Comment by degenerate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by degenerate | Hacker News Reader

>> "... know that you’re in good company. Actors like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone, musicians such as The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Taylor Swift ..."

Not quite the 'company' I had in mind when thinking about anxiety. If the article started out with 'medical residents' or other jobs that are stressful and anxiety-inducing because your ability to do your job correctly and quickly might mean someone else dies, or the success of the company rests on your performance, perhaps I'd take the article seriously. But actors and musicians? Sure, messing up means failure, and failure might mean lost contracts, disappointed fans, and having to let go of the great team of people that got you to success. But anxiety driven by success is not the 'company' that most people can relate to. It's having to perform duties that are put upon you by your job, society, and family that are hardest to deal with. If you're good at these things, you will be successful. But the long road to success is the hard part which causes most people anxiety. Not already achieving it like musicians and actors have. That's a different type of anxiety that most people can't relate to.

I'm sure you don't intend this, but this reads like you misunderstand the anxiety of many of us fundamentally: it's not rational. The fundamental hardship of anxiety for many of us is that we know that it's not rational, and can reason out why it shouldn't be causing such an extreme reaction, yet that doesn't remove the feeling where everything is closing in on you.

> not the 'company' that most people can relate to.

Putting a face to someone else who is struggling with the same issue is very helpful to a lot of us. And while I understand the point you are raising, I can't begrudge the author for not knowing someone I personally know to name here. If this were a profile of someone specific being used to highlight anxiety, then you'd have a point, but this is just a single sentence intended to offer faces familiar to the maximum number of readers.

Points very well taken, thanks for offering a different perspective.

I find it productive. It's a reminder that anyone we know who seems to have a successful, perfect life might actually be suffering. It lets regular people know they are not alone as some loser who is the only one struggling.

One example is Elizabeth Vargas. She looks perfectly professional and in control on TV, when actually decades of anxiety have cost her dearly: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/abc-news-anchor-elizabeth-varga...

I suffer from regular anxiety issues and that line certainly helped. It reminded me that I am not the only one who has this. In fact, it is kind of "normal" because even celebrities have it.

When I am having these anxiety issues, it always makes me feel like I am the only one feeling like this. Good to know I am not.

Your quote from the article about celebrities is presumably referring to anxiety disorders (i.e. pathologic anxiety - as opposed to the "normal", sometimes helpful variety), though the article doesn't really differentiate clearly between the two.

Is the anxiety imposed upon actors and musicians by their chosen profession different in effect or feeling than the anxieties imposed by other professions?

My son feels anxiety about trying new things. Does that differ from the anxiety I feel about what happens to my family if my job goes away, or that an actor feels about performing poorly? Do the effects on related things differ?

Anxiety is a form of fear, and that's pretty much universal.

Many people look up to celebrities to some degree or another - often in the context of "if my life weny a little differently, maybe that could have been me", and can find comfort in realizing that they have the same feelings in spite of how successful they are - more comfort than knowing that their neighbor feels the same anxiousness about the same things they do.

This is also why celebrity gossip is a thing - it shows that these people are human too, with the same weaknesses as the rest of us.

i don't think anxiety is a form o fear. Fear is the lack of response for a given situation. Fear don't let you do your job, for instance. Whereas anxiety is an response (sometimes even physical) to the future, and it's don't have to be bad.

Sometimes i fell anxious the day before a good event, a trip for example.

When I feel anxiety over a good thing, I tend to find that underlying it are feelings of excitement and anticipation for the thing, and of fear that the thing will not be what I expected/it will go wrong in some way, etc.

I'm not so sure of that definition of fear v anxiety. My understanding (which is several years rusty now) is that the physiological response is the same, varying sometimes only in degree.

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