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Comment by jacksonkmarley | Hacker News Reader

> in my experience it is usually tied to some kind of predicted loss of love and connection

This seems like a creative explanation that probably makes an article such as this seem a bit more quirky and interesting or something. Otherwise it's not a bad piece, but I don't think potential loss of love or connection is necessary to explain not wanting to do some difficult/annoying/time consuming task.

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I think the article is describing resistance not just in terms of ‘difficult’ creative processes but any excuse you could make for any action that would likely benefit you.

Hence that line is more for people who resist finding new connections to people because of past problems. Learned fear of action is just that - learned. And it can be unlearned given the time and practice.

Well the first example in the article was about the author completing her PhD, and it mentioned productivity and making use of talents, and seemed to be talking about fear of success, so I read it as a (strange) extension of that.

If it was meant to be about more personal relationship type stuff the author could have discussed that explicitly. Maybe the piece needed an extra paragraph to explain better what the link was.

Yeah I think their analogies are a bit mixed, but the general idea of ‘learned reaction’ is still there, even if the examples the author used didn’t mesh well together.

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