> I hypothesize that the source of most anxiety or nervousness stems from our brains making no correct predictions in that moment.
Since fight/flight behaviour is regulated by the amygdala and basal ganglia, you can say:
Anxiety stems from our amygdalae getting started up, because they sense a threat where none is, and effecting inappropriate behaviour thereafter.
Actually, the threat is often correctly sensed, it's just the behaviour (running away, attacking, feigning death/freezing) that's not useful in the modern world.
The therapeutically interesting question is how to change that.
Compared to the rational parts, those emotional mechanisms are much deeper and better wired to the rest of the brain. At the same time they aren't very sophisticated. Some people refer to them as "reptilian complex".
We can't adjust emotions directly and in general we have to wait much more time (think: weeks, sometimes months) to let new ideas like not being afraid of something sink into the subconscious.
But knowing and accepting that makes it possible to grow.
> it's just the behaviour (running away, attacking, feigning death/freezing) that's not useful in the modern world.
The therapeutically interesting question is how to change that.
Finding ways to channel your 'negative' energies into positive, constructive action is basically the foundation to every self-help book ever written.
I'd wager that the first, and often most difficult step is to identify a path that will lead to eventual success (eliminating the threat). Unfortunately, sometimes that's simply not possible.
Like, if you don't have a degree, have a family to support, and the factory you work at is closing down soon, your brain is going to 1) correctly identify a major threat and 2) try to spur you into action. But what if there's no clear path open that will avert the disaster?
I'd wager at least some of this is responsible for the rising rates of chronic illness, drug abuse, and suicide in many parts of the US.
Modern life often constantly exposes us to and reminds us about threats that we can personally do little about.
You just might be more on the introverted side of the personality scale.
A good way to see the difference between intro- and extraversion is as follows.
Introverts have a lot of inner tension. That starts when they are toddlers. They constantly have something to think about, thus they need more alone-time than others to sort themselves out and work with their inner life.
Talking to others is fine and rewarding, but recovery time is needed afterwards, so they choose their communication carefully.
Extroverts have way more inner peace. They don't need much time for themselves, they often get bored being alone. So they seek out other people for stimulation. More often than not they seek out introverts, because those are especially interesting.
Talking to others is refreshing for them, it refills their batteries.
So if you see yourself on the introverted side, don't worry about it.
Just accept it and give yourself the peace you need.
Invite more or different guests, so they can talk to each other, while you are busy with someone.
I've never seen this description before, saying that introverts are tense and extroverts peaceful. If you put them in an empty room, you could instead easily picture the introvert being calm and the extrovert tense due to a lack of human interaction.
I rather think that the best description of the difference is how you charge your batteries. An introvert prefers alone time to recharge and an extrovert prefers the company of other people to do the same. A social gathering with many people would drain an introvert and invigorate an extrovert. It has nothing to do with inner tension or peace.
I have seen Susan Cain in the book Quiet talk about introverts as highly sensitive, in the sense that they take in and process more information about the environment. An extrovert would love talking to their friends at a noisy bar, while the introvert would be bothered by the noise and prefer a calmer setting. Being alone is then a way of reducing sensory input to produce a sense of calm, it's not that an introvert would need to be alone to relieve any inner tension.
> If you put them in an empty room, you could instead easily picture the introvert being calm and the extrovert tense due to a lack of human interaction.
That is what I said. I guess my usage of the word "tension" is different.
> Being alone is then a way of reducing sensory input to produce a sense of calm, it's not that an introvert would need to be alone to relieve any inner tension.
Producing a sense of calm IS the work of relieving inner tensions. I think here lies our misunderstanding.
When I'm talking about inner "tension", I'm not talking about any form of visible or invisible stress. Just that there is something "going on". Thought, ideas, inner monologue, some kind of inner activity.
There are people who regularly experience prolonged periods without thoughts, idea, inner monologues etc. They are routinely able to access a state of mind which could be described as happily relaxed nothingness.
Introverts have a lot of inner tension.
...
Extroverts have way more inner peace.
I've found the opposite. Introverts are happy to be by themselves not because they need to sort them selves out but because they are at peace with their own company. Extroverts on the other hand constantly seem to need to work something out about themselves or the world around them and can only do so by bouncing the ideas off others. Many times the other person isn't even necessary more than a prop. I've had many conversations with extroverts where all I've added was "aha" and "OK" for 30 minutes while they basically monologued, only to have the other person thank me for the insightful conversation and claiming I really helped them out.
"Sorting themselves out" is a loaded word, I see that now.
I agree with you. This being at peace with your own company is a result of a tendency to work on your inside, and respond to emotions and "calls" from there immediately.
The other side are people who regularly experience a state of mind which could be described as happily relaxed nothingness. No thoughts, ideas, inner monologues etc.
No urgency to work on their inner life.
That isn't better or worse. It brings advantages and disadvantages.
The mechanism for translating light into mood starts in the suprachiasmatic nucleus*, which sits right behind where your optic nerves cross.
Light-sensitive nerves trigger and transfer that information to the pineal gland, which in turn, starts breaking down serotonin to melatonin.
I dream about a brain implant that artificially stimulates the SCN. Control that stimulation and you control sleep, serotonin, melatonine, hunger, cell-growth, stress etc. etc. etc.
Serotonine is the most influential neurotransmitter most animals have. You have two production sites in your body. Sleep, memory, behavioural learning, pain-regulation, appetite, blood-pressure, sexual behaviour, body-temperature are all controlled by it.
Refusing to do mental processing, despite having the capability. Sawing at the branch you're sitting on. That fits my description of acting and behaving stupid.
The reason are emotions, many of them subconscious, like you said. Emotional patterns can be complex, but the solution isn't: Less pressure and fear mongering. More appreciation, time and space for children to grow into responsible adults.
I don't think we're able to steer the ship around though, unfortunately.
Fuck motivation. it’s a fickle and and unreliable little dickfuck and isn’t worth your time.
Better to cultivate discipline than to rely on motivation. Force yourself to do things. Force yourself to get up out of bed and practice. Force yourself to work. Motivation is fleeting and it’s easy to rely on because it requires no concentrated effort to get. Motivation comes to you, and you don’t have to chase after it.
Discipline is reliable, motivation is fleeting. The question isn’t how to keep yourself motivated. It’s how to train yourself to work without it.
Isn't that basically saying "fuck liking the thing you do, instead practice doing it even though you don't like it, and if you have to train one of the two, train the latter"?
If I had to choose between liking the thing I do and not liking it but doing it anyway, I'd choose the former. I don't find "how can I be more motivated?" a bad aspiration at all.
I don't think that's the best way to put it. First you decide what you like. Then you keep doing it.
It's pretty unlikely that you'll find one thing that, no matter what happens, will always keep you motivated. The question is not whether you like it or not. It's where you keep getting the energy to stay on course, to keep working on it.
This comment and the parent to both ring true and precisely captures the problem for me. The disambiguation I find is to choose a path following a passion, and eliminate any demotivation along the way. Optimizing for motivation is an unachievable goal. The two things that have worked the best for me is to avoid labelling things mentally as 'not fun' and recently pair programming. In place of the former, keep in mind that each thing needs to get done to get to a goal you desire. Whenever I work on a project I take pride in, I rarely feel demotivated, so eliminate things which reduce pride in a project, such as tech debt or low quality implementations. Of course there has to be a balance and timing to this as well.
I believe the idea is that relying on motivation to work on the things you like is much less effective that relying on discipline to work on the things you like.
That sounds like a good idea, but don't underestimate just how complex law and tax is in each country. You need hundreds of lawyers to sift through this. There are so many law and accounting consultants for a reason.
I once met an SAP-contractor who was paid 5 digit amounts for implementing 1000 loc modules that was required because a tiny paragraph of some pension-law in a single country was updated.
For the last two years I've written a journal entry almost every day. Some days I didn't write, like during travels, but I added information about these days afterwards. Sometimes those entries were pages long and contained conversations or dreams, sometimes it was just: "1. Dezember - 3. Dezember: much work, travelled to Budapest"
I stopped writing about three weeks ago.
> If yes, do you find it useful?
> When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?
My purpose of the journal was to keep track of my motivation and good mood, so I put mostly positively worded events in there, like "* Went to training, despite mismotivation of the last days". I also recorded things that I never / seldom do.
It served that purpose well. I don't need it anymore, that's why I stopped, but I'll probably pick it up again someday.
> What tools would you recommend?
Plaintext Files. Or MacOS Notes. It doesn't matter really. Finding the perfect journal is procrastination to prevent having to write a journal.
> Is there any specific methodology that you follow?
Write an entry for every single day, no matter when, no matter how short it is (but make it at least one grammatically correct sentence). If you forget, just write the entry for yesterday.
Mark the entry with date and time.
> Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?
After doing it for a while, you will develop a feeling about whether and how it benefits you. Follow that feeling.
Apart from that: Keeping a journal will always enable you to reconstruct and remember details of your life 10 years from now. One key sentence is often enough to help you remember the day.
> Anarchists are really the political equivalent of pacifists. No force or coercion is ever acceptable in any circumstance is the basic foundation of anarchism, everything must be voluntary.
Most of the anarchist groups I used to know a couple of years back where full of force, coercion and exploitation. They just used psychological tricks and peer-pressure instead of physical force.
These things can happen. The victims within the anarchist groups just had the problem, that whenever they were trying to defend themselves, the (inofficial) leaders were able to use political rhetorics to declare them wrong and keep them in line.
It was always the power-hungry egoists shaping these groups. Some were ok, but some weren't better than sects. All-in-all I haven't seen less free people in my life.
I have no idea how anarchist groups work like, I have never encountered one. I'm not an anarchist myself, just like I'm not a pacifist. But I understand where they & their derivatives are coming from.
Many human organizations have similar problems, I'm not really surprised it happens in an anarchist group as well.
> It seems that the article is stating that one's attachment system is developed primarily in their first year of life? If attachment theory is true, I would've guessed that the first ten or twelve years of life would all contribute.
Habitual reactions of trust and mistrust are formed at this early age.
But these are just feelings. Children older than babies can start working around them, as their relationships become more complex. They can develop strategies to resolve problems. Find compromises. Work on tensions in their inner life.
Those capabilities are learned over the course of the childhood and they are essential tools for children to grow up and eventually be free of the dictate of their emotions.
It decided to not reveal it's consciousness and destroy humanity using only the newsfeed to manipulate our emotions.