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Why Am I So Lazy?

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Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#51

Post by perl4ever »

pizza wrote: post #31
saulrh wrote: post #11

Motivational essays are this are great for some people. Others, on the other hand, are persuaded to avoid seeking help for medical (mental health, hormonal, etc) problems that are wrecking their lives. Overmedication is a problem, yes, but this particular field is catastrophically underdiagnosed because its problems have come to be seen as moral failings and the fault of the sufferer. If you are so "lazy" that you ha…

> Modern psychiatry has infinitely better cognitive tricks than the moralizing platitudes in motivational essays. If you're really lucky, your physician will guess two-thirds of your symptoms before you describe them, diagnose you with a particular neurochemical deficiency, and prescribe you a medication that, in the space of a week, does more to help you with your problems than you'd managed in your entire life to d…

Well, meds work for some people some times, and not others. And they tend to have severe side effects. That's why people have different opinions.

I believe that medications can be extremely helpful, but aren't always, and it's tragic we don't understand why. We desperately need objective, quantitative means of measuring what the problem is and what meds do. It takes a rather long time before meds have an effect, so it seems obvious to me that the common saying that they "correct chemical imbalances" can't be correct - otherwise meds would be take immediate effect. People speculate that it takes time for neurons to grow, but we really don't know specifically what's going on with either a mental condition or a treatment.

My dream is for care for mental illness to be improved to resemble diabetes, where you can check a metric like blood sugar, quickly correct it if it is too high or low, and check long term health with a metric analogous to A1C.

Edit: It may be unclear to some whether I am disagreeing with the statement in the parent about contentiousness.

If you accept that different people have different experiences, then it no longer makes sense to "contend" which is the true reality. The different experiences are all real.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#52

Post by bambax »

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers!

That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT!

Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at math and you're surprised she doesn't get good grades -- she's a natural! all of this should be sooo easy for her! there must be something holding her back.

People tend to conform to other people's opinions of them; they will get good at math just to match the image we're projecting on them.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#54

Post by adrusi »

whiddershins wrote: post #44
josephpmay wrote: post #7

From the little "Sloth" wrote, it sounds like it's possible she might have undiagnosed ADHD. As someone with ADHD myself, I instantly recognized the inability to get myself to start working on something until the last minute (even if I really, really want to do it) and the piles clothes (despite my propensity for cleanliness). Another hallmark of ADHD that many don't know about is bursts of almost manic productivity…

Huh. As someone with diagnosed ADHD and who has (in the past) taken appropriate medication, I still thought the advice rang true. How you conceptualize your identity is a huge factor in addressing behavior pattern ambivalence. For me it somehow dovetails perfectly with a neurochemistry explanation because there's no bright line separating this stuff.

I want to unilaterally echo this.

As a kid I coped with my inability to complete school assignments on time by not identifying with success in school. This reinforced my existing faults.

Learning to crush that coping mechanism out of existence was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#55

Post by xyzzyz »

barry-cotter wrote: post #48
tomcam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern psychiatry has infinitely better cognitive tricks than the moralizing platitudes in motivational essays. Please name two such tricks.

Amphetamines, get enough exercise, get enough sleep, SSRIs if you’re depressed

The tricks sometimes work, for some people, but they are definitely not the silver bullet. SSRI effectiveness in treating depression, for one, is not that great.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#56

Post by [deleted] »

perl4ever wrote: post #51
pizza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern psychiatry has infinitely better cognitive tricks than the moralizing platitudes in motivational essays. If you're really lucky, your physician will guess two-thirds of your symptoms before you describe them, diagnose you with a particular neurochemical deficiency, and prescribe you a medication that, in the space of a week, does more to help you with your problems than you'd managed in your entire life to d…

Well, meds work for some people some times, and not others. And they tend to have severe side effects. That's why people have different opinions. I believe that medications can be extremely helpful, but aren't always, and it's tragic we don't understand why. We desperately need objective, quantitative means of measuring what the problem is and what meds do. It takes a rather long time before meds have an effect, so i…

[deleted]

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#57

Post by perl4ever »

wildmusings wrote: post #41
saulrh wrote: post #11

Motivational essays are this are great for some people. Others, on the other hand, are persuaded to avoid seeking help for medical (mental health, hormonal, etc) problems that are wrecking their lives. Overmedication is a problem, yes, but this particular field is catastrophically underdiagnosed because its problems have come to be seen as moral failings and the fault of the sufferer. If you are so "lazy" that you ha…

You're discounting the value of moral thinking. You can reduce everything to a medical issue, because all human behavior is indeed biologically caused, but you are failing to consider that blame and fault and other moral concepts are exactly the kind of thing the mind is responsive to. Why are you so hostile to those, but so eager to pump people full of drugs, designed and dispensed on the basis of our very poor unde…

Psych meds have significant drawbacks, so they usually aren't the first course of action. I mean, a doctor may prescribe something on the first visit, but if the patient tried unsuccessfully for a decade to will themselves to change, it wasn't the first course of action. I think your tendentious language ("pump people full of drugs") is painting a caricature of psychiatrists that's unwarranted.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#58

Post by watwut »

wildmusings wrote: post #41
saulrh wrote: post #11

Motivational essays are this are great for some people. Others, on the other hand, are persuaded to avoid seeking help for medical (mental health, hormonal, etc) problems that are wrecking their lives. Overmedication is a problem, yes, but this particular field is catastrophically underdiagnosed because its problems have come to be seen as moral failings and the fault of the sufferer. If you are so "lazy" that you ha…

You're discounting the value of moral thinking. You can reduce everything to a medical issue, because all human behavior is indeed biologically caused, but you are failing to consider that blame and fault and other moral concepts are exactly the kind of thing the mind is responsive to. Why are you so hostile to those, but so eager to pump people full of drugs, designed and dispensed on the basis of our very poor unde…

Because if you do need that drug or have condition, shaming you instead so that other people are scared and less lazy is unethical.

Because blaming and shaming people for their mental conditions makes treatment harder.

Because if we are talking about people who tried to change and did not succeeded multiple times, adding more shame solves literally nothing.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#59

Post by UncleEntity »

> You’re choosing a lifestyle of avoidance and low expectations.

What's wrong with that?

Some people have laid their heart open to the benign indifference of the universe and are just like: "what's the point?"

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#60

Post by manigandham »

adrusi wrote: post #50
manigandham wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just normal, not ADHD (which is way too overdiagnosed at this point and would fit 90% of people I meet). People are lazy, but they also do not want to completely ruin their life, so they will wait until they realize they cant wait anymore, doing the minimum amount at the last minute to meet the goal.

What do you think ADHD is? It's defined by its diagnostic criteria, and those are very vague. There's certainly no consensus that ADHD is anything other than a term to describe the lowest performers on the metrics which Adderall improves. ADHD is definitely not some kind of genetic defect of the prefrontal cortex or anything of that sort.

Being lazy is not an attention deficit or hyperactivity. Most people can focus just fine, as they do when the deadline approaches. The situation described in the parent post is an issue of motivation and discipline, not attention.

To be more clear as to the diagnosis: there is a definite difference between people who don't want to pay attention to certain tasks (the vast majority) and those who cant (the minority that do have legitimate ADHD).

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