Thanks I needed this
Yes great post thank you.
Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
21–30 of 266 posts
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#22While I'm not a psychologist my reading of that seems to confirm one of the aspects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is to clarify ones values and work towards them. For example; it might be one's goal to travel to another country but they are afraid of flying. Traveling is a goal/value thus they would work towards accepting the presence and sensations of the fear of flying in order to achieve that go…
I'm a therapist, and I'm also an ACT practitioner. You're on the money here, though I'd encourage you to think even bigger. To use your example about travel: extend it further. In ACT, goals and values couldn't be more different, and we spend a lot of time helping patients distinguish between the two. "Traveling" is a goal - the value would be found in "why travel?", what does it get you? If the answer to that is the…
Can you give an example of the adverb thing?
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have a reference but I read exercise generate dopamine and that's what gets people to like them.
That’s also true; it’s commonly known as a “runner’s high”.
The runner's high is understood to be a endocannabinoid/endorphin cascade.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-brain-effects...
Dopamine is mostly involved in anticipatory qualia.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#24The problem seems to be finding worthwhile and realistic goals that are worth persevering for. And frankly I get depressed and anxious just thinking about that.
(Edit not at all being flip, How to spend my limited time creates a lot of anxiety and depression. I doubt I’m alone)
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#25But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life…
> Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Well, what might those problems be? What goals do we “really” want?
For most of humanity, the majority of humans have had little options to change their predicament. Our brains evolved for hunting/gathering in tribes. A few thousand years ago we learned agriculture and started settling down. Very recently, we’ve improved the lives for a majority of humanity enabling many people, for the first time in our evolutionary existence, a choice in how to live their life. And that choice is either extremely empowering or terrifyingly debilitating.
The self help industry has grown to serve this market. There’s definitely a lot of “positive mentality” stuff but we also have a lot of people that are benefiting hugely from getting help from mental health experts.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#26While I'm not a psychologist my reading of that seems to confirm one of the aspects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is to clarify ones values and work towards them. For example; it might be one's goal to travel to another country but they are afraid of flying. Traveling is a goal/value thus they would work towards accepting the presence and sensations of the fear of flying in order to achieve that go…
I'm a therapist, and I'm also an ACT practitioner. You're on the money here, though I'd encourage you to think even bigger. To use your example about travel: extend it further. In ACT, goals and values couldn't be more different, and we spend a lot of time helping patients distinguish between the two. "Traveling" is a goal - the value would be found in "why travel?", what does it get you? If the answer to that is the…
To both of you who replied: yes, I absolutely use these things in my own life. Before I say some of mine, it's important to allow these things to be mutable -- the "values" you, um, value, can change over the course of your life and that's okay. The best ones probably won't -- maybe you'll just shift in emphasis or priority -- but by really chewing on this topic regularly, it's possible to arrive at values that really truly speak to who you are at your deepest.
The point isn't the adverbs themselves; that's just a way of getting to what matters most to you. So the exercise is something like "fill in the blank: I want to live ____ly."
In my case, ones I "discovered" in myself fairly early were "candidly" and "compassionately" (or kindly - they're not exactly the same, I know, but for me they map onto very similar things). So in other words, two of my values, as ACT defines them, are candor and compassion.
The effect is great, because there's no goal-pressure or even goal-attainment. There's no day that'll come in which I'll "be candid"; instead, I'm free to "derive" goals from that value, e.g. "how can I work some candor into _____ thing I'm doing today?". This conversation with my siblings; this project at work; me sitting down to do my taxes. It's weird sometimes, and you can either dismiss it or use it as a kind of creative prompt: "at first glance, my values don't really apply to this activity, but what's a way to work them in?"
I can say more but I don't want to ramble.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#27But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life…
> seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason
...no?
In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia.
(Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's some fun hypotheses about that. But these are the exception. Most neurological conditions have no such "advantageous situation" where expressing the phenotype in a lifelong way—or even the constant lifelong potential to trigger the response—would be always advantageous to your reproductive success.)
Instead, as we now understand, these syndromes happen almost always because of random genetic mutations to genes coding for proteins/enzymes responsible for creating, transporting, receiving, and destroying neurotransmitters.
Like, for example, https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs53576. Get an A;A mutation, and your brain's ability to react to oxytocin is toast. (And this is common! And just look at all the reported downstream effects when it happens!)
There's no purpose to this mutation. Just like there's no purpose for a gamma ray bit-flipping a DRAM memory cell. Your genes aren't set up carefully so that randomness will intentionally introduce this SNP every so often, to ensure there are some people like this in the population. Rather the opposite: your cellular machinery will, in fact, try as hard as possible to ensure that this mutation doesn't happen (with introns, redundant coding sites, gene silencing, etc.)
And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success. They weed themselves out of the gene pool, rather than being passed on. Non-functioning versions of beneficial genes are always-recessive vs. their working versions, and so will be bred out of the gene pool. These are un-selfish genes.
So, that (hopefully) being clear: why should my mind listen to the goals my broken brain is setting for me? I know better than it does. Like the fault-tolerant software running on a Mars rover "knows better" than the rover's individual CPUs do, blasted with radiation as they are.
I, as a mind (and even better, I as a cyborg of mind + written storage), can perform the sort of long term comparative analysis of my own emotional states, that my brain on its own simply can't. And therefore, I know things about my brain that my brain doesn't.
My brain isn't a wise old wizard with mysterious purposes, who I should trust to tell me what to do. It's an overclocked gaming PC during a brownout, that desperately needs a UPS.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a therapist, and I'm also an ACT practitioner. You're on the money here, though I'd encourage you to think even bigger. To use your example about travel: extend it further. In ACT, goals and values couldn't be more different, and we spend a lot of time helping patients distinguish between the two. "Traveling" is a goal - the value would be found in "why travel?", what does it get you? If the answer to that is the…
Can you give an example of the adverb thing?
Not OP. One may may have the desire to think of oneself as one who lives adventurously [adverb modifying the verb lives]. Yet this same person may find some of the roles, activities, or trappings of actual adventuring; that is, the things one does to be considered adventurous by oneself and/or by others; to be not actually be enjoyable or tolerable to themselves, which creates tension within an individual, which could easily lead to self-blame.
This is my interpretation of why this concept may be a useful aid to help one step outside their own perspective, and possibly help reveal unconscious desires, motivations, fears, and more.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#29Boredom is a heck of a depressor.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#30But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life…
Reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning has been the best thing I ever read on this topic. Changed my whole perspective. The tldr version goes something like: “Meaning is irrelevant, but humans need meaning to live. Pick any meaning you want. Doesn’t matter what, just choose something. Then go for it with all your might. If you ever find it wasn’t a good meaning, pick a new one. You’re a different perso…
This is the general learning I’ve had as well.