Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
apa.org
apa.org
Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek. Their mind has predicted the conclusion of their efforts, and the conclusion lies far below what they seek. Thus the mind desperately attempts to re-understand, re-configure, and re-model the world to achieve its goals.
But instead what is espoused by modern psychology and self-help is a kind of blind optimism or a horse blinders kind of approach to tending one’s mind. Most types of meditative studies also force this notion of blindness. Depression and anxiety and other “disorders” (whose classification from its onset is very unhelpful for its ideological integration into society as a valid problem to work through) most often happen to those who are sensitive, those who have surprisingly extensive models of the world, etc.
But it has become very fashionable in SV intelligentsia and the communities that drink the intelligence soup that trickles down from the SV community (like other cities of America or other America-directed tech communities) to treat the mind as a dumb system that did a poor job evolving to a modern environment (e.g. rationality movement). Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Optimization for optimization’s sake is bad, but goal-seeking for goal-seeking’s sake may be a significantly worse and dangerous meme.
The tldr version goes something like: “Meaning is irrelevant, but humans need meaning to live. Pick any meaning you want. Doesn’t matter what, just choose something. Then go for it with all your might. If you ever find it wasn’t a good meaning, pick a new one. You’re a different person now anyway”
Now, even though depression and anxiety can have many causes, including the individual itself and one's reactions. We know humans and living beings need physical and mental stimulation. Thus activities such as dancing, singing, whatever would activate joy, can help break bad spells. We don't know beforehand either, what we could have capacity to enjoy, so should seek out diverse experiences and people with an open mind.
Such tools may help to uncover a person's life's purpose. To find meaning, we need tools and other people as mirrors. We may even need to experience stuff we later actively decline, for many different reasons.
Thinking too much or one's attitudes, can hamper and limit much more than a person might realize. It's easy to miss out of one own's life, by comparing and vying for other people's lives. Also even though one would be totally miserable with another's plights!
So it is there, in-between activation and purpose, one need the reminder, that the purpose is not the end result. That life's not a journey. We alone judge good and bad, while life just is as it is regardless what we think and feel in each moment. Letting go of the destination and many concepts, we can realize it doesn't matter who is fully realized and perfect. That life happens perfectly every moment regardless, and that those who tell others what their meaning is, is full of * * * *.
It seems Frankl has been somewhat exposed/debunked. Would you believe he was at Auschwitz for only a few days, performed medical experiments on Jews himself, and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl#Controversy
There was a bit of a discussion previously about that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21901602
The Wikipedia link doesn't mention anything of the sort. And the other discussion just points to the same link / "proof".
On the contrary, it does mention that he helped save thousands of mental patients from the Nazis, and that he was held not just in Auschwitz, but in 4 camps (in which case, whether he was in Auschwitz just for "a few days" is irrelevant).
As for the "performed medical experiments on Jews himself", which makes him sound like Mengele, what he did was treat people including Jews who had attempted suicide. He used electroshock therapy and even lobotomy, but those widely used in the time, they weren't some nazi-like experiments (and up to the 1970s in the USA for example).
>and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false.
That's just what some other professor said in some papers. Not some definite rebuttal. You can find papers against anything...
edit: Gee, you're right about the wikpedia page! The controversy section has been entirely erased since I last looked! Very weird. Sorry about that. e.g. in April last year it looked like
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Viktor_Frankl&typ...
I guess all the references to things have been removed too. I'm not sure why. The books and papers it led me to seemed believable.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-brain-effects...
Dopamine is mostly involved in anticipatory qualia.
If you get no feedback after years on end... watch out
There are too many religions that glorify martyrdom where destruction of self can be seen as a honorable end. This when coupled with these grit narratives, make for very scary things.
The internal dialog must be carefully tuned to a feedback system. And not just any feedback system, one of the individuals chasing (a is intentional). Without proper nurturing, one begins to lose the self - leading to many terrible things.
Well, what might those problems be? What goals do we “really” want?
For most of humanity, the majority of humans have had little options to change their predicament. Our brains evolved for hunting/gathering in tribes. A few thousand years ago we learned agriculture and started settling down. Very recently, we’ve improved the lives for a majority of humanity enabling many people, for the first time in our evolutionary existence, a choice in how to live their life. And that choice is either extremely empowering or terrifyingly debilitating.
The self help industry has grown to serve this market. There’s definitely a lot of “positive mentality” stuff but we also have a lot of people that are benefiting hugely from getting help from mental health experts.
We must learn any specific hunting/gathering skills from role models while growing up. We even learn from others what goals are worth achieving. We are right now learning from each other how to think about our goals and problems.
This is not the first time humans have the choice of picking their goals. Even on an evolutionary scale we have always had cultural institutions to guide us with that (and/or exploit us). For example we have thousands of years of stories about worthy and unworthy goals.
...no?
In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia.
(Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's some fun hypotheses about that. But these are the exception. Most neurological conditions have no such "advantageous situation" where expressing the phenotype in a lifelong way—or even the constant lifelong potential to trigger the response—would be always advantageous to your reproductive success.)
Instead, as we now understand, these syndromes happen almost always because of random genetic mutations to genes coding for proteins/enzymes responsible for creating, transporting, receiving, and destroying neurotransmitters.
Like, for example, https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs53576. Get an A;A mutation, and your brain's ability to react to oxytocin is toast. (And this is common! And just look at all the reported downstream effects when it happens!)
There's no purpose to this mutation. Just like there's no purpose for a gamma ray bit-flipping a DRAM memory cell. Your genes aren't set up carefully so that randomness will intentionally introduce this SNP every so often, to ensure there are some people like this in the population. Rather the opposite: your cellular machinery will, in fact, try as hard as possible to ensure that this mutation doesn't happen (with introns, redundant coding sites, gene silencing, etc.)
And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success. They weed themselves out of the gene pool, rather than being passed on. Non-functioning versions of beneficial genes are always-recessive vs. their working versions, and so will be bred out of the gene pool. These are un-selfish genes.
So, that (hopefully) being clear: why should my mind listen to the goals my broken brain is setting for me? I know better than it does. Like the fault-tolerant software running on a Mars rover "knows better" than the rover's individual CPUs do, blasted with radiation as they are.
I, as a mind (and even better, I as a cyborg of mind + written storage), can perform the sort of long term comparative analysis of my own emotional states, that my brain on its own simply can't. And therefore, I know things about my brain that my brain doesn't.
My brain isn't a wise old wizard with mysterious purposes, who I should trust to tell me what to do. It's an overclocked gaming PC during a brownout, that desperately needs a UPS.
> And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success.
I don't believe this first claim is true and from my understanding the second isn't supported by current evolutionary thought. Could you explain more about why you believe these syndromes are never appropriate responses?
I can offer my own anecdotes that OCD gives me a competitive advantage in many aspects of life despite its drawbacks. But I'd like to hear more of your thoughts.
OCD is not a knack for being organized or orderly. Without even mentioning the compulsions, it’s a never-ending onslaught of intrusive thoughts and corresponding anxieties.
Managed well, it’s still a permanent distraction that’s always in the background. Managed poorly, it’s life-ruining. I don’t see how either could yield a competitive advantage in any scenario.
Also, you seem to be saying that even in the cases where a person is left with a bad brain (due to genetic bad luck), their I/mind is still perfectly capable of a rational analysis of their emotional states (here you seem to agree with GP) and can thus act reasonably despite a broken brain. But why wouldn't a bad brain almost necessarily result in a mind that is not capable of such analysis, or on acting on the result of such an analysis?
Our lifestyle isn't very natural, we have long left natural selection behind for that matter.
Homeostasis processes, and redundant gene-coding sites in our DNA, mean that your body is mostly robust to environmental onslaughts. Animals have evolved in a competitive environment where these problems already existed: parasites want to control your brain; predators want to envenomate you before they eat you; prey species want to stop you in your tracks with toxins. But life evolves to adapt to these problems, becoming able to shrug most of them off if it's a consistent part of their niche. Most of the "spices" we eat are plant toxins we've adapted to be fine consuming.
When mutations happen, they don't always immediately cause a problem. What they more-often do, is to cause the body (or in this case, the brain) to lose some of its homeostatic mechanisms — to become less robust to these environmental onslaughts. The affected system becomes more vulnerable, or loses compensatory capacity — it remains able to function in the normal case, but loses the ability to function in the edge case.
Of course, some of our body processes are more robust/protected than others. Some systems (reward; inflammation; sleep) are very easy to "hack", for some reason; while others (libido; fear) are nearly impossible.
Especially if there are cases of mutism, where trauma is the cause. At least that should pose more questions.
edit: Additionally, the is a correlation between "giftedness" and sensory overload.
1. "Not adaptive in any situation..."
Putting aside the many problems with evolutionary psychological explanations (just-so theory, underdetermination, so-called disjunction and grain problems), there's actually an very strong argument to OCD's adaptive role, both at the individual (threat response) and group. I think the group argument is most compelling, as various degrees of neuroticism have very high upside for risk management over time.
Or take depression for example. It can serve, theoretically, to reduce risk of conflict and death when social hierarchies might be in flux, it's a way to honestly signal a problem to ones group, it could be a mechanism to accurately try and signal a problem to oneself like physical pain does, its been theorized to potentially reduce risk of infection, etc.
2. These genes very clearly do not weed themselves out of the gene pool. In fact, mental illness has been on the rise, probably mostly because neurodiversity has been increasingly pathologized. The social construct in which these are considered disordered is hugely important.
3. Your comment about that empathy snp is extreme genetic essentialsm and determinism. Moreover, it's a single snp. I don't know of a single researcher who'd claim that something as complicated as empathy is either toast or not toast from a single snp.
Nothing that matters to you. If it mattered to you it would be a life goal.
> The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek.
You've added a ton of words which literally don't even mean anything in context. Let me whittle this down:
> The reason why modern humans have increased risk of these symptoms is they know that even when they achieve their life goals, that they wouldn't achieve satisfaction.
Okay, we found an actual claim.
In his essay, Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls, Scott Alexander notes that any intellectual movement that has been around for a while has made some mistakes, and is probably aware of them, so if there's some obvious failure of a movement, the people who still believe in the movement probably have learned from that failure. Communists are aware of Stalin murdering people and are wary of totalitarianism. Christians are aware of Torquemada torturing people and are wary of religious persecution. There are of course crazy communists and Christians who think Stalin and Torquemada were great, but they're not by any means the majority. If you talk to a communist and your big argument is "but, Stalin!" you're just showing exactly how outdated your knowledge is.
This is no exception. If your big criticism of psychology is that achieving your goals can leave you feeling empty, well, let me assure you, psychologists are well aware of this, and have studied it at length. This is not the gotcha you think it is.
There are two kinds of goals, process goals and outcome goals. Yes, outcome goals are likely to leave people feeling empty once the desired outcome achieved, which is why some psychologists think it's a good idea to focus on process goals instead. When you talk about "achieving" things and not feeling satisfaction, you're only talking about outcome goals, when there's a whole other type of goal that the article you're criticizing is probably talking about.
But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholder in life for when things get real tough. A patch on your wound that helps the wound heal. The patch isn’t healing the wound, your body is.
But people (e.g. self-help aficionados) become thoroughly entranced with this idea (among other bad ideas like growth mindset) that they lose sight of the fact that a patch is a patch, a bandage a bandage. It has outlived its usefulness, but people keep treating it as a real solution.
Most often when people observe their mind they can dig up a lot of content. Depression, anxiety, and what have you are real things that you can explore and navigate. How to navigate and what to do with them is extremely difficult because we have never been taught how. We sort of induct what our parents and teachers do without explicitly categorizing/identifying what is going on in out minds. Most times we are running the same damn loop for the, what, millionth time in a row. The same situation, the same psychological response, the same result.
Without even going into replication crisis, there are a lot of psychological theories and therapies that are sold, to others and even to the theorizer him/herself. The mind is a value-seeking machine that will not deter itself from using fiction to understand the world and get what it wants.
Interestingly, the fiction of the mind acts as a patch itself, but it is never recognized by the self because the mind (most of the time) does it under the rug. So the patch sticks around and causes problems.
The solution is to recognize that the mind can employ fiction and slowly but surely the mind will start doing these things overtly visibly to you (simply because it doesn’t have to hide it anymore).
Stay on track with what the mind provides to you and be free about it (sometimes ignore it, hate it, listen to it, coddle it, be depressed, be anxious — to the mind emotions are generated and should be accepted without scores attached to them). Then the implicit goals will become explicit. But this hijacking of explicit goals without respecting implicit goals is pure whack.
> The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree with). It is satisfying, and can keep life afloat.
> But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholder in life for when things get real tough. A patch on your wound that helps the wound heal. The patch isn’t healing the wound, your body is.
There's nothing "fake" about life goals, and it's not a trick. When I say I want to have close, honest relationships, or when I say I want a contributing role in my community, I really want those things. These aren't placeholders, patches, or bandages for anything. They're actually what I want, and it's arrogant of you to think you know what I want better than I know what I want.
> Stay on track with what the mind provides to you and be free about it (sometimes ignore it, hate it, listen to it, coddle it, be depressed, be anxious — to the mind emotions are generated and should be accepted without scores attached to them). Then the implicit goals will become explicit. But this hijacking of explicit goals without respecting implicit goals is pure whack.
This implicit versus explicit goals dichotomy is something you made up, and then started accusing people of choosing one over the other. Nobody is suggesting choosing explicit goals over implicit goals. In fact, nobody even was talking about these things before you invented them. This is just a straw man argument.
The entirety of your post could have been reduced to around five sentences--this would be a great increase in clarity with no loss in meaning. Throwing in random parentheticals and clauses might fool dumb people into thinking what you're saying is smart, but smart people are going to suspect that you're hiding a bogus argument under layers of words.
Ad hominem aside, is it so hard to understand the words “implicit” and “explicit”? They are English words, and implicit vs. explicit goals really isn’t all that hard to understand. Maybe people around you don’t use this language, but implicit vs. explicit models is a dichotomy I hear all the time among pretty smart people. And very useful distinction.
I don’t think you are capable of ingesting in new information or original thought. Your response to what I said about “fake mission” clearly demonstrates this. I also never said you don’t know your desires. I don’t even know you. Do you have so much time that you feel personally attacked by some (you would call) random assortment of words on the internet? Jeez.
I am seeing your other comments and you are just not that positive overall. Being skeptical and negative and doubtful isn’t a hallmark of intelligence, mind you.
Please take your matters elsewhere.
The problem isn't that they are hard to understand, the problem is that they have nothing to do with what anyone was talking about. When someone says, "Persevering in goals can alleviate negative feelings", saying "Explicit goals can distract from implicit goals" isn't a response, it's a non-sequitur.
> Being skeptical and negative and doubtful isn’t a hallmark of intelligence, mind you.
Being skeptical and doubtful are definitely hallmarks of intelligence. The alternative to skepticism is blind faith. The alternative to doubt is unjustified confidence.
In the rest of your post you've decided to attack me personally, to which my only response is going to be: you're accusing me of ad hominem attacks?
Put another way: not all faith is blind, but faith without skepticism is blind faith; not all confidence is unjustified, but in the confidence without justification (evidence) is unjustified.
I'm not so sure about that. So far, we've had dozens of implementations of communism all over the world and 100% of them ended up being authoritarian (i.e. if you disagree with the ruling party, you go to jail) or straight up murderous. This uncanny correlation suggests that it may not be impossible to actually implement anything like communism without it being evil. Jordan Peterson explores reasons for why that might be so.
sigh You read a post saying that "but look at these skulls!"-type arguments are naive and arrogant, and your response is a "but look at these skulls!"-type argument? Really?
Which of these[1] pacifist[2] communes[3] do you think fit into your 100% number that you made up without researching?
I'm not defending communism or Christianity here, I'm saying find out what people actually believe and why they believe it before you criticize, instead of criticizing high-profile failures of their movement which they probably recognize and disagree with.
> Jordan Peterson explores reasons for why that might be so.
The fact that Jordan Peterson is exploring reasons for why something might be so which isn't so, tells me all I need to know about Jordan Peterson's opinions on the subject: they're uninformed opinions.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/07...
How so?
> but just merely small groups of people who do so, in a safe bubble provided by a non-communist society (US or Israel) which surrounds them. They benefit immensely from the wealth and protection coming from the surrounding non-communist society.
If you talk to communists, I think you'll find a lot of communists agree with this.
EDIT: That said, I think you may be underestimating the degree of independence these communes have. Keep in mind, Maoz Haim was founded in 1937, before Israel existed, which makes it a bit hard to argue that it's dependent on Israel. All three of these communes have a high degree of food and energy independence.
> These conditions do not translate in any way to larger scale implementation
So what? I think if you talk to communists, you'll find a lot of communists agree with this as well.
Sometimes solutions don't have to scale. A famous communist once said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the idea of a cancer cell." (Okay, maybe it's a bit of a stretch to call Edward Abbey a communist).
> it's not what majority of people mean when they discuss communism.
So what? The majority of people don't get to tell communists what communists believe. A straw man argument doesn't become valid because the majority of people believe the straw man is real.
My current goal is simply to learn to be happy with what I have and who I am.
As an indirect result of pursuing this I've found that loads of other goals and things that I've wanted to accomplish have become massively easier to progress on.
I've found that creating more space in my brain (I am prone to suffering anxiety) removes the friction I have in starting tasks and increases the enjoyment I get out of them.
Not only have goals become easier to progress on, but I've found that I can take on more.
All of this is a work in progress though, some days/weeks/months are easier than others - but equally the more I learn the more tools I have to deal with setbacks.
For me the things that have had a huge positive impact besides just changing my mind set are:
Wim Hof Method - I felt this would be worth trying to improve my asthma, but I've found it taught me how to meditate too - using this as a spring board I'm exploring other and further meditation techniques.
CBD Oil - this absolutely slayed my baseline anxiety, even if it turns out just to be a placebo, I place high weight on this simple act changing a lot for me.
Exercise (also a goal) - towards the end of last year I was around ~90kg @ 182cm, I'm now around ~75kg with some decent muscle definition - I've focused mostly on bodybuilding, watching the change in the mirror and taking a few minutes to appreciate the changes and my own hard work have been hugely rewarding for me. Also the enordphine rush from some of the workouts is great too.
Closely related to exercise is diet - this is something I am constantly paying attention to now (before I just didn't have the capacity and would happily chow down on McD's multiple times a week despite knowing how bad it was) changes in this impact not just my waist line but also my mood.
Jewelry - I discovered that while it's unusual for most men to do so that wearing jewelery makes me happy, so I disregard what anyone else may think and now wear quite a bit on a daily basis. Might seem a bit off-beat, but it's been a recent personal discovery and I think borne out of focusing just a bit more on being "me" not some ideal projection of myself.
Music (also a goal!), I've started to play the guitar again, I've had abortive attempts at this in the past but simply being able to say to myself "hey, I suck at this and it's OK because I enjoy it" has made it so much easier!
Now, of course there are goals that I am still failing at - learning Mandarin for instance - but seeing the progress on the others and by applying strategies I've learned from one goal or area of self improvement I am hopeful that I will eventually crack it.
Sorry if this diverted and went off topic, but I hope my experiences and rambling helps some people!
How did you change your mindset? Books, articles, techniques?
I currently employ THC to help with my baseline anxiety but that has been going downhill for me recently. May give CBD oil a shot. Do you just vape it?
When you say Wim Hof Method, do you include the cold therapy or just the breathing?
I wonder how much does lack of healthy relationships (romantic or otherwise) plays a role? That has been my biggest problem.
CBD oil I just use a tincture that I apply under my tongue - I'll also occasionally add edible capsules if I feel a day is going to be particularly stressful. From my experiments with THC as a teenager, we didn't mix well - I also used nicotine for a very long time, I wouldn't recommend it though!
For WHM I also do cold showers - I wasn't a fan at first, but now most of my showers are cold. I will note that I live in a fairly tropical climate so "cold" here isn't exactly freezing - I'm interested to see what the experience will be like towards winter as the water temperature will gradually drop. I do find I get the most out of it during periods of breath holding as it really let's me empty my mind.
Lack of healthy relationships can be huge - due to expatriating and people I knew leaving the country I am in I don't have a great deal of close friends who live in the same country as me - I am however happily married.
None of these are absolutes and it has taken me a long time to get to where I am.
I will also readily admit that in many areas I have been exceedingly fortunate and as a result there are many things I don't have to worry about that others do, this naturally makes some things easier - all our paths are unique.
Twenty years ago I set a thirty year goal, literally bet my life on it. It wasn't until two years ago that I was reasonably sure it had a chance of success. I had to, and continue to basically give up everything, no one funds very long term research, so I had to learn to live on less than $200 a month. No healthcare, not being able to buy a new pair of glasses, only being able to buy clothes once a year or so. But I found a university who believed in my work, gave me an office and a flat on campus outside of Phnom Penh and the freedom to follow the project wherever it went. No salary, but it's been enough.
Perseverance is what keeps you sane, gets you up in the morning. It gets you through whatever is thrown at you. I have not had a happy or easy life, but it has been a life full of purpose. I have seen and done things that most people couldn't imagine, that has been, many times, too weird to be believable even as fiction.
Perseverance is a skill you practice every day for the rest of your life. But there are many small compensations. You find kindness and beauty and from time to time pleasure in unexpected places along the way.
With the university's help we will go to press with the first volume later this year, with a volume every year or so until it's finished on or about 2030. No one would willingly choose such a life, you fall into such things, and I was one of the stupid one's who took on such a ridiculously ambitious challenge. With a little luck I will live to see it through to the end.
So for some, purpose and perseverance, trump happiness and comfort and security. Though I admit I am likely and edge case.
I must say though, my wife and I sure as shit would like to live on a little more than $200 a month. :)
But if you have found what you want to do and have set a reasonably long goal (30 years is dedication), then yes humans are imperfect and there will be bits and pieces of motivation still missing. But not many are fortunate to have this goal arising from within.
I like the “shower thoughts” test. Are your goals what you think about in the shower? If yes, then that is probably what you want.
Other story in the same line is “if you are trying to start a startup and you get discouraged by someone and consider not, you probably weren’t meant to do it in the first place.” (Peter Graham I think)
You really can’t not have desires. You can have desires that you don’t want or invisible/preconscious desires, but strictly speaking a person can’t be more desirous (or, loosely, more passionate) than another. It’s like saying a piece of AI is half-invested into its utility function, it just doesn’t work like that.
What? I'm really curious now. What is the project? What was the goal? Don't leave us hanging!
@deerpig you could set up a Patreon or some sort of crowd funding. If a few people interested in your project give you few bucks here and there, it could have a big impact on your income.
His comment history suggests he's old-school, been around the block (China, Japan, Cambodia), has done work for SGI, and has an "Infinite Reality" machine at work (which is described as a "graphics supercomputer").
This is something I've struggled to come to terms with. But looking at my grandpa as an example, he had some plaques and things commemorating him in his local community after he died. He wasn't a hero and he didn't change the world (outside of, by all accounts, being a decent dad and husband), but he was an invested and involved member of his local community.
I'm not the local community type (like being nomadic too much) but my parallel is contributing work to open source projects I use. It's not heroic or a big life goal, but it'll leave the open source community very slightly better than it would have been without me, and that's something.
In my experience, many seem to encourage the opposite (a higher awareness of one's emotional state). Perhaps certain techniques could be considered similar to horse blinders, but I definitely don't think "blindness" is the goal.
Where I disagree is that depression is caused by us being misaligned internally. Anybody who has been there knows that the brain can hijack your perception of the world. When you are depressed everything sucks. We live in an unexplainable universe with billions of assholes and we are all going to die so what's the point of anything? Nihilism takes over. You get more depressed. But once the fog lifts you can find the joy in life and appreciate all the stuff your "rational" depressed self thought was pointless.
From my experience I think its best to not make these grand sweeping life goals in the first place. Take it day by and keep moving forward. What excites you today? What do you daydream about when you are in the shower? People who achieve these "great goals" do so via naturally gained momentum and almost nobody has a life goal that lasts for decades. You start with something, see if you like it, if you do keep that momentum rolling. It should be more natural, feel good, and not be contrived. Be easy on yourself and enjoy the ride. You don't have to be Steve Jobs and even he wasn't trying to be Steve Jobs. He just got the momentum going and kept with it. If it happens so be it but if you are miserable you are doing it wrong.
So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA!
No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a genetic disorder (GCH1 Deficiency). After I yelled at my doctors for years to look more deeply they finally found that it was not that I did not have goals, but that I needed a low protein diet and some medications that a psychiatrist could not give me, and now I am doing better. Now I can have goals.
So while this article might be true for some people with situational depression, I hate these studies because people always said crap like this to me. I was "lazy" and just needed a hobby, and on and on. They psychiatric association does not recognize, still, that mood disorders can be caused by metabolic issues. When they say I do not have enough serotonin and I ask them why they looked at me like they were in Psych 101. And these articles make psychiatrists lazy, putting all the effort on the patient while they sit back and collect check after check.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/7...
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/382815/fnins-12-0...
The deficiency causes problems with amino acid metabolism, which themselves mess up the brain.
The depression was a mere symptom of the underlying disease. When you read the DSM, you realize there are no mental illnesses, just syndromes: sets of signs and symptoms. Except in select few cases, the pathophysiology is unknown.
Protein is split into amino acids and then recombined into proteins inside body. The splitting process and recombination process need glucose in blood and, effectively, drain glucose from blood.
In my experience, some of the amino acid sport drinks can drain glucose from blood to the point where I had clear signs of very low glucose levels, including restlessness and shaking limbs.
The glucose level may affect mood and has other interesting effects.
If you look at what carbs, fats and proteins do with you mood, I think you will see that carbs make one relaxed (see relation between carbs and orexin), fats make one jolly (due to endocannabioids) and proteins make one awake (draining carbs from blood, mainly).
To me it looks like most of them lack professional curiosity and certainly basic empathy. I lost all my respect for doctors over the 6 years based on how I have been treated.
And I agree, even when my tests came back weird my primary care doctor would say, "What do you want to do now?"
Argh
It is frankly absurd to put this onto the patient. It is all about their perceived Physchological basis of the disease, they will humour you on tests and some low harm drugs until you run out of stuff and hope you will finally see the light that CBT will help you.
I have done much of the foot work on ME/CFS. Start looking into aldehydes (malondialdehyde specifically) and the role they play. Also, if you can get your genetics from Ancestry it could help you understand yourself more.
We have far too few doctors per capita to have enough time to treat people. This is mostly because we have institutions set up that reduce the number of doctors that are output (e.g. we have about the same number of medical schools as 100 years ago).
tl;dr doctors have no time, there are lots of knock on effects to this.
more doctors, less income though...
I don't see this as blaming myself, it's just how the brain works. Chronic stress has negative effects for all mammals. Take a look at forced swimming, visible burrow, or other stress experiments. It isn't the animal's fault that it has a negative reaction (in terms of cortisol, neurotransmitters, depression, anxiety, mental/physical fatigue, or whatever) to the stressful situation. The brain has evolved to generate these responses to stress, presumably as a survival tool to help prevent the even worse effects of chronic long-term stress. The one advantage we have as humans is that we have a certain amount of control in getting out of stressful situations.
I think it's more likely that if you're not depressed, chronically anxious or having panic attacks, you'll find it far easier to muster some perseverance.
“Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.”
"Greater within-subject increased goal persistence (but not positive reappraisal or self-mastery) led to larger future declines in disorder counts. However, within-subject change in disorder counts did not substantially influence future change in each cognitive or behavioral strategy"
Participants were 3,294 community-dwelling adults ages 45.62 years
This is for me a (as a fellow sufferer of some of these conditions, who has never received any state support and doesn't even have health insurance) an extremely shaky moral ground.
Because 95% of the homeless population and drug addicts are clinically diagnosable of most of these conditions under DSM IV definitions. And almost none of them receive anything.
If you are homeless and do not have an address there is zero chance to get disability. That is why we should house them first without any qualifications. Or maybe they justneed to set better goals. :)
There is only wealth in this country because we treat the most vulnerable like garbage.
This is the thing I hate most about dealing with doctors. As a child doctors failed to diagnose in me a condition so obvious that a friend of my mother, who works at an airport, was able to figure it out from a mere description. Still my mother had to get angry with the doctor before he would perform a simple blood test for it!
Like in any profession, most of them suck at their job. That wouldn't be such a big deal except that the system in the US is set up to make it absurdly difficult and ludicrously expensive to shop around.
However, it seems that some physicians oversimplify diagnosis so that _only_ the likeliest scenarios are considered. It's also an opportunity for subjective biases to influence an individual doctors definition of "likely."
E.g. Trans broken-arm syndrome
You've made a simple logical error: a study claiming that people who have goals can fend off depression does not imply that those with depression have it because they do not have goals. It means that some people who don't have goals, but do have depression, may remedy it by getting goals. But not everyone.
If the research above is resulting in psychiatrists becoming lazy, it's because they're making the same logical error you are making. So in that sense, you should avoid doing so, since the kind of error you are making is the very thing which leads to the behavior you've experienced.
The proper response (by you, and psychiatrists) is to conclude that trying to encourage goal formation in those with depression seems wise, and will help some, but many (like yourself) will not benefit. Nor should we invert causation and assume the reason people have depression is due to lack of goals, much like if we determined that eating a specific kind of food helped prevent cancer meant that those who for whatever reason didn't have that food in their diet were somehow causing their own cancer by neglecting to eat it.
From the study: "People who showed more goal persistence and optimism during the first assessment in the mid-1990s had greater reductions in depression, anxiety and panic disorders across the 18 years, according to the authors.
And throughout those years, people who began with fewer mental health problems showed more increased perseverance toward life goals and were better at focusing on the positive side of unfortunate events, said Zainal."
and they conclude with your inverted causation:
"Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.”
So people who are not depressed do not easily get depressed. Really? That is the ground breaking work? Re read that part, again and again, and tell me where my logic is wrong. They are saying correlation is causal.
I just told you they were wrong about me during my 30 years of treatment. They thought I had a mood disorder but I had a metabolic disorder. so in this case, yes, they knew less than I did.
I have PARTIAL GCH1 deficiency. This affects a lot more people since it is not detected at birth.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2679294/
And I am in no way blaming all mood disorders on this gene change.
If they said a heating pad could help me fix my muscle strain, does that mean they are saying that I caused a muscle strain by not using a heating pad? That's absurd of course.
They are saying that focusing on achievement of life goals (as opposed to focusing on "fixing" yourself) can have therapeutic value.
>If they said a heating pad could help me fix my muscle strain, does that mean they are saying that I caused a muscle strain by not using a heating pad? That's absurd of course.
If you look at the rest of this thread that is how everyone is interpreting it. read them and talk to them. I am not doing that, doctors do it.
> We wanted to understand what specific coping strategies would be helpful in reducing rates of depression, anxiety and panic attacks.
> Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.”
The second quote is really not far from presenting lack of perseverence or negativity as an active choice, putting the onus on the patient.
The first is that because something is on average true does not mean it is always true. There are cases where perseverance does not help depression. There are many where it does. On average it helps, which is the claim.
Next, it it is not fair to presume that because something helps, that it has a causal relationship with that thing. Most people feel less depressed (temporarily) if they take a dopamine agonist. This does not necessarily mean that their depression was caused by a lack of dopamine, only that dopamine helps. In the same way, focusing on goals will help a lot of depressed people. Influence does not imply causality.
And the last part of that statement about disengaging from goals and having a cynical attitude are also facts not conjecture. Negative thinking and disengaging from goal pursuit are linked to mood decline in virtually all people. This does not imply that people have full control over their thinking and goal pursuit or even that there aren't some people for whom such control is next to impossible.
As clinicians, we teach clients to work with what they have and make decisions that will help them. This study outlines some things that are typically helpful. It does not say that they will be helpful or possible for everyone.
Agreed, but what do you do if it does not help them. THAT is the problem.
I think what trips me is that the article is not expliciting these caveats either. I fail to find a good analogy, perhaps it would be like explaining how sitting around is bad for your health to an audience including wheelchair users.
Sure, it wouldn’t be a false statement, but you’d try to address the elephant in the room somehow. I just wish people don’t get weird advice ideas for depressed people in their life reading the post.
It really doesn't show this at all, you are misreading the study because the author of the article misrepresents it. Very few correlation studies turn into causation studies. Even when we have entire subfields dedicated to it. See amyloid beta.
Other possibilities "goals are protective against anxiety and depression but not changeable" "other factors increase goal driven behavior and protect against anxiety and depression" "goal driven behavior is protective but not curative of anxiety and depression" "goal driven behavior increases likelihood that individual gets treated for anxiety or depression"
Any of which would mean that increasing goal driven behavior would not help with anxiety or depression.
I think that's a problem with the influence of psychology within psychiatry? There is little ability to distinguish organic disorders and the endogenous vs. exogenous question only really gets resolved with respect to whole diagnoses, less common to distinguish w.r.t. an individual.
Curious, were these medications for the symptoms you mentioned in general (Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders), or specific to the genetic disorder that caused those symptoms?
(I assume the latter, but I hate to assume.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrobiopterin_deficiency...
Perhaps everybody struggling with anything has a yet-unknown condition that could be treated with drugs.
Yet based on how we act, even with a handicap, our outcomes will vary widely.
I feel this. I hate all of these phrases.
"Just get a hobby","Go outside more","Set better goals","Pray more","Eat Better","Just adjust your mindset","Just work harder","Make your bed","Read a book","Try meditation","Take a nap","Drink more water","Doubt your doubt", and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, ...
/rant
I "only" had a bad situational depression but when I was at the bottom it was clear that nothing normal, pep talk etc was connected to my reality. And even long after that it was infuriating to be talked down by people with 'lazy' innuendos.
Yet ... I myself realize that in my brain there's a little 'will' part that you can focus on which kinda resonnated with the self part of depression and how you may (in time) give it a push to move away from the depressive state faster.
Sorry if it annoys you, I'm mostly trying to share my experience. Do the best you can in you context. Best wishes.
There's another ship. It has a captain and crew but no destination is set. Where is it going?
There's another ship. It has captain, crew, destination but no course is set. Where is it going?
There's another ship. It has captain, crew, destination and a course set. Everyone is ready to go and intends to go. Where is it going?
Only one of these ships will set sail, leave the harbor, reach a set of map points, follow that course and arrive at its destination. Regardless of being driven off course due to bad weather or other circumstance, only one has a real chance.
"Perseverance cultivates a sense of purposefulness that can create resilience against or decrease current levels of major depressive disorders..."
Sort of. Purpose means perseverance is useful. Lack of purpose means perseverance, resilience or even the least effort can be wasted.
That's taken care of right in the title: "perseverance toward life goals"
There is another ship that comes across some depressive and anxiety provoking spots on the course. The captain consults with other captains and finds out the destination was foolish. But through this process they are able to iterate on setting better and better destinations.
The problem space of life is combinatorially explosive. No one knows the exact best destination, and best destinations both differ from ship to ship and also change over time. Anxiety and depression gets a bad rep but in their non-toxic forms they want us to ask "can I do it" and "is it worth it" respectively. This helps us setting better and better courses.
Chronic anxiety and depression are the ones that are sticky. They tell us "you can't do anything" and "nothing is worth it". Then the right approach (as this article aligns with) is to accept and commit (ACT), and balance them with the participatory knowledge of life, aligned with our values, which in turn (hopefully) informs us that we can do some things pretty well and there are still many things that are worth it.
I think having a destination does help with depression. It certainly helps with knowing when you're off track or are having issues.
It is known that if you think the way to your goal is a smooth ride you can end up in a very big depression when things don't go as planned.
I've had great results applying this principle to day to day annoyances. For example, when I go to meet someone, I always expect a 5-10 minute delay and go prepared (e.g. with a book). My loss (time) is the same, but my mood remains mostly unaffected. What's more, if the person show's up on time, it's a pleasant surprise.
Happiness is wanting what you get.
Maybe the cpt was actually - in hindsight - coming from a pretty decent place. She was just too impatient and immature to realize it. Then she watches a biopic about Jeff Bezos and his "regret minimization framework" (aka FOMO) - so she thought she has to take that risk just because she might regret it. should have never set sail anywhere. in another alternative universe she does everything above (the wrong thing technically) but his home town got nuked and she thinks - good that I left. better live in a boring house next to some boring lake with a husband that I don't love anymore than being dead or crippled by cancer due to the radiation.
"Lets head out - somewhere - and find somewhere interesting, or some people that are interesting, and stop when we find something that fits. We might fail a few times, but it'll be an adventure"
The middle two ships can do this just fine. It just depends on your perspective and what you want from it.
I've been told much of my life that I should be following the ways of the last ship: But to tell you the truth, the only way I'm going to get some of the things I really want is through luck - and to a point, work that I don't really want to do, if we are being honest. But following that 'interesting' thing? It has worked out really well.
It means that bad weather isn't really an issue either - that just leads me to different things of interest. Hopefully, I don't get a surge of ship-destroying plagues. I'm unfortunately close to that - I was diagnosed with MS 1.5 to 2 years ago. But hey, my stuff is pretty mild right now (and I'm over 40) and hopefully it stays that way.
It's rarely said that marriage, kids, job, degree, a house, car, and most physical things are not missions. And in fact, most of these things -- unless accompanied by a "why am i doing this" and attendant missions/goals do not lead to happiness.
Marriage without goals = divorce. Kids without mission = abandonment. Money without a plan = poverty. Degree without a plan = debt/sadness. Relationship without a mission = break up. Programming without a mission = abandoned code.
1. Rearing children with the goal of making them read at 2 years old. Then with the goal of learning calculus at 10. Then others as they grow older.
2. Learning programming by writing a real system that actual people will use -- instead of code katas or reading programming books or attending a boot camp.
3. Marrying not only for love, but with the intention of building a business or farm together.
4. Buying a house, with the knowledge you will sell it or convert it into a rental in a certain number of years. Then repeat with another house.
5. Starting a social media account to cover a specific topic, instead of making random posts about anything (have you noticed the most successful accounts are about one topic??).
6. Taking a degree with the intention of using it in a specific way and knowing how much money you will make to pay off the loan and live a comfortable life.
7. Buying a "beater" car, because you want to hire a new offshore employee for a side project instead of making a high lease payment to the bank.
The world is filled with the stories of people who do things purely on emotion and never had "missions" or a "why" they did the thing.
For ex. I did my undergrad in IT Security. I did an MSDA. I ended up in professional sales. I don't know what to do with all this. I've been good at tackling hard subjects my entire life, but how do you craft a mission from a hodgepodge of difficult and unrelated skillsets?
No one can build your strategy for you-- you'll want one suited for you, and no one knows you better than yourself. Although I am sure certain folks can help: Life Coaches, Counselors, Psychologists, etc.
Find resources on: - Skills that BOTH interest you, and are economically in demand - Geographical areas where those skills have a competitive advantage and are in demand
i.e. bureau of labor statistics
[1] Visualize it: Wages and projected openings by occupation https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2019/article/wages-and-ope...
[2] Fastest growing occupations: 20 occupations with the highest percent change of employment between 2018-28. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm
[3] You can find entire libraries of skills at sites like Lynda.com and Udemy.com
I am an web app developer. No tech degree.
How? Built my skills. And strategically: I am creative, interested in business & entrepreneurship, interested in freedom, technology, and building things. And, I want to make good income so I can support a community where I help people grow.
Looking at those desires... it fits well with a Web App Developer career.
Likewise, you need to determine:
A. What do you want ("Goal". Not having a goal is like having a map without a destination: Going nowhere)
B. What you're willing to get what you want ("How badly do you _want_ to reach your goal? Do you really _want_ it? Again-- how badly? Are you willing to take 6 months off from work to grow your own skillset, full time, via project-based work, in order to leapfrog yourself into a new career?)
Just some ideas. It's not tough. Just ask a search engine the right questions. And know yourself.
Go through trials, tribulations, challenges-- One doesn't get to know their self by living an easy, meandering life. We get to know our self and what we're capable of by going through significant challenges-- By testing ourselves.
You completed your mission of IT Security. But then you realized you love professional sales. Now you can aim to be the best in that.
For example, I'm a really good programmer for the past 30 years. But now I found i absolutely love online marketing -- so much more than writing Ruby, Erlang and Elixir it's not even close!
Now my mission is to do things related marketing. And I'm putting projects together that will keep me busy doing it. Loving it is not enough, so I force myself to practice it every day by marketing for real customers and products.
That's a more focussed starting point which may lead you to find your mission.
I'd say you don't have to fit the entirety of your skillset into a mission to be happy/successful, and that a mission with only part of your skillset doesn't imply you'll be at a competitive disadvantage.
All attained skills and knowledge do — or will eventually — contribute in one way or another to your path, even if they are currently irrelevant to your mission.
Personally, the best decision I have made was to start going to a psychologist weekly. It's essentially a debugger for the mind, provided you put in the work of dumping your mind data on them.
Hol up. A little off topic, but a better goal is to be a supportive and loving parent. Don't have kids with a goal to have them do X by Y. Children are there own person. Guide them, direct them, support them, teach them, but their goals should be their own.
A better mission might be to help your kids explore their own interests, find what they're passionate about, and then do whatever you can to foster and encourage that interest.
I have a kid who I taught to read by 2 years old. That was a mission. She hated it and hated me for it at the time.
But I just came off a 2 hour session with her teaching her SEO. She was jumping to do it, because that early reading taught her how to be self-sufficient in learning things herself from the very beginning.
Another mission was to teach her how to find and learn anything she wants in a short period of time. I did that and now she complains to me that her friends want her to do everything for them.
I told her that's how she makes money. By doing the things that other people are too lazy to do.
The point is that your mission with your kids is to actually force generic life skills down your children's throats. It's not an option!!!
Teach them to read! Teach them basic life values! Teach them global techniques that they can apply to learn anything they want later. These things are not something you leave up to kids -- unless they are learning disabled somehow.
Now she is interested in art, music, computers -- none of which I taught her, because she was able to quickly learn it herself.
A lot of parents just hands-off the kids, particularly in the early stages, and then you end up with a kid that is socially stilted, or unable to do anything for themselves later.
> The point is that your mission with your kids is to actually force generic life skills down your children's throats. It's not an option!!!
You're presenting a false dichotomy, where the only options are either forcing skills down your children's throats, or being completely hands off. There's a way to teach them good skills that doesn't include forcing them to hit arbitrary deadlines for reading and calculus, and making a 2 year old hate you in the process.
I'm glad this parenting style has worked for you, but it's not a generically applicable way to raise kids.
Put her in an environment that she can only navigate by reading signs?
Flashcards and the conditional withholding of food?
Then i had her put simple words together - syllable by syllable. It was shocking how quickly she learned.
But the key to it was DISCIPLINE.
It was not something she could avoid or say that she did not feel like doing it today. I was cold and unemotional about it. Because its as basic a skill as breathing in the modern world.
As she got older, we spent the summers reading 2 novels each week (Jack Vance). Then as she finished a chapter, i had her bring it to me and summarize what she read.
This is how she learned complex vocabulary. Through practical use. She got A's in anything related to language from the beginning of school.
Coincidentally -- its the same way how i learn new computer languages, by diving into real projects immediately.
Children are definitely their own person and I generally agree with what you're saying, but sometimes kids don't develop their own goals. Then they graduate from high school and their childhood is basically over and they have no inner voice driving them in a certain direction.
This is happening with someone I know right now and the anxiety that it's creating is making the problem much worse.
Having outsized expectations of children is often a recipe for resentment. Children don’t have tendency to evolve the way you plan before they are born.
Buying a house just to live in is enough for most people.
You just have to have something to aim for with your spouse, or you do get bored. Currently where I live, i see families working in the family business all the time and they really are forced to be together working on something.
Whereas their children just want to move from the provinces and live in an apartment with a spouse and they are miserable, because they don't have something to work together with.
They think having the house, the wife and the car is enough. It isn't. It's just the recipe for a midlife crisis after you get all of those things.
Curious, when did you start thinking about your life in terms of mission (s) and what was the trigger for it?
Now 40 years later, i'm cogent enough to put it into words and mentor it to younger people in an elevator pitch way that they "get it".
These all form their own funnels. Take number 3, marriage and building something. That one alone if pursued means your dating preferences are very different from if you have a different purpose/goals. You filter out people differently. Potential actually matters. Idiosyncrasies matter. Lust is interpreted differently.
Your lens would be very different from someone who just marries for "love". Or casual hookups. Or even just marriage by itself.
Having a purpose to getting married from the time of selecting the mate, is going to be different and driven in a different way.
It makes all the difference in finding the best person suited for you.
By claiming mission, it implies you mean values based reasoning... completely different than 'logically justified'
1. Teach my kids how to become better at learning, and teach myself to minimize the urge to control them.
3. Marrying with the goal of supporting the spouse in their self-actualization, no matter what that might be. Buying things is seldom self-actualization, but a distraction from that.
6. Taking a degree which motivates you (love the process, not the goal - a degree takes too long to just push through)
I kind of, or absolutely agree, with the other ideas.
Some of parent‘s ideas rest on the idea of gaining control over the future or other people (not even little kids can or should be controlled perfectly), or goals that are so far off that it’s unclear that one would ever reach them. Goals that are far off AND specific are more influenced by external factors than one‘s own doing - which is the very definition of gambling.
It reminds me of a quora response where Andrew Ng says you should teach your kid to program as a toddler. Not everything has to be hyper-optimized. Let your child live their life.
My dad barely finished high school, but he did teach me to read by the age of 2. It profoundly changed my life.
> It's rarely said that marriage, kids, job, degree, a house, car, and most physical things are not missions.
No, they are missions. Anyone without them who wants them views each of these as a major milestone in their life. However, like you said, you need to find another mission after completing these.
These things are kind of a like a "life plan starter pack", to give you a framework for what many people view as a set of good missions for your life. But many unhappy people who have these things have failed to continue to pursue missions after attaining them. I think this is why it's easy (but wrong) to say that they "aren't missions".
Now I don't like the if-you're-not-a-billionaire-then-your-entirely-incomplete subtext of motivation/self-improvement culture, but this man spoke honestly about having a goal to acquire something luxurious for himself, and the work ethic it instilled in his younger self.
I suppose the point is there is a huge different between life goals (even material ones) and retail therapy.
Getting married (as in, finding someone you want to marry and making it happen) is a mission. Perhaps becoming a parent is for many. Striving to be a good parent is definitely a mission.
For a lot of people this is the Standard Life Script, and they never even realise it's only one of many options. Then they get older and suddenly it hits them they've been living their life on autopilot with the sat-nav set to the factory default destination, and that's not where they want to be at all.
It is also untrue. I have no mission for my marriage, or my children. Neither did my parents, or my wife's parents, nor do my siblings. No divorce in that cohort, and no abandonment.
Same goes for children.
If you truly couldn’t care less about them then there’s no mission there, but most people do.
You think you have control of your life, but you do not.
No they don't. Your findings suggest that people who have more perseverance have reduced risk of depression and anxiety later in life. Additional research would be needed to prove that "we can increase perseverance by aspiring towards goals", and that "increasing perseverance reduces that individuals risk of anxiety and depression". And I would be very surprised if both of these are true.
And once I'm being happy and optimistic, it's natural to persevere and accomplish stuff more effectively, and I have desired results. That is, "be -> do -> have". Which is just the opposite of the western cultural default of "have -> do -> be". As in: "If I were wealthy, I could do all this fun stuff, and then I'd be happy."
The article in question used a lagged design, using temporally prior markers to predict later change. This is not fully causal, but it's not fully correlative either. In the field, it's consider to provide preliminary causal evidence. Still needs additional research to be sure.
> Unlike in previous research, Zainal and Newman did not find that self-mastery, or feeling in control of one’s fate, had an effect on the mental health of participants across the 18-year period.
Kind of a given that people with less sense of purpose would be more prone to anxiety/depression.
It’s why my anxiety always rematerializes when it turns out that the current company is a hellhole too. Can’t have a sense of purpose when everything is pointless.
Isn't a big part of depression is pessimism? I feel like this sentence is the same as saying "People who showed no signs of depression ... had greater reductions in depression"
The one thing that surprises me is that they quickly go on to conclude that therapies should focus on what they studied. Quote: "Treatments for MDD, GAD, and PD should attempt to enhance perseverance and optimism."
A predictor isn't necessarily an actuator. I think that a few steps are skipped if a predictor is immediately used as a tool to correct an issue rather than to primarily track it. They would need to do a separate study to know IF one possible new treatment can come out of training in "goal persistence".
There are other ways to think about the results. For example, some of the criteria to diagnose a Major Depressive Disorder could be refined thanks to this kind of research. If a sort of "goal" or "persistence" assessment is tracked, the intensity of the disorder might be better perceived, which in turn could mean that therapists and psychiatrists could work towards more fitting treatment amongst what is already researched and known.
In any case, as someone with a fairly intense mix of two of the disorders in this study, I am always happy to see some research come out (especially when n >> 3 undergrads who were passing by).
Read the journal article
Something about the format or style of that part of the page made my mind assume it was a link to a related page and my eyes just skipped right over it. I have included the link for you below.
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000428.pd...
> A predictor isn't necessarily an actuator.
And moreover interventions can be harmful. Unless they know it's possible to correct such a deficit, identifying a deficit only does so much.
I think there's more awareness that treatments can be harmful in medicine, oddly.
I wanted to become a top scientist. Yet, the academic path is full of disillusionment (mainly with the system). Perseverance gave me the power to go through sacrifices one after another and to carry on. However, only after I let it go (and turning to data science / deep learning), I became much happier and emotionally stable. (A longer version here: https://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html)
"Perseverance is good" is a dangerous survival bias fallacy.
(Edit not at all being flip, How to spend my limited time creates a lot of anxiety and depression. I doubt I’m alone)
> participants were asked to rate their goal persistence (e.g., “When I encounter problems, I don’t give up until I solve them”), self-mastery (e.g., “I can do just anything I really set my mind to”) and positive reappraisal (e.g., “I can find something positive, even in the worst situations”). Diagnoses for major depressive, anxiety and panic disorders were also collected at each interval.
> People who showed more goal persistence and optimism during the first assessment in the mid-1990s had greater reductions in depression, anxiety and panic disorders across the 18 years, according to the authors.
Not only is your conclusion a valid one from the data, I'd say that it should very well by the default conclusion. Answering low on their goal-persistence questions would be obvious flags for being depressed.
Especially because there's no casual link that can be established, the most I could say from reading this article is that if you aren't interested in pursuing goals, you may be depressed.
The value here is that showing the existence of an emotion earlier in ones life is correlated to lessening of symptoms later is that it helps therapists know which emotions and behaviors to target during long term treatment like cognitive/behavioral therapy.
At least that's how I read it, I'm not a professional
“I got here, you didn’t. Therefore, you must not have tried hard enough.”
Hear it every day.
These papers seem like mere artefacts of the researcher's mind. At best, they learn a lot by (re)defining the problem, looking into different methods for testing their hypothesis ...
Personally, I never understood how mental unease can be tackled on the verbal level. Even if your definition of "perseverance", for instance, appears very succinct - there is no way it will mean the same to me in a couple of days, months or even years.
In fact, because of this I constantly have to redefine my mental models to minimize the time I stay passive/goal-less. This may not sound so bad, but it is emotionally rather taxing and I still spend a lot of time down in the dumps.
Psychology in a nutshell.
Unfortunately, I find this article seems to be supporting the ol' "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" method of treating mental disorders. What were the other aspects of the study? Were medications monitored? What level of therapy was being given? I don't see anything in the article that suggests it couldn't have been the case that those that improved in their battle with mental disorders had also been under the effect of successful medication and therapy and thus their perseverance toward or even identification of life goals was made possible through that.
Especially since the article said it was bidirectional :p
For example; it might be one's goal to travel to another country but they are afraid of flying. Traveling is a goal/value thus they would work towards accepting the presence and sensations of the fear of flying in order to achieve that goal. That's a greatly simplified description of ACT but you get the gist.
If the answer to that is then something like "it gets me a sense of adventure", then the "value" (as defined in ACT, anyway) might be just that: you want to live adventurously, and traveling is a "goal" that you believe, at least for now, can bring you a little bit of that. In fact, one of my favorite ACT exercises is finding adverbs that fit these ideas, because adverbs cannot be "attained" like goals can. That's the whole problem with goals, in fact, that leads indirectly to a lot of pain: goals can be attained.
ACT is lovely, but I'm biased. If you have any questions please ask!
Do you apply it in your own life, and if so, how? (If you don’t mind sharing!)
This is my interpretation of why this concept may be a useful aid to help one step outside their own perspective, and possibly help reveal unconscious desires, motivations, fears, and more.
The point isn't the adverbs themselves; that's just a way of getting to what matters most to you. So the exercise is something like "fill in the blank: I want to live ____ly."
In my case, ones I "discovered" in myself fairly early were "candidly" and "compassionately" (or kindly - they're not exactly the same, I know, but for me they map onto very similar things). So in other words, two of my values, as ACT defines them, are candor and compassion.
The effect is great, because there's no goal-pressure or even goal-attainment. There's no day that'll come in which I'll "be candid"; instead, I'm free to "derive" goals from that value, e.g. "how can I work some candor into _____ thing I'm doing today?". This conversation with my siblings; this project at work; me sitting down to do my taxes. It's weird sometimes, and you can either dismiss it or use it as a kind of creative prompt: "at first glance, my values don't really apply to this activity, but what's a way to work them in?"
I can say more but I don't want to ramble.
I responded below to another commenter, not on your behalf of course. I hope I didn’t misrepresent your point. Thanks for posting.
I've just seen your comment below and it's great to see that people in this community are curious about these ideas and mental health more broadly. I don't think you misrepresented my point at all; in fact you engaged with it in a way I hadn't considered before. I think it's essential to remind ourselves just how freakin' young psychology, psychiatry, "mental health", and all within these things (especially ACT) really are. I don't think the public really knows how little we know as a profession, and how much many of the most touted interventions are, from researchers' points of view, really just modest attempts at making a positive impact. The public certainly aren't aware of the possible negative consequences of mental health treatments, including psychotherapy. And I'm sad to say many of my colleagues don't think a lot about this potential for _iatrogenesis_ , as it's known, either. All of which is to say that the more that intelligent people, like yourselves here on HN, engage critically with mental health, the better.
I'll gladly continue posting here, and I thank you for the encouragement. It doesn't seem like HN has direct messages, sadly, otherwise I'd happily offer you or anyone else to reach out in private any time.
The version of the exercise I gave was extremely abbreviated - it's a web forum, after all! - so it's necessarily stripped of a lot of detail and context. In a real engagement with a patient, I'd have addressed questions like yours right out of the gate. So apologies. (I hope you see this!).
The short answer to all of them is: it's just fine! The purpose here isn't to get a highly formal, systematic, rigid "code of action" that you live by strictly like some kind of Roman philosopher (though that stuff is incredibly interesting, and ACT has debts to much of it). Instead, the purpose of the values thing is to assist in being able to respond flexibly to pain and suffering while committing to some of the things you find most meaningful - things that are larger than yourself that you can serve.
Is it bad to have too many adverbs? Heavens, no. This is an iterative process, so if the first thing that comes out of your head is a tsunami of possible values, that's terrific. What I might recommend next is to quickly rank-order them based on a simple gut feeling of which ones really interest you right now, these days.
Contradictory adverbs: I don't want to sound glib, but I'll say it anyway: you're human! Of course you'll have contradictory values. That's okay. Since the entire point of ACT is to "act" (heh) in the world, to live these values in some way, however modestly, the contradictions don't necessarily matter so much if, in picking one in one instance and trying to act on it somehow, you walk away from the situation with a feeling of "I'm uncomfortable because this clashes a bit with other things I find important, but I know that I didn't act purposelessly back there" - if that makes any sense.
So basically your suspicions in your last question are correct: just get a few, don't overthink it, go out there and try to live them or instantiate them in some way (doesn't matter how small!), and then return to reflect on how that went. It might be that, in acting on some value, you find that actually you don't believe in it that deeply, or it's not really truly you, or whatever, and you can drop it and try the next one out. Like I said, this is an iterative, lifelong process, and it's mutable and it'll change and grow and go in different, surprising directions. The point isn't to do this exercise once -- it's to begin doing it on and off for the rest of your life, in the same way that a navigator keeps looking up at the night sky and keeping an eye on Polaris every now and then.
I hope this was somewhat helpful to you. I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any more questions.
Then the observed correlation would be the reverse causation of the article.
https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Opportunities-Reality-Antho...
https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happin...
Why? They help to rewire your brain and help you detach from a lot of the things and ideas. Not a silver bullet (depression is one of several, natural, human states) but may help some who want to avoid the pharmacological route.
A lot of my family were optimistic and happy, even though they worked long hours, and tried to make it, and generally we didn't have problems with mental issues (even though we've been through an economic crisis, wars, poverty, famine, etc...)
The still is the master of unrest.
Realizing this,
the successful person is poised and centered
in the midst of all activities;
although surrounded by opulence,
he is not swayed.
Why should the lord of the country flit about like a fool?
If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
To be restless is to lose one's self-mastery.
- Lao Tzu
It's so easy to fall into this trap of obsessing over achieving your one goal to the detriment of your health and sanity (developing OCD, etc.)
Can anyone relate? for me it was the gym which spilled over into unhealthy diets and unhealthy relationship to eating normal food that had carbs like it was going to kill me until I realized how obsessed I was becoming and quit the gym for outdoor activities.
Ended up giving up on that pursuit, and went into the software world and became a developer. It was really hard throwing that previous dream out, sunk cost and all, but I have never been happier than I am now. I realized that my single focus and obsession about achieving that specific goal meant that the rest of my life had been essentially halted. That's not the case anymore.
I think sometimes, at least for myself, we can get so caught up in the idealized end goal, that we forget that life happens between now and the end goal. If we don't take care of ourselves between those two end-points, we will either never reach that goal, or when we do, be unable to appreciate it.
I.e. it's not a matter of telling people to have a goal to avoid depression, but rather that people who are self motivated are also less prone to depression.
That seems almost obvious, and it causes less cognitive dissonance for me.
Healthier mind and body allow to pursue more opportunities and work on longer term goals. Any kind of disorder means that it's hard to get the normal stuff done.
Lately though I've been thinking something isn't a waste of time if it makes money.
People without $DISORDER show less symptoms of $DISORDER.
Everyone already said this. Sorry.