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Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

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Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#161

Post by lvturner »

aspaviento wrote: post #116
lvturner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent a great deal of time and energy trying to set meaningful goals and progress towards things, then worry that I was progressing to the wrong thing and adjust goals etc. My current goal is simply to learn to be happy with what I have and who I am. As an indirect result of pursuing this I've found that loads of other goals and things that I've wanted to accomplish have become massively easier to progress on.

Could you elaborate on how those goals have become massively easier to progress on? is it because your mood and energy are better/greater?

Yes, and I apologise if I veer off topic a bit, but I find all of these things below inter-related.

I've found that creating more space in my brain (I am prone to suffering anxiety) removes the friction I have in starting tasks and increases the enjoyment I get out of them.

Not only have goals become easier to progress on, but I've found that I can take on more.

All of this is a work in progress though, some days/weeks/months are easier than others - but equally the more I learn the more tools I have to deal with setbacks.

For me the things that have had a huge positive impact besides just changing my mind set are:

Wim Hof Method - I felt this would be worth trying to improve my asthma, but I've found it taught me how to meditate too - using this as a spring board I'm exploring other and further meditation techniques.

CBD Oil - this absolutely slayed my baseline anxiety, even if it turns out just to be a placebo, I place high weight on this simple act changing a lot for me.

Exercise (also a goal) - towards the end of last year I was around ~90kg @ 182cm, I'm now around ~75kg with some decent muscle definition - I've focused mostly on bodybuilding, watching the change in the mirror and taking a few minutes to appreciate the changes and my own hard work have been hugely rewarding for me. Also the enordphine rush from some of the workouts is great too.

Closely related to exercise is diet - this is something I am constantly paying attention to now (before I just didn't have the capacity and would happily chow down on McD's multiple times a week despite knowing how bad it was) changes in this impact not just my waist line but also my mood.

Jewelry - I discovered that while it's unusual for most men to do so that wearing jewelery makes me happy, so I disregard what anyone else may think and now wear quite a bit on a daily basis. Might seem a bit off-beat, but it's been a recent personal discovery and I think borne out of focusing just a bit more on being "me" not some ideal projection of myself.

Music (also a goal!), I've started to play the guitar again, I've had abortive attempts at this in the past but simply being able to say to myself "hey, I suck at this and it's OK because I enjoy it" has made it so much easier!

Now, of course there are goals that I am still failing at - learning Mandarin for instance - but seeing the progress on the others and by applying strategies I've learned from one goal or area of self improvement I am hopeful that I will eventually crack it.

Sorry if this diverted and went off topic, but I hope my experiences and rambling helps some people!

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#162

Post by PaulKeeble »

podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

The more I am unfortunately exposed to this after catching ME/CFS the more I realise medicine has a huge professionalism problem. Maybe a better term is a religious problem. Anything they cant currently explain is the patients fault. Having chronic energy fatigue issues is just me being lazy apparently and the enormous crashes I get after exercise are me doing wrong. The hundreds of thousands of c19 patients that develop this condition will get the same thing.

To me it looks like most of them lack professional curiosity and certainly basic empathy. I lost all my respect for doctors over the 6 years based on how I have been treated.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#164

Post by taneq »

podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

> So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance?

I think it's more likely that if you're not depressed, chronically anxious or having panic attacks, you'll find it far easier to muster some perseverance.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#165

Post by indigochill »

wiz21c wrote: post #153
cc_ashby wrote: post #7

But 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…

I totally agree. I'd add this : of course it helps to have life goals because it helps to structure, to not get lost. But I'm confident that the vast majority of us doesn't have a life goal. Most of use figure out a new small goal from time to time. And we'd be so much better if we'd recognize that a non-heroic life is just as good as any other.

>And we'd be so much better if we'd recognize that a non-heroic life is just as good as any other.

This is something I've struggled to come to terms with. But looking at my grandpa as an example, he had some plaques and things commemorating him in his local community after he died. He wasn't a hero and he didn't change the world (outside of, by all accounts, being a decent dad and husband), but he was an invested and involved member of his local community.

I'm not the local community type (like being nomadic too much) but my parallel is contributing work to open source projects I use. It's not heroic or a big life goal, but it'll leave the open source community very slightly better than it would have been without me, and that's something.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#166

Post by xpaqui »

eric4smith wrote: post #59
dialamac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree with most of these. Marrying for a high level of intimacy and partnership is by itself often enough — and if followed seriously often more solid - business plans fall through. Having outsized expectations of children is often a recipe for resentment. Children don’t have tendency to evolve the way you plan before they are born. Buying a house just to live in is enough for most people.

In my 55 years of experience and seeing friends, family and others around me, having some kind of mission is critical. You just have to have something to aim for with your spouse, or you do get bored. Currently where I live, i see families working in the family business all the time and they really are forced to be together working on something. Whereas their children just want to move from the provinces and live in…

Couples who work together do have midlife crisis. Children who leave the province do it for a reasons you don't agree. Misery, might or might not be a consequence of "moving from the province" or not having a goal. Personally I agree with your overall point and disagree with the presentation. Your examples look like busy work, disguised as meaningful and fulfilling. Something you'd amusingly read in the index of a self-help book, picked up out of curiosity in a dusty box at a garage sale. To sum up, some people pointed out, that this idea might not be transient to others. It requires the dedication, not just to patrol your life, but to patrol the lives of those who might unknowingly be part of your personal mission.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#167

Post by scott_siskind »

podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

Out of curiosity, what country offers disability benefits for these conditions?

This is for me a (as a fellow sufferer of some of these conditions, who has never received any state support and doesn't even have health insurance) an extremely shaky moral ground.

Because 95% of the homeless population and drug addicts are clinically diagnosable of most of these conditions under DSM IV definitions. And almost none of them receive anything.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#168

Post by kerkeslager »

avindroth wrote: post #70
kerkeslager wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Nothing that matters to you. If it mattered to you it would be a life goal. > 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 goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological…

The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree with). It is satisfying, and can keep life afloat. But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholde…

Jesus dude, I'm really not sure whose post you're responding to, because you didn't address anything I said in my post.

> The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree with). It is satisfying, and can keep life afloat.

> But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholder in life for when things get real tough. A patch on your wound that helps the wound heal. The patch isn’t healing the wound, your body is.

There's nothing "fake" about life goals, and it's not a trick. When I say I want to have close, honest relationships, or when I say I want a contributing role in my community, I really want those things. These aren't placeholders, patches, or bandages for anything. They're actually what I want, and it's arrogant of you to think you know what I want better than I know what I want.

> Stay on track with what the mind provides to you and be free about it (sometimes ignore it, hate it, listen to it, coddle it, be depressed, be anxious — to the mind emotions are generated and should be accepted without scores attached to them). Then the implicit goals will become explicit. But this hijacking of explicit goals without respecting implicit goals is pure whack.

This implicit versus explicit goals dichotomy is something you made up, and then started accusing people of choosing one over the other. Nobody is suggesting choosing explicit goals over implicit goals. In fact, nobody even was talking about these things before you invented them. This is just a straw man argument.

The entirety of your post could have been reduced to around five sentences--this would be a great increase in clarity with no loss in meaning. Throwing in random parentheticals and clauses might fool dumb people into thinking what you're saying is smart, but smart people are going to suspect that you're hiding a bogus argument under layers of words.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#169

Post by xpaqui »

Aeolun wrote: post #154
circlefavshape wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last paragraph is insane It is also untrue. I have no mission for my marriage, or my children. Neither did my parents, or my wife's parents, nor do my siblings. No divorce in that cohort, and no abandonment.

If you want it to be a good marriage, and to make your partner happy, is that not a mission? Same goes for children. If you truly couldn’t care less about them then there’s no mission there, but most people do.

With this broad stroke breakfast also becomes a mission, if you want to have energy for the rest of the day. The false dichotomy also applies here, either you do it and it's great, or you don't and dine your failure.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#170

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

> After I yelled at my doctors for years to look more deeply

This is the thing I hate most about dealing with doctors. As a child doctors failed to diagnose in me a condition so obvious that a friend of my mother, who works at an airport, was able to figure it out from a mere description. Still my mother had to get angry with the doctor before he would perform a simple blood test for it!

Like in any profession, most of them suck at their job. That wouldn't be such a big deal except that the system in the US is set up to make it absurdly difficult and ludicrously expensive to shop around.

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