Day Retreat Amsterdam: Resolving Internal Conflict

Do you feel constrained in your ability to pursue your Effective Altruism goals effectively because anxiety is holding you back, you're struggling with procrastination, have recurring negative thoughts or other unhelpful behavior, and standard therapy or meditation doesn't seem to give you much progress?

These feelings, thoughts, or behaviors that are holding you back come from internal conflict. For example, you may wish you could apply for that job but also feel scared and don't like doing it. You can't both want to do and not want it simultaneously, so there is a conflict somewhere.

Often, both perspectives, in this case, of wanting to apply for a job and feeling scared, have something useful to offer. Uncovering the true motivations behind these feelings and bringing this to our attention is important for resolving the internal conflict and integrating it into a coherent set of behaviors with which we are fully on board.

In this retreat, we will practice three popular methods that help us do that: Focusing, Downward Arrow (a Cognitive Behavior Therapy technique explained in this podcast at 1:48:06), and Internal Double Crux to resolve the internal conflicts that are holding you back from pursuing your EA goals. We will do this in pairs to allow for direct feedback to improve those skills and make it less likely to fool yourself.

Registration
Please fill out this Google Form to register for the retreat.

About me
I, Raymond Koopmanschap, am organizing this independently (not as an official EA Netherlands event). I have been engaged in effective altruism for more than 5 years now. I have run several mental health-related workshops at the EA Summer camp and the LessWrong Community weekend, managed a four-day event for CFAR alums, and organized a day retreat like this in Amsterdam, which was well-received and excited me to organize another retreat.

Other
Target audience: This event will not dive into EA-specific content. The target audience is people who are already trying or want to bring EA into practice but experience psychological barriers to doing so.
Price: I will ask for an optional donation at the end of the retreat.

For a full description (Meetup only allows short descriptions), see the event posted on the EA Forum.