Oh, I didn't even know some of the notation was for that, I thought they were just treated like normal player pushes.
On the one hand, I feel like I'm being too whiny about this, figuring out the notation could just be a part of the puzzle. Puzzles like this may just not be my preference, and I could just prefer puzzles with more clearly defined rules. Baba Is You is tough, but the rules for everything are clear. Chances are though that the notation is fine, and I just wasn't smart enough to read it.
On the other hand, I feel frustrated that the rules were so obtuse that I wasn't making decisions with each block, I was just brute forcing stuff to see what worked.