# Here's Why I'm Hesitant To Respond In More Depth

![Northern elephant seal | Animals | Monterey Bay Aquarium](https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/globalassets/mba/images/animals/marine-mammals/northern-elephant-seal-tr17-0154.jpg)

Hello and welcome!

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this post.

**I mean that sincerely.**

I'm replying with this post because something about your comment seems to have triggered my Hesitation Reaction.

Explaining what that means requires too much nuance to write it out every time. But I think I miss out on a lot of good conversations because of this Hesitation Reaction, which is essentially one of self-protection.

So I created this post to explain my Hestitation Reaction in case you find it helpful in engaging with me differently, hopefully in ways we both prefer, in our original thread of conversation.

### My Hesitation Reaction, in brief

To start, these are my own emotions, which are my responsibility, not yours. The point of articulating them isn't to blame you for them!!!

The point is that your comment may have had the (non-blameworthy) side effect of bringing these emotions up in me, and that it will for practical purposes be difficult for me to continue having the interesting discussion we might both like to have as a result, without some sort of hopefully minor adjustment to get us back on track.

My hope is that exposing these facts about my emotions in this level of depth will facilitate us mutually and collaboratively figuring out some productive next steps. That's not on you to sort out on your own. I'm up for my half of the bargain too.

On an emotional level, my Hesitation Reaction is often a combination of:

*   Kind of a chilled emotional feeling, a sort of pulling back. It's the reaction you have when somebody is noticeably less warm or interested or generous about something you're excited about than you had anticipated or hoped for.
*   Anxiety that I'm being either trolled or drawn into a contest over status, expertise or authority.
*   Frustration that my goals in posting feel like they're not being recognized.
*   A feeling as though I'm being singled out as less worthy, implicitly excluded or marginalized somehow.

Here is another picture of an elephant seal to lighten the mood:

![Southern Elephant Seal (male) | Project Noah](https://lh5.ggpht.com/vHJWRWUiw1i6WGvvAhpTTw6FHTsemWvK8B6elzJpHyVvbZusSSpfdZ0RgRh1Ga2z9y-nRoZ1V8gABALxSlQ=s600)

### Making me Hesitate is not a crime

Look, I really get it! It's tough to judge how much effort to put in, what needs to be said, who the heck the person you're talking to is and what their motivations are. Sometimes, we all leave comments that make the other person Hesitate, when we didn't mean to. And that's not necessarily a sign that we did anything wrong at all.

In fact, the main reason I wrote this is because I suspect I'm leaving a lot of value on the table by having low-grade negative reactions to Hestitation-provoking comments that actually could have been the start of a really interesting conversation.

So **please** don't take the fact that I linked you to this post as a criticism of you, *or* of your comment. This is the most important thing I want you to take away from this post. Instead, I linked you here because, through no fault of your own, your comment provoked my Hestitation Reaction. Assuming good faith, I want to highlight some reasons why that might have been, and invite you to take whatever steps you like to address that reaction, very much including nothing at all!

I hope you and anybody else who sees the link will perceive this post as my best attempt to expose a part of my perhaps neurotic psychology for your direct inspection, not as a criticism or as a status move.

### Common drivers of my Hesitation Reaction.

Note that these are all *my subjective perceptions*, which don't necessarily reflect your intentions, how other people would see the situation, or the facts of the matter. Almost certainly only a small subset of these apply in this specific case.

1.  Overemphasizing a genuine problem in my post that I don't consider to be among the highest-priority problems with it.
2.  Getting too "big picture." For example, let's say I write a post of detailed technical analysis about a specific company and publish it as investment advice (unlikely!). If you respond that the Efficient Market Hypothesis means my advice is probably worthless, that's an example of "too big picture." The very fact that I decided to write a post of investment advice about a specific company means that I've implicitly decided to not deal with that objection in the context of that post, so bringing it up there is distracting. That's not to say it's irrelevant, just that you should find a different space for your thoughts.
3.  Not showing a clear understanding of what I'm trying to accomplish with my post
4.  Making a request that would be a lot of work for me, without reassuring me that my efforts will be appreciated or lead to a useful outcome.
5.  Critiquing my post in a way that feels disengaged and shallow, as if you're available to point out problems but not interested in helping me make the post into a useful product.
6.  Critiques that essentially boil down to "this post isn't as good as it could be." "This post isn't good enough for reasons X, Y and Z" are totally fine, and if you made a comment like that and I linked you to this post, please correct me.
7.  Assuming that my decision to leave something out was forgetful rather than deliberate. I may well have forgotten it, but start by asking!

### Suggested next steps

**Acknowledge:** Don't apologize - you really don't need to! Just give a sort of "message received" acknowledgement and, if you want to figure out how to proceed with a more in-depth conversation, let me know about that fact. If anybody picked on you because I linked you to this post, I'd have your back :P

**Consider:** Spend a moment to hypothesize about what might have provoked my Hesitation Reaction, perhaps using the suggestions above.

**Adjust:** The point isn't to make up for anything, because you did nothing wrong. I just need you to make a hopefully minor adjustment that will help me let my guard down, so we can enjoy the rest of our conversation together.

It is also fine if you simply don't want to continue the conversation or make any adjustments!

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

![5 Fascinating Things About Elephant Seals - Polar Latitudes](https://polar-latitudes.com/app/uploads/2020/12/%C2%A9-Adam-Rheborg-2-2-scaled.jpg)