enemies or antagonists, with purpose behind their actions. People don't think of how to take vengeance on a road closed for construction, they take vengeance on those who have wronged them. Working on identifying the emotions behind your thoughts and addressing them in productive ways (intense exercise, for example) can help.
In a more Kantian sense I understand how you are looking at them as obstacles, rather than people. It sounds like you get caught up in finding a solution, and that just doesn't stop when someone makes a personal decision. For example:
To me, that speaks of an intense focus and determination to find a solution well before it reaches machiavellian brainstorming. It's harder to stop a heavy and quickly moving object; the same goes for thoughts.
It's not an easy solution, but you have to find a way to let go of lines of thinking that aren't productive, and that is usually well before the self-destructive and anti-social thoughts you describe. My experience is that when you enter the realm of obsessive specification, you are losing sight of more realistic options, and certainly losing touch with the general audience of normies in the world, who are the primary people you will deal with in these situations.
Aside from learning to deal with the average person (most people don't want completely rational discussions and taking that route makes them less agreeable), one thing that has helped me is zooming out to the bigger picture. For the HR situation: do you want to work for a company that refuses you a raise when you are doing a good job? From their perspective, they were either being disingenuous about what they thought of your performance (a symptom of the larger ecosystem), or stupid (also a symptom of the larger ecosystem). Do you want to be a part of that ecosystem?
Understanding how you fit into all the systems around you will give you a better idea of where you can force your position, and where you are powerless and better off searching for another solution (lest you delve into unsavory thoughts, or frustration more generally).
In short: stop the trolley before it's at max velocity, and learn how to change tracks before it becomes more difficult.
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