On Reactive Devaluation
Most of us are incapable of reactive shifts in our evaluations of others, such that our evaluations are suddenly taken to extremes.
E.g. to feel bad about ourselves in response to what someone says or does, or to think that someone is about to say or do something that will make us feel bad about ourselves, tends not to be enough to drastically change how we are viewing that person and whether we value that person. We tend to know that the former is independent of the latter—e.g. that a person might do or say something that makes us feel bad even though we value and think highly of her, and that her doing or saying this thing will tend to have little bearing on her overall nature. For most of us, this knowledge (that our own emotional reactions don’t dictate the personalities of others) fits with the ways in which we actually evaluate others, so that our evaluations of others are relatively stable and non-reactive.
But this is not true of everyone. Some of us are capable of reactive shifts in evaluations of others, such that those evaluations are suddenly taken to extremes. Some people might even do this automatically. For such people, feeling bad or expecting to feel bad about one’s self does tend to be enough to drastically change how another person is being viewed, and whether that person is valued. In particular, it tends to result in devaluation.
How is this possible? Why is it done? How does the capacity develop in the first place?
The answers to these questions might differ from case to case. However, if we are to think about such questions more generally, then the following is worthy of careful consideration.
To be able to quickly adopt an attitude of devaluative indifference is to have access to a powerful means of protecting one’s ego—albeit one that is exclusively short-term, and comes at the expense of one’s relationships, one’s integrity, and the emotional wellbeing of others.
After all, if you’re able to abruptly shift in your perceptions of others, so that those others can suddenly appear to you to be worthless or destructive, then you’re able to dismiss them without having to feel any guilt, and before they ever have a chance of influencing you in a way that you fear. You can feel justified in not taking seriously their questions, suggestions, criticisms, or objections, when doing so might make you feel bad, or force you to confront something bad in yourself.