anxiety

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

fairycosmos:

me in my head at the supermarket: nobody is ever going to fucking love me. omg 25% off

Tags:

#the wounds in the world are innumerable‚ a constant aching wrongness whose healing is a Sisyphean task #oh fuck yes the cashews for $6/lb are still in stock #re: prev tag #(”it is only by the grace of god that i am not a highly active couponer”) #I am absolutely a couponer† and it’s great #it’s like accounting except you can’t fail the job interview #you just show up with your carefully optimised lists and buy $300 of groceries for $200 #(some people in the notes are saying that grocery stores are *especially* Like This) #(I agree that grocery shopping *was* a wild emotional ride in 2020 #–(…OP wrote this on 2020-03-14‚ so there’s that)– #but if you filter out enough of the aerosolised anxiety particles it’s fine) #†(the Canadian manifestation of this focuses more on price-matching‚ though literal coupons do make an occasional appearance) #tag rambles #food #anxiety #adventures in human capitalism #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

emotionallaborunion:

People say that you should really do something out of your comfort zone. Why? I worked very hard to find my comfort zone. It was really rough and I can’t even get there that often. Takes all day and I gotta get off to a good start and do all the right things and avoid the right people and find all the right people and do all of these things to find my comfort zone. And then I’m supposed to do something outside of my – Fuck you! You do something outside your comfort zone. My comfort zone is hard-won….

But then, that’s where popular culture and pop psych comes in and wants – and the shtick I was looking at last night was that like, so, if it’s ‘afraid’, then, ‘You should do the things you’re afraid of’. Why? Why? I have felt quite enough fear. I don’t think I will benefit from more fear. I don’t think it’s the missing element in my life. I don’t think that’s the thing I need to be seeking out. ‘Go to the places that scare you.’ No! I have carved out an awesome space in which I don’t have to visit the places that scare me. I don’t like them there. I’ve been there. I know more about them than you, person telling me to go to the places that scare me.

John Darnielle, 2014-04-19 and 2014-04-20 at the Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago ( track 18 in https://archive.org/details/tmg2014-04-19.oldtown.flac16 and track 21 in https://archive.org/details/tmg2014-04-20)

Tags:

#I read a thing recently about a free-solo climber #and when they asked why he did it he was like #”I don’t want to just be happy and cozy‚ anyone can be happy and cozy‚ I want more than that” #and I was like what the fuck are you talking about #happy-and-cozy is one of the hardest things there is #you can spend a lifetime striving for it and catch only fleeting glimpses #I don’t understand skydivers and bungee-jumpers and all of that shit #they’re like ”it makes me feel alive” and I’m like ”…no‚ not alive‚ the *other* thing” #how can you be *happy* if you don’t even feel *safe*? #tag rambles #anxiety #death mention #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #and I’ll also add: #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #my mind is complicated but is also *coherent* #everything feeds into everything else and I can see how these aspects feed into each other #(and indeed I once wrote a to-hell-with-leaving-my-comfort-zone post that was *specifically* in a sexual context)

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Finally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{Title link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/personality-quiz/?group=-MLnw84-zDddzbQsP6ta }}

rustingbridges:

voxette-vk:

TIL 538 has a personality test

Follow the link above to be in the “group” I made so that you can compare your score against the average. (Hopefully. It seems not to want to load the results when I refresh the page…)

c7f813ba153e5b17bb4cf97bd1a2bcff06a6571a

we’re doin big 5 I guess:

9687af0eccb13aa6f1d4cd1764ad61a4ca562d69
30ccfc5eb49856a1b965b3797179e9514352f62e

My first thought was that it was attempting to tell me what I want to hear: most of these are rather “better” figures than I was getting on Open Psychometrics a couple years back.

Then I looked at the more detailed breakdown, and a lot of my supposed middle-of-the-road-ness is from having very high scores in some subcategories and very low scores in others, which “averages out” when seen at lower resolutions. Are you very anxious but not depressed? Congratulations, your negative emotionality is “moderate”.

(Except conscientiousness, which is a nice symmetric equilateral triangle with every vertex at ~75.)

((…wait, how does the *average* American have *75th* percentile conscientiousness))

This version seems to place somewhat more emphasis on *treating* people well when it comes to agreeableness, as opposed to Open Psychometrics’ questions which were pretty much purely about how you felt about them on the inside, and that difference is most of what dragged me from 12 up to 38. I am a proverbial kitten who thinks of nothing but murder.

—

“You might also have a low opinion of your own looks.” I look plain in a vaguely pleasant manner, which is *exactly how I like it*, thank you very much

“Some scientists think low extraversion has protected humans from disease — you can’t pick up a bug from people if you avoid people.” saaame

Tags:

#reply via reblog #memes #surveys #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #anxiety #anger management

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

boethiah:

Hello! I hope this email finds you well! Please be aware that these exclamation points are equivalent to a prey animal signalling alarm, and I am afraid of you!

Tags:

#anxiety #relatable #exclamation points are like smiling #(and indeed smiley-face emoticons fulfil the same function) #people say it’s about conveying happiness and excitement #and *sometimes* that’s true #but other times the point is to show off the *lack* of sharpness in your teeth #”please‚ I’m no threat to you‚ please show me some mercy”

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

1rakus:

1rakus:

what kind of cookie are you

ed7c7d45cbeb10d699cfd6fbbd12aaa728286b6f

Tags:

#I gave multiple responses containing phrases like ”panicked paranoia” and ”doomsday prepper” #and my result admonishes me to ”try not to trust people so easily” #what the fuck #were you even listening #food mention #meme #(okay to be *completely* fair I do not *literally* own a spare container of gasoline) #(I would much rather use solar power for the apocalypse: #sure solar panels break occasionally but I’m pretty sure you’d go through them slower than you’d go through gasoline) #((also less fire and pollution hazard!)) #(but I feel that I fit the *spirit* of that answer) #((my result was oatmeal raisin btw)) #tag rambles #anxiety #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

judiciousimprecation:

Saw a lady on the bus wearing one of those fancy one-way valved n95 masks, and I tried to figure out why I felt so much irritation with this random stranger.

Obviously the majority of this was just that I was envious she either got ahold of masks before they went out of stock everywhere, or paid a ridiculous price for them, but also I realized, those valved n95 masks are like the exact opposite of regular surgical masks, courtesy-wise.

The surgical masks mostly just block the wearers sneezes and coughs and reduce the amount of infection they might spread, while not doing much to prevent inhaling germs. They are a device which protects bystanders much more than the wearer.

The n95 masks meanwhile, theoretically block all germs from getting into the wearer (modulo proper use), but the one-way valve means unfiltered breath from the wearer makes it back into the atmosphere, thereby blocking way less of the germs they might be exhaling. Thus the valved n95 masks do absolutely fuck-all for bystanders. Fuck you, I got mine

 

etiragram:

Your attitude surprises me. This person is not doing something wrong. Consider the universe where they covered exactly the same route, but without the mask. In that universe, they risked everyone else they came into contact with as much as they did in this one, but also incurred additional risk themself. And in this world, if the mask made a difference, they have reduced the probability of hurting other people by becoming an extra node in the transmitting network.

Feeling irritation with this person for protecting themself without addition protection to others is in some ways akin to feeling irritation for wearing a seat belt. And there’s an aspect to it that’s pretty similar to “How dare this person do the same thing many other people do, but incur fewer costs for it”.

In my opinion, the only thing they could be said to have done wrong is in buying up a scarce resource that some people say medical professionals need far more, but only if they believed they were making more people worse off somewhere and still chose to buy it.

 

judiciousimprecation:

Te be clear, I fully acknowledge that my attitude toward this person was irrational, and I think part of the reason the experience stuck with me was because I was confused about why I was feeling that way. I tried to touch on that in the second paragraph but I definitely could have been more clear that I don’t really endorse it.

I think, having grown up in a country where wearing masks is not a normal thing to do even when (avoiding being) sick, seeing someone wearing a surgical mask tickles the (entirely unendorsed!) “this person is wrong for doing a weird thing, shun them” and normally I compensate for that by reminding myself “no, it’s cool, they’re probably doing it as a courtesy to others, cut them some slack”. Without that loophole it’s much harder to shut that part of my brain up.

I still think there’s something interesting to the “keep everyone else from getting sick” vs “keep only myself from getting sick” dichotomy (oh no, is this prisoner’s dilemma?), and I’d be incredibly curious to see what a statistical toy model looks like where half the population gets ingress-only masks or egress-only masks, but in retrospect I definitely leaned too hard on the “people wearing valved respirators are jerks who care about no one but themselves” angle

Back before COVID-19, I bought a valved mask in significant part because I figured signalling “this mask is for my protection, not yours” would make me look like *less* of a jerk.

(‘I’m not going out in public while sick, I promise! I’m just highly sensitive to pollen! I’m not dangerous, please don’t be scared!’)

Turns out the valve was a weak point and the mask failed almost immediately. Mom wants to try tinkering with it and seeing if she can repair it, but I’m probably back to surgical masks for the foreseeable future. I was already worried that I was going to scare people who saw me take off a surgical mask on my way into the restaurant and then go and serve them food, and that’s probably even *more* of a concern in the midst of a plague.

—

>>I still think there’s something interesting to the “keep everyone else from getting sick” vs “keep only myself from getting sick” dichotomy (oh no, is this prisoner’s dilemma?)<<

The impression I got reading your OP is that the reason it was bothering you is that it *wasn’t* prisoner’s dilemma, that she *could* have protected herself *and* others (with a non-valved N95) but instead chose to protect only herself, sacrificing others’ *safety* for her *comfort* (slightly less restricted breathing, less foggy glasses if applicable).

(this is speaking about the hypothetical world where your intuition was justified; in the endorsed world she may very well have had access to valved N95s but not non-valved)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #illness tw #covid19 #allergies #anxiety #in which Brin has a job

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

overlordtulip:

A few months ago, it came to my attention that, for many people, helplessness is a central cause of anxiety, such that a good way to reduce their anxiety is to reduce their sense of helplessness.

This is deeply bizarre to me. For my part, I tend to find helplessness actively comforting, and situations of helplessness to be among those where I have the least anxiety. If there’s a situation whose outcome I’m unable to affect, then I can just relax and let it resolve itself, rather than worrying about exactly what actions to take and how they’ll affect the outcome.

(For example: asking for things from people who I’m not accustomed to asking for things from is often a high-anxiety activity for me; but waiting for a response after asking, when there’s nothing more for me to do, is low-anxiety.)

I’m now kind of curious how many other people have the arrangement I have rather than the apparently-default helplessness-increases-anxiety one. And also how the apparently-default one works, because my model of its internals is currently pretty weak.

I’ve thought about this too, and I think the way it works for me is that *uncertainty* increases anxiety. Helplessness decreases uncertainty about *what to do next* but increases uncertainty about *the outcome*: which of these effects is bigger depends on the situation.

Waiting for a response to a difficult email is worse than writing it, because if I haven’t sent the email yet I *know* there’s been no response and I at least theoretically have ways I can tweak the phrasing and such to make them more likely to respond well, but if I’ve sent it the response *might* arrive at any time and *might* be bad, and I have no further methods of weighting the probabilities in my favour.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

anxietyblogging

{{for readability, I should note that there was originally a cut here}}

aaaaaaaahhhh

I just submitted my term paper

I have never written an academic-style term paper before

(except maybe the geology course project? depending on definition? but also I failed the geology course project so let’s not use that comparison shall we)

I wouldn’t be so concerned except if you fail this assignment it’s an automatic fail for the course

okay, okay, I just need 50%, that’s all I need

and 20% of the assignment grade is a short-answer section, which I have historically done really well on, so that’s probably like 18 percentage points right there

(aaaahh)

Tags:

#I still need to do some more studying for my exam next week #I’m glad I started studying in the evenings a couple weeks ago #because otherwise there’s no way I could revise 700 pages #like 60% of the exam grade is multiple-choice and another 30% is short-answer #so that’s probably hopefully going to be pleasantly anticlimactic #(I mean it’s closed-book time-limited short-answer) #(so significantly harder than the other short-answer sections) #(but on the other hand they tend to grade exam writing more generously) #(because they’re thinking in terms of What You Could Reasonably Have Accomplished Under the Circumstances) #adventures in University Land #oh look an original post

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sdhs-rationalist:

rusalkii:

ambivalencerelations:

rusalkii:

Does anyone know of any reason why someone shouldn’t eat exclusively bananas, apple sauce, those round red cheese ball things, and sugar cubes for lunch for three weeks? Uh, asking for a friend.

I would like to meet this… friend.

*waves* Apparently I was too subtle. Look, I didn’t choose the Anxiety Diet, it’s just that going out to buy food at work is stressful, and packing anything but snacks at my aunt and uncle’s is also stressful, and work has bananas and sugar cubes. Hence, my question.

c.f. why my intake of snacks has drastically increased

What’s wrong with fruit and cheese? Totally legit lunch. Surviving exclusively on them for three weeks might run into some difficulties, but if it’s just for lunch that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

(Speaking as someone whose non-dinner diet is mostly pretty…I don’t know if “atomised” is quite the right word here. Things that are individual food units in themselves, like “banana” or “peanut butter” or “yogurt”, rather than mixing lots of ingredients together into something meal. My food-unit selection is also fairly limited: there are the basic food groups, “fruit”, “dairy”, “nuts”, “protein” (usually mixed into the dinner meal), “chocolate”, “starch”, with usually ~2 – 3 possible foods in each category (not always the same 2 – 3 over time) and making some effort to cover as many categories as possible on any given day. My nutrition seems to be doing fine.)

Tags:

#food #reply via reblog #disordered eating?

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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welcome–to–awkwardville:

brin-bellway:

welcome–to–awkwardville:

the troubles of a person with prosopagnosia and anxiety:

*sees post with pictures of very popular actor they look at pictures of all day*

*tags it with name of very popular actor*

*almost clicks the reblog button*

*checks pictures five times to make sure the pictures actually portray very famous actor and not someone who looks a bit like him*

*feels ashamed because they literally look at pictures of very famous actor all day so it’s very embarrassing not to be sure if it’s really him*

Would you like advice or do you just want to vent? I don’t want to go barging in here with tips if that wouldn’t be appropriate.

it’s okay! i wouldn’t mind advice :)

I’ve found the TagViewer extension for XKit to be very helpful for this situation. To give a relatively recent example (that I’m not sure whether I ever actually reblogged, but it’s still a good example of the process):

1. See gifset of person who may or may not be Taylor Swift playing with small fluffy animals.

2. Press TagViewer button on post.

3. Scroll through the list of reblogs with tags and what tags they used. See that the majority of reblogs with any tags at all contain the tag “taylor swift”, “tswift”, “tay-tay”, or other variations thereupon. See that nobody has tagged it with a name other than Taylor Swift.

4. Feel much more confident that the picture is of Taylor Swift now that you’ve gotten dozens of concurring opinions.

Tags:

#prosopagnosia #reply via reblog #tales from the prosopagnosia tag

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