Earlier quoted context omitted.
May I ask what stressed you out like this?
new child
Was the stress primarily because of sleep deprivation/multitasking with a new baby? I am just trying to understand.
Long-term stress erodes memory
51–60 of 160 posts
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suggestions: Epictetus' Enchiridion. A cheap, used Dover Editions copy off Ebay is all one needs. Also, if a Christian, morning and evening prayers by candlelight using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.
hesychasm -- the most underrated aspect of christian spirituality, sadly expelled by most reformation and counter-reformation traditions. A good exercise is to just sit quietly in a dark room, and completely empty your mind. Think no thoughts -- whether you believe them to be good or bad. This simple thing turns out to be so incredibly difficult, that many monks on the Holy Mountain have mastered. I myself can barely…
That's called meditation these days, but it's not about thinking no thoughts. It's about sorting your thoughts until there are no more worries. Everyone should be doing this.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#53For those that are stressed about stress, Kelly McGonigal has some really interesting research on stress and the picture isn't quite as black and white. Depending on how the person views stress, it can benefit the person instead of harming them. Her book: https://www.amazon.com/Upside-Stress-Why-Good-You/dp/1101982...
Stress is such a broad term. The first beneficial type of stress that comes to mind for me is exercise.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#54As far as I understand, long term stress erodes pretty much everything.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
new child
Was the stress primarily because of sleep deprivation/multitasking with a new baby? I am just trying to understand.
There's a lot of people on here discussing the stress of a new child.
I don't think they are differentiating between stress, that this study discusses, from lack of sleep, which also affects memory.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
new child
Was the stress primarily because of sleep deprivation/multitasking with a new baby? I am just trying to understand.
Not the poster you're asking, but have 3 kids.
Stress factors include:
1) Getting very, very poor sleep, which can last anywhere from 2-12 months depending on your kid and your parenting technique.
2) Higher monthly expenses, plus a potentially-giant bill for the birth, on top of a year of smaller but still substantial bills for various things. This will be worse if the pregnancy is split over two years of insurance deductible (probably irrelevant in countries with medical coverage systems that aren't totally broken, but very relevant in the US)
3) Having your free time (including kid-free time that you have to use to keep the house in something that resembles order if you squint at it really hard) drop to ~25-30% what it was pre-kid. (you can gain a bit more by making your sleep even worse, though. Hooray?)
4) Your house will be kinda messy and gross even if you try hard to keep it clean, which is discouraging and stressful.
5) Leaving the house and getting out of the car now being A Whole Thing instead of something that barely takes any time or effort at all. Everything you do that isn't sitting at home in your pajamas is much more difficult. Even that is, in a way.
6) You no longer actually have time off, ever. Not in the sense you did before kids.
7) If you're a woman and want to breast feed... oh god. It's bad. Even worse sleep, and you'll have either a baby or a noisy milking machine attached to you seemingly all the damn time, which is incredibly inconvenient if you need to do anything else at all ever.
Go ahead an multiply the stress of the above by a factor of 10 if your new kid has serious health issues.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#57People rush to confirm from "personal experience" what has been observed in mice?
And mostly bring up sleep deprivation instead of stress.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#58I discovered a short memory loss on myself. It's more like an instant blockage rather than a memory loss.
Whenever I have multiple tasks to cover in a short amount of time, my creativity levels stutter. I find myself unable to come up with quick and creative solutions instantly. I guess I need to learn how to work under pressure although I've read that multitasking is counter productive.
I find short breaks helpful but most of the time I can't afford them because of the urgent nature of the tasks. Writing down helps a lot when I do routine actions, but I still believe that this might not be the best method to incentivize creativity.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
hesychasm -- the most underrated aspect of christian spirituality, sadly expelled by most reformation and counter-reformation traditions. A good exercise is to just sit quietly in a dark room, and completely empty your mind. Think no thoughts -- whether you believe them to be good or bad. This simple thing turns out to be so incredibly difficult, that many monks on the Holy Mountain have mastered. I myself can barely…
That's called meditation these days, but it's not about thinking no thoughts. It's about sorting your thoughts until there are no more worries. Everyone should be doing this.
Not quite, it's so much different from meditation. What you are referring to is more of the western concept of "quietism" which is pretty synonymous with meditation. But in either case, I agree, everyone should be practicing this.
Re: Long-term stress erodes memory
#60Pretty much textbook science from animal models. Stress wrecks havoc on typical brain functions including memory, learning, attention, even decision making.