Who is Nishant? Do I like him?

On talking about the self in third-person

Kc asked me if I felt any self-love, and what I felt really confused. What does that mean? When I try to access self-love, I end up feeling like “Who is the lover, and who is being loved? I don’t know either person.” Loving myself involves knowing myself, and I don’t think I do. I know other people. But other people know me. Isn’t that how that’s supposed to work?

It isn’t necessarily, according to Kc. He says when his knee hurt (he just had a surgery), he would console himself by saying to himself, “It’s okay Kc, it’ll get better.” He talks to himself in third person very often, and that was fascinating to me because I never do. I never have. The number of times my brain voices would have said the word “Nishant” are very very few. I can’t remember even one time.

So according to Kc, self-love is when you can talk to yourself and be kind and gentle, like you would be with someone you love. You can be someone you love. So Kc is self-soothing by telling himself, “It’ll be okay, Kc”. I realize that I do say those things to myself sometimes, but only in the ‘I’, in that I will be fine, or I’m doing alright.

Conversation as rationality

One of the most powerful experiments I’ve learned in therapy is - “Would you talk about a friend the way you talk about yourself?” Often, I have found solutions to my own problems when asked, “What would you advise a friend in this situation?” It seems that the ‘I’ is a deeply biased space where all rational thought goes to die. The moment it shifts to a ‘he’, clarity starts to emerge.

Some philosophers argue that this is the reason almost the entirety of Plato’s work was written in conversation. He believed that humans were terrible reasoners in isolation, and it was only in conversation that rational thought emerged. All of this points to the efficacy of Kc’s approach. How powerful it could be if we could be in conversation with our own self, and hence think more clearly about our lives and give ourselves the same love and affection we would give a lover.

I talked to Kc about this only a couple days ago and I remain fascinated by it. I tried an experiment where I wrote down how I thought others would describe Nishant, both at work and personal life. I guess this is what it means to get to know yourself. Till now, I have been driving a car where I can only see out the windshield. I don’t have any idea what color my car is on the outside. This is an experiment in trying to see if I can step out and observe the car that is being driven.

I tried to describe Nishant in my journal the other day and here’s what I came up with:

In his personal life, Nishant is a kind and generous person. He is understanding, empathetic, and he communicates well at least with S. He's not so communicative with the other people in his life. He is also really smart and someone people can trust that they'll get good advice from. He is a good writer and the people in his life seem to appreciate his writing. He is also thoughtful about everything he does. If I met Nishant, I would note that Nishant seems smart and good at what he does, but I'd be suspicious and be like "I'm sure he's missing something about life." because people who are really smart often do. If I read Nishant's newsletter I'd want to be friends with him. I'd probably be really happy for him that he has enough clarity to create a life he wants. I would also wonder that if close friends are so important for him, why does he live away from them? He doesn't seem to be prioritizing that in his life, so he's probably a bit lonely.

In his professional life, if I met Nishant I would be a bit intimidated, because he is really good at what he does and seems very self-assured about it. I would not want to be competing with him, or I probably would but only to be challenged and have another smart person who's working on the same things. I would observe how he is in office and I'd probably wonder how he gets away with coming to office so late. I would be inspired, intimidated, but also enjoy being around him.

Experiments in third-person

I sat down to write something for this newsletter today and couldn’t get a word out. Then I tried to switch to third person. “Nishant is sitting here trying to write but can’t.” and my brain responded, “Nishant should just type whatever he can. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good or it makes any sense.” That is how I ended up being able to write this today.

There is research that proves the efficacy of exactly this approach. In 2017, researchers measured how people’s emotions responded to them talking about themselves in third-person and saying the same thing in first-person. They found that people who talked to themselves in third person were able to regulate emotions and exercise self-control with significantly less stress.

Removing the biases we have towards ourselves by taking an outsider’s view seems like a powerful thing. Even in meditation, there is the idea of stepping out of the self and taking an observational approach. I am going to try and get better at getting to know Nishant, so that I can be a friend to him and guide him better in stressful situations or otherwise.