Is Chronic Anxiety a Learning Disorder?
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Personally, I remember that I was once in a job interview where I had to code on a whiteboard. I was so overwhelmed with anxiety that I was temporary incapable of completing simple coding tasks. In the face of extreme anxiety, I literally become stupid.
But assuming behavior was contrived tests, why would you want to work for an employer that is tuning on who to hire by making sure they can abuse them in certain ways?
There's probably no sense in trying to fathom anything about why a company seems ugly when you can just move on.
The interviewer was standing about six feet away intently watching for every mark I made, which made me freeze up and start rambling about stars shining, or something equally nonsensical.
You don't need to experience "extreme anxiety", or even have a diagnosis, to experience this effect. Most people that are just learning how to drive a car will at some point experience how acute stress causes you to fail even the most basic tasks, things you would never predict that you would fail doing before you actually do. When I was learning how to drive, I repeatedly forgot checking the rear view mirror before switching lanes (even though I knew this was extremely important), because I was so focused on manual gear shifting. I would switch to the wrong gear or forget turning the turn indicator off, because my stressed mind would filter out the noise of the indicator blinking.
Some even believe that the "experience of driving" in itself is detrimental, and that "each exposure elicits an acute stress response, and that repeated exposures may act as a chronic stressor".[1]
[1]: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I experienced this quite viscerally in my last job, where I had roughly a 40 minute commute in heavy traffic each way. On the surface, it sounds like nothing, but I feared for my safety every time and it worsened with each passing month.
There were several reasons I left the job, but this was at least 30% of it and I can tell you it significantly improved my mental health. For a while I had anxiety every time I had to drive, and it started well before I ever got in the car. A couple years later, I was able to handle several very long road trips and even did a stint as a rideshare driver with almost no issues-- the anxiety is pretty much gone now, it was nearly all due to that commute.
In my case it's also amplified by ADD and rejection sensitive dysphoria. It doesn't matter how much I achieve (e.g. I have, converted from German to US grades, a 3.7 GPA), or what I do, it won't go away. So I just live with it.
He must have been surprised by my sudden jump in intelligence when he got a girlfriend...
In a stressful situation your brain disengages the frontal cortex and falls back to an instinctual mode of operation. This mode is generally unaware of the modern world. In my own field of expertise sometimes divers with plenty of gas in their cylinder will tear their regulator out of their mouth. What’s happening? They are having difficulty breathing normally, panicked and the hind brain has said “there’s something in my mouth, take it out!”. Similarly pilots who fly aircraft into the ground, they have panicked and the hind brain has said “get to low ground ASAP”.
And after the fact everyone wonders “what we’re they thinking?” But the answer is, they weren’t thinking at all, they couldn’t.
There's this TED talk by a "poker champion" Liv Boeree where she says that calculating probabilities is the main thing that she learned in poker and applies in everyday life. I also saw an article on that, with many poker players answering the question what they learned from the game, and the ability to estimate probabilities comes up every single time.
A quote from Liv: "So now I also try to speak in numbers as well. So if someone asks me, "Hey, Liv, do you think you're going to come along to that thing tonight?" instead of just saying to them, "Yeah, probably," I actually give them my best estimate -- say, 60 percent. Because -- I know that sounds a little odd -- but the thing is, I ran a poll on Twitter of what people understand the word "probably" to mean, and this was the spread of answers. Enormous! So apparently, it's absolutely useless at actually conveying any real information."
Liv Boeree' TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/liv_boeree_3_lessons_on_decision_m...
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
So on trying to improve my mental health I started taking nootropics. Some of them people SWARE BY, yet I never experienced any noticeable effect. But by chance I ordered a batch of Magnesium L-Threonate and it was absolutely exhilarating. I can honestly say I've been dosing for about 6 months now and it's completely turned my around. I don't suggest anyone experiment with supplements and/or medications without professional assistance. Because this was more like one of those one shot wonders, where you just chance it till you find whatever works.
Another wonder mineral is Calcium. It relieves my back pain. I have learned when I need Mg or Ca by the way I feel, so now I am OK without abusing them. I just pop one when needed.
It’s hard to pay attention when your mind is telling you that you need to go to the hospital for some random reason at all times.
For the most part I’ve learned to keep it in check. But it took 30 years so it greatly affected my learning years, I believe. I also always make sure to carry around Xanax just in case.
During an attack, very controlled deep breathing and taking my shirt off to walk around in circles.
If I may, keep the meditation thing in mind, it really changed how I approached my own anxiety and how I could restore a balanced state of mind. Maybe one day it will click for you, I hope.
Evolution is an infinite process. There's no reason to believe humans are no longer evolving. Survival is relative to current conditions. Some of us are, naturally, just not wired for the "amenities" of modern life.
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Strategies-Distractio...
When I asked her why she chose the one with clearly no particular expertise in coffee making(they were also right next to one another) she’d tell me that she wanted to support the independent small player and not the big corporate chain.
I always wondered how efficient those theories, like the learning theory are, with complex intelligent beings like us. Sometimes we can even ignore all conventional models and just do smt because of philosophical belief. Which in turn developed by other unknown factors..
(When she was alone at University or Downtown she’d mostly hang out to the local big Chain-Coffee, but when faced with an easy choice of two different types of coffee shop one right next to each other she’d after some time make mostly the “philosophical” choice)
The article example is pretty dumb honestly. Chains are a mental shortcut for making decisions, but truthfully, there is much more variation between two Starbucks than they would like to admit.
Yet, I am fairly confident we can name more things than we can control. So, I don't know why that is such a common misunderstanding. One I often have.
I’ve had a large number of conversations over the years with people over the decision whether or not to pursue a diagnosis for a mental disorder. Naming something doesn’t give you a ticket to understand something, but it does give you something to find in the card catalog or Google. If you have both eyes open, you can answer “Do I have an anxiety disorder?” or “Do I have bipolar disorder?” and understand some of the consequences, both negative and positive, of labeling yourself that way. It’s not a truly binary choice, but when you apply these labels to yourself it both exposes you to the effects of stigma and makes treatment and support available, depending on circumstances. I say “choice” because for many, the diagnosis is a choice… a capable adult who is not a danger to themself has a lot of latitude here.
If you think that “we” speak of naming things as akin to understanding them, then there are very, very few people I know who are in this group “we”.
A name is just a substitute for the infinite complexity of the universe. We can’t understand the universe, so we have to name things, create models, and understand the models as a proxy.
That quote, first page, stopped me in my tracks for a long time. I often recall it when I'm tempted by the naming (categorization, abstracting, ...) of some X imagining I understand more about it than I actually do. Similar to as you note, I think.
Additionally, your statement that this "oriental philosophy"(?) doesn't give "due credit" to abstractions, which seems like a very wide dismissal of an undefined subset of philosophical groups.
Then you go on to dismiss meditation as a practice as well, as an "escape from reality". I am assuming that you would agree that since abstractions and definitions are important, the term "reality" isn't well-defined within your statement.
I am curious as to what you mean in general, because it seems like you're trying to tear down some sort of philosophy that we aren't privy to without offering any meaningful alternative counterpoint.
And I find your tone to be unnecessarily confrontational. People have been writing about consistent differences between Eastern and Western philosophies for at least a hundred years. Hell, there's an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to Eastern philosophy[1]. I'm curious as to what exactly you find "problematic" about GP's post.
Many people's minds spend most of the time in the second type of thoughts("self"), and it can be very helpful to have less of those, both for peace and other psychological benefits, and for having more mental power and clarity for useful thoughts.
But in the context of ancient India, China, where eastern philosophies came from, people don't need that much thought most of the time, but spiritual qualities can be very useful in small interdependent peasent communities.
We should not trivialise anxiety disorders: they cause death and harm and they can lead to years of life lost to disability. They can be very debilitating.