Psychologist shows why we “choke” under pressure – and how to avoid it | Hacker News Reader

Psychologist shows why we “choke” under pressure – and how to avoid it

news.uchicago.edu

6 pointssushumna5 comments

Choking is my main psychological problems. The description of working memory shrinking is exactly what I suffer from and I can actually sense it happening.

In high stress situations such as interviews I find it impossible to explore problems because I struggle to keep the problem in my head. It's really frustrating.

Are you suggesting going into an interview with a completely empty head and just not worrying about it? My best interviews just happened to be during times when I completely winged it and had no pre-mental analysis before hand.

Well not to sound snarky, but as it happens you guys are two different people.

We are, thinking about this a little further I distinctly remember annoying my teachers at school. I would ace a written maths test and be less than average at mental maths tests. Same questions.... very different results.

It didn't really bother me as a child but I wish I'd overcome it. It feels like there is a storm in my head and I can't get to the answer or make progress.

Oh well, that's life.

I seem to have had this choking feeling for a long time aswell, very often when singled out by an authority figure. I don't know when, but somehow I learnt/realized that the only reasonable thing is to stop having fear, because nothing could be gained from acting fearfully. It sounds a little too easy to be real, but it was a headfirst approach to the problem with no real nor perceived downsides.

Over the years, this has resulted in an interesting kind of behaviour: My mind can be completely calm in pretty much any situation. You could say that I have utter control of my mind. But interestingly my body doesn't follow! (or the subconscious). It is actually quite annoying, sometimes I downright start to shiver, I need to go to the toilet multiple times in a short period of time...all the while wondering what the hell is going on, since in my mind I'm completely fine with the situation. Last time this happened was at my final oral bachelor's exam.

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