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Comment by NayamAmarshe | Hacker News Reader

It's always fear, isn't it?

We're afraid to approach people, afraid to ask for help, afraid that someone might react in the worst possible way or something really bad might happen.

But obviously, it never happens the way we imagine. Reality is 100% of the time, different from our imagination and yet, many of us still fail to remember that.

Every good opportunity that I ever got, was from me coming out of my comfort zone and avoiding to avoid situations.

It's important to remember, anxiety is a useful defense mechanism, but not 99% of the time.

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As an anxious person with people-pleasing tendencies, something I've been trying to focus on is reframing the situation and removing fear entirely. For me, fundamentally the fear of social interactions comes from the fear I'm going to do something wrong, that person will react badly, and I'll feel bad about myself. I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions which is something you cannot control.

Instead, I'm trying to focus on feeling good or bad based on my intentions, and seeing people's reactions as merely a feedback loop to better align my actions with my intentions. It has been difficult but I think it is slowly working.

> Instead, I'm trying to focus on feeling good or bad based on my intentions, and seeing people's reactions as merely a feedback loop to better align my actions with my intentions.

This is the way. People might disagree, but I've noticed that our intentions really do influence the outcomes because our intentions affect the way we approach problems (Kinda like Wave function collapse). My world is a mere reflection of who I really am, what I really think and what I meditate upon.

Yes, I completely agree. Instead of being upset with outcomes (like how people react to me in interactions), there's three things I've been trying to instead focus on: Am I at peace with my core values? Do my intentions align with those values? And finally, do my actions align with those intentions. If something bad has happened, and those three questions are a 'yes', then you have no reason to feel bad because you've been completely true to yourself and this occurence is something outside your control. If it's a 'no', then you probably need to do some reflection and figure out where in that chain something is going wrong.

If you say something unpleasant to a boss or someone else with the power to hurt you in life, even if it is aligned with your values (like enforcing boundaries or refusing unethical tasks), you may get fired, lose your income and destabilize your future safety, and have every reason to feel bad about your situation.

Still you might think, I did the best I could.

Epictetus would add that you need to act in accordance with "nature", by which he meant the world as it is, including human behaviour, not as we want it to be. In this case "nature" would include the behaviour of the boss and you can act accordingly, knowing that if you challenge them you may suffer repercussions.

I see your point but I’d argue that if you feel bad about this it means your core value is actually financial stability over sticking to your principles at any cost, and in that case your actions and intentions didn’t align with what you truly value.

Easy to say when you aren’t homeless or at risk of being made homeless.

For some folks, unfortunately, lying at times is a necessary survival mechanism.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. If you value financial stability over taking a stand about things you might disagree with, then lying for survival is aligned with your values. Using the ideas I described above, this would be completely acceptable for the person doing that.

I've been doing this too, but saying to myself "you are off the hook altogether" with the reasoning that the harm from not attempting something is just so much worse than any typical consequence from saying or doing something dumb in the moment, to the point it needn't even be a consideration. But I like this approach of focussing on intention, to rationalize it.

But your actions may have good intentions but still end up getting a bad reaction. Think codependency; you may have good intentions dealing with the other person's bad behaviour, but you're still encouraging the bad behaviour that way, and you may still resent your own actions despite your good intentions.

That's the idea though, if your intentions are sound but you're not getting the reactions you expect, then you need to re-evaluate how you're acting. The important part is not to beat yourself up about it - bad reactions are just a way for you to learn and correct your actions, fundamentally you are still the person you think you think you are.

They key thing here is that what you’re describing can be interpreted several ways.

One could be maladaptive (long term) and is the easy approach (or may be necessary to survive short term) - ‘oh, I need to be nicer or give more’, or ‘oh, I need to manipulate them or make them be okay with this’ which is the codependent approach.

The other is to step back, realize perhaps you’re already giving too much, and it’s time to leave (safely) or deal with more blowback at the moment to set a boundary even at the risk of real problems.

That takes courage and a wider view, exactly what is hard to do when in these situations though.

>I've realised this entire calculus is broken, because you feel good or bad based on people's reactions which is something you cannot control.

Yes. A thousand times this. It has taken me years to create a situational intuition around this. Another thing that I have had to learn is that people aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are. Like, take whatever amount of time that you think someone is thinking about you in any social situation, and divide that by 10. That’s still more than they are thinking about you.

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” - Mark Twain

I've weirdly noticed a type of analagous mechanism in relation to anxiety where I castastrophize or engage in worst-outcome thinking and when things inevitably turn out ok, the relief from the incongruity has a somewhat "euphoric" and calming effect. I feel like it might be somewhat maladaptive and "addictive"

I remember reading something similar about people who survived bombings in London during the war.

Apparently many of the survivors were quite content as they had somehow survived the destruction.

I think "meaning" plays a huge role and when you can get yourself to buy into a productive/growth mindset-type narrative, it does seem to help immunize against trauma or at the very least, to help integrate it to the point the negative effect is attenuated

Definitely sounds like not a good thing, even though it ties in with pithy sayings like "expect the worst but hope for the best" or "Don't get your hopes up and you'll never be disappointed".

Yeah that advice is the worst if you actually live it.

Prepare for the worst (as in planning), but never take it to heart or you’ll drown.

Does this all feel familiar?

https://youtu.be/_tpB-B8BXk0

I don’t know if it’s always this way, but I create emergencies and catastrophes because I otherwise have no motivation to do anything. My back has to be against the wall to get me to act. It’s been a lifelong issue, I’ve tried to kill myself several times because of it, and I learned it was ADHD in the last month. 100% of my issues are explained by this. I never would have guessed.

That may very well be. Probably related to ADHD and traumatic lack of agency for much of life

I'm speaking autobiopically, to clarify.

This was first attributed to Mark Twain in a Singapore newspaper 13 years after his death, so was probably not actually said by him. It looks like it's just one of those things people say:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/04/never-happened/

Good quote none the less and from what I know of Mark Twain, he wouldn’t have minded being attributed that.

Spot on. This hit me a few weeks ago when I was considering a long workout class ln Peloton. I was hesitant to hit the start button because it was late, I was tired, etc. Then I realized that it was genuinely harder to hit play than to actually do the class.

Literally I've done thousands of workouts and have never regretted one, yet every time there's this negotiation to not do it. I am connecting that to your "reality is different 100% of the time" point.

It's sort of a meme but I experience this pretty frequently with running. I've been a distance runner for over 30 years now but when I have a long run and I wake up and I'm just not feeling it, I will stare at my running shoes with pure hatred for a while before finding the courage to lace up and move. It's always the right decision, I always feel incredible once I get going, but it's sometimes very hard to summon the motivation at the onset.

This book by David Burns [1] taught me that ACTION comes first, AND THEN motivation arrives. If you lay there and wait to be motivated, it will never happen. Specifically:

1. Action

2. Results

3. Motivation

4. Repeat!

Anti-pattern:

1. Motivation

2. Action

3. Results

4. Does not work

When I notice myself using self-talk like "ugh, I just don't feel like it" I thing of A-R-M and it helps.

1: https://amzn.to/3shnZlg

Some days you have to find motivation and some days motivation finds you.

Either way, it's because of your actions.

> This book by David Burns [1] taught me that ACTION comes first, AND THEN motivation arrives.

Existence precedes essence?

I'm assuming the above affiliate link is the book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr. David Burns

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...

I am assuing this is in the context of some kind of mental health issue? Because this reads and feels backwards to me. Maybe it is a recipe for people without motivation, and that is fine. But I, for one, am mostly driven by motivation. I dont do things just because they are written on a list, or because someone told me it is supposedly good. I do things because I am intrinsically motivated to do so, or not. Just performing an action in hope of positive affirmation to boost motivation feels like the algorithm to drive a robot, not a human.

It's not necessarily a "mental health issue", it's just fairly common procrastination.

Also, there's motivation and there's (self-) discipline. You get up in the morning or do things either because you feel like it, or because you have to. Of course it feels better if you feel like it (you're motivated), but if you're not motivated then discipline has to take over.

> I am assuing this is in the context of some kind of mental health issue?

Yes, if you are already 'self-actualized', you don't need to be thinking about behavior modification frameworks, your behaviors are already serving you.

Some people have circumstances and long-lived reactions and behaviors for those circumstances that make it very difficult to change course, even if they have a real desire to. This 'disconnectedness' between lived experience and personal goals and values can lead to a lot of anguish. In those cases, following a framework, even though it can feel 'weird', can lead to the positive sparks required for change.

> Anti-pattern:

> 1. Motivation

> 2. Action

> 3. Results

> 4. Does not work

Action and discipline (the habit of doing the same action) beat motivation everytime. And yet you will find people on HN that will fight to death that motivation is enough or that motivation is the moving force of discipline. Up to redefining words if needed. I think it's because of the warped guilt trip of the saying "you didn't do it/achieve it because you weren't motivated enough" and the "entrepreneuship" spirit of the audience who needs to believe that they can succeed no matter what and motivation is the main factor because it's something fuzzy enough they can say they had it or hadn't when they fail/succeed and ignore the hard unpleasant things like hard work, luck, skills, talent, etc.

I think a big part of the difficulty here is that "motivation" is a very broad term, and people often mix up different aspects of it (both intentionally and unintentionally). It pretty much covers the "full stack" of goal-oriented behavior: everything from the neurological factors that balance action vs. inaction generally to the most abstract meta-goals toward which actions are ultimately directed. When people say they "lack motivation", the experience they're describing might involve any mixture of deficiency in the biological foundations of attention and behavior, lack of identifiable goals, or lack of belief/understanding in the connections between actions and goals. An aphorism like "discipline beats motivation" can't possibly come close to engaging that full spectrum, so even if there's value in the underlying idea, there will probably always be people who feel that someone saying it is misunderstanding or ignoring their difficulties.

Furthermore, I think what people are sometimes confronting when they discuss motivation is personal belief in markedly different goals than society promotes. In such cases they're not really expressing a lack of motivation generally, but rather frustration with a disconnect between the goals they actually believe in and the goals that they've been told to pursue (typically with according extrinsic reward/punishment). Telling such people that they just need to develop discipline is probably about as useful as telling atheists that they just need to go to church.

Yes most of human behavior is about fear - just that we mostly aren’t aware of it. Almost everything is a coping strategy for fear - some constructive, others destructive. Some people end up with more of the constructive ones, others with more of the destructive ones. The way to have some control over this is mindfulness, to practice being aware of the fear whenever it comes, and then of the habitual response. And then to practice responding differently if one doesn’t find one’s habitual response constructive.

At the same time, as someone very prone to this kind of behavior, with siblings with similar issues to talk to, we've all found that few attempts at helping are more frustrating than being told "just remember that you don't need to be anxious". The entire point is that in the moment that just doesn't work. It's kind of like telling a person with ADHD to just pay attention.

This 100%. But the only time where I do have the courage to step out of that comfort zone is when I have that don't-give-a-shit attitude usually triggered by a specific life situation for e.g divorce made me not give a shit about being self-conscious about going to the gym or I'm pretty bad at asking people for help but had to approach someone at immigration to get help with my passport in front of everyone there.

I wish it comes easy like with the people I know for e.g no worries or issues at all with questioning a contractor regarding the price of remodelling a kitchen, sending back dishes due to some quality issues..etc

A little anxiety is a good thing. It’s the nagging feeling that maybe you should complete that pre-flight checklist.

I forecast a lot of doom, but try to bother only with the dooms I can prevent or mitigate. This is useful for going “I should replace that pipe before it bursts” or “I should fill up on gas here as it’s 300km to the next station”.

Where it goes wrong is doom we either cannot control at all, or cannot control without inflicting greater dooms - what someone else might think, whether the sun will rise tomorrow.

I feel we are trained (thanks, marketing. Thanks, social animals) to sensitise ourselves to a great many fears, most of which are beyond our control, and it does us little good.

Case in point: a little over a week ago I was having apoplectic paroxysms over the amount of stuff I have to do at home before winter - foundations to dig, brush to clear, firewood to gather. Then, a forest fire ripped through our land, which was somewhere in my mind as “definitely one day, probably not today, don’t sweat it, but have a plan”. The former anxiety I was letting grow out of all proportion - so fucking what if I don’t dig foundations this year? No deck. Boo hoo.

The latter, if I’m honest, occasionally kept me up at night, and occasionally hovered around the edge of my field of imaginary view, like a particularly irritating fly, but after I would reassure myself that we had go-bags packed, that we had the ability to run without hesitation, it would subside. It’s that whole agency thing - being able to take what actions you can to alleviate an anxiety. If there’s no meaningful action to be taken, it’s a useless anxiety, best forgotten.

If anything, more positives have emerged than negatives - the fire service fixed our road, which we’d been begging the council to do for years, the flammable brush is cleared, and we discovered we have a great many friends.

Sometimes it takes the manifestation of one of our anxieties to remind us what is and what isn’t worth worrying about. Watching a friend or family die also has the desired effect - but unfortunately from experience, it isn’t permanent, and we (I mean I) seem to need a slap in the face from time to time to remind us what matters.

This reminds me of Seneca's letter on groundless fears. "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." [1]

[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...

Always comes back to uncertainty. The things we avoid have somewhat unpredictable outcomes. Fear of calling someone: who will answer, will they resent the interruption. Fear of submitting work: is it what they wanted, is it good enough. Avoiding starting a creative job for a client: am I taking the right tack, am I wasting my time?

My personal flavor of social anxiety is quite a bit different. I don't expect to have a negative social interaction (I almost never do), and when it does happen, it doesn't actually bother me that much (I find it very easy to roll my eyes and dismiss assholes).

My anxiety stems from the fear that the interaction will be exhausting. And that fear is almost always realized.

The only thing I've found that reduces my anxiety is to ensure that I am feeling very energetic (e.g., getting a good night's sleep and giving myself an extra strong dose of caffeine), to make sure the interaction happens in an easier and less tiring format (e.g., face-to-face where I can read their face and body language, as opposed to something like a phone call where I have to work extra hard to process what they are saying), and to make sure my schedule is clear for the next few days for recovery. When I can do these things, I find myself actively looking forward to social interactions and enjoying them a great deal. I can even manage to be downright outgoing and charming.

So I'm not really sure what a good solution is here. Life requires more social interactions than I can properly prepare for, and assorted necessary interactions sap all my energy for more fulfilling interactions. It creates this conundrum where I crave more interactions with my friends, but I simultaneously avoid them; even receiving a text from a friend fills me with dread.

Anxiety is maladapted for the modern world. Everyday situations in our ancestral past were legitimately dangerous so in that context it paid to be excessively cautious.

Its honestly getting to that point though, and, depending on the robustness of your support network and economic situation, it can actually get that bad or worse.

Yes, but we are one proverbial red button away from nuclear hell on Earth no ancestor could have prepared for, where a lot of anxiety will translate into a lot of lives being saved. So we’re not too far from being adapted to the modern world.

It’s just that temporarily things are going well - there are no famines, no lawlessness, and no wars. As soon as we return to chaos even a bit, all those thrifty genes and anxious genes won’t be so maladaptive.

There doesn’t even need to be a world-ending scenario. Just go live outside an urban center, among wild animals, and all these genes will help you.

> > afraid that someone might react in the worst possible way or something really bad might happen.

That type of anxiety is easily beaten, the one where the worry is that ‘not the best thing ever happens’ is much harder to beat

Kinda like ‘if you ain’t first you’re last mentality’ and opportunity cost type thing

> "Reality is 100% of the time, different from our imagination" A bit of a hyperbole: 100%? So never ever we can predict reality? I think, if we focus on the core details, we are better than always wrong, perhaps even much better.

That's what I meant. Even if you imagine a scenario you can successfully predict (a cashier handing you your change, for example), how it plays out in experience is always different.

Anxiety causes you to imagine how a scenario would play out, in detail. Flashes of things going wrong, something breaking apart and all the terrible things that a horror movie director could imagine.

The thing is, if you really know it's just a fear, it's much easier to name it and overcome it. I know from myself that the worst thing that can be is anxiety of unknown origin.

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