191–200 of 303 posts
In general people need to be better aware that you do have real limits to what kind of stress levels you can handle effectively and you need to back off when you start feeling overwhelmed and not try to "push through".
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Can you visualize things in your mind as if they were physically in front of you? People with aphantasia cannot and they often can't remember visual events from the past as a result. Perhaps you have it too.
Wait. You're telling me that you're supposed to be able to do so? I thought it was some mind hack that gives you the power to become an artist, not everyday stuff.
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Middle aged here. Almost, but not quite, no autobiographical memory. Been that way since I was really young. So that’s fun. Often I remember that something happened. Order gets wonky, even a week back. Sometimes I can kinda remember an image or a snippet, but not reliably. I gather most people hold on to a lot more than that. Fine with facts and such. Never a problem in school. I do have trouble remembering the names…
Same here. I've always had terrible personal memory since I was young, despite dramatic lifestyle and diet changes over time. Distinctive characters in fiction stick with me, but not order of events: I couldn't tell you anything useful about the plot details of my favorite films and books despite revisiting them many times. It applies to short-term memory, too. I give myself very specific places to put things, becaus…
I can usually slowly work my way back through a book, maybe with a couple prompts from someone else to help me piece it back together, but only for stuff I’ve read in the past few years. Farther back and it’s gone. Character names rarely stick. I did watch the Star Wars trilogy so much as a kid that I could replay it in my head, every frame, sound effect, and line, every cut perfectly timed. Not anymore, but that part of me’s not totally broken, I guess. I think I’m not far off average on that stuff, maybe a bit below.
> Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.
Yep, exactly that here, too.
I have had something similar to this (heavy fog and inability to continue creative work) and I use coffee, bulk vitamins and regular walks with music to work through it. I also started eating more fresh food and less frozen food, even if it meant eating-out fresh, because it was much worse when I was reheating a lot of tasteless frozen food. But no matter how hard I try, I have focused my career into an area that req…
I wonder if you may have aphantasia, and I also wonder if it may be more common (selected for even) amongst engineers. If I say: "imagine a red triangle", can you do it easily? Is it red? Does it visually exist in front of you? I have asked many people this, and many people say it is laughably easy. This tells me it is "normal". I can't do this. I also have a terrible episodic memory. But my semantic memory is fantas…
This reads out exactly how a manic or hypomanic person would experience things and rationalize past events and feelings. The idea that it has to be something complex and in a sense grandiose compared to "just being burned out" is often a very telling sign. Perhaps it's Twitter forcing the format a little, but I could see myself thinking like this during a hypomanic episode. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder (type 2…
This sounds exactly like a psychotic break to me. I had a massive one and it started with a pop in my mind followed by half a year of similar symptoms. In the end, I was diagnosed Bipolar type—1. Some people often ask, the story is here: https://kayode.co/blog/4106/living-with-psychosis/
I pushed myself too hard with too little sleep and that was combined with pressure from family.
There was a feeling in my mind of something snapping and it was like throwing a switch. One minute I was tired but still myself, the next I was incapacitated, delusional, paranoid, unable to sleep or relax or focus.
Does anyone remember that Reddit post where a guy thought his landlord was sneaking into his apartment and leaving him notes? He insisted the handwriting was completely different. Then a poster suggested he get tested for CO poisoning, which it was, and the “different handwriting” was actually a part of his delusion. “Burning out all of the glucose and dopamine in your brain” isn’t a thing. “Functional Neurological D…
> “Burning out all of the glucose and dopamine in your brain” isn’t a thing. This sort of narrative-based grandstanding is something the author is previously known for. His "lol oops I hacked too much" doesn't hold up to scrutiny, otherwise this would be an extremely common thing in overworked knowledge workers. It's not.
It is a physical thing. I’m not sure it’s caused by burning out all the glucose or whatever (as that is short term addressable). Dopamine, that’s possible.
In my case, it was caused I think by not getting enough sleep combined with cognitive load, perhaps exasperated by high sodium, and poor nutrition. Stimulants (such as caffeine, but also Ritalin, adderall, etc) if not carefully moderated both cause you to continue to work beyond the point your brain physically needs rest while also causing a kind of dopamine resistance where you need more stimulant for the same effect.
And you get migraines. In my case, optical migraines (expanding noise/patterns... in your visual cortex, not in your eyeball... that is me with somewhat foggy thinking and a bit of a head ache). A little like seizures but limited to certain parts of the brain. A little like micro-strokes as well as there’s evidence that migraines like that are somewhat vascular in nature in that similar damage is seen (in folks with lots of migraines) as in small strokes. And they seem to happen when combined with high sodium, low water intake, combined with lack of sleep and high cognitive load.
But I wouldn’t be too certain about the causes. It’s hard to tell with these things.
I suspect it has something to do with the glymphatic system (as drinking enough water seems to help as does getting enough sleep).
I’m more careful with my sleep schedule and generally don’t push myself overly hard like in grad school and try not to have too much sodium (eating Ramen—with the packet—triggered one of my episodes) and I really have them only extremely rarely—less than once a year—instead of multiple times a week like in grad school.
Recognizing limits on yourself is important. I think hard work is really wonderful and feels amazing, but you should be careful to sleep enough (7-8, maybe more if you’re recovering from something... I aggressively try to get at least 7 hours every single night), drink enough water, don’t over do it on stimulants, and make sure to eat enough.
This reads out exactly how a manic or hypomanic person would experience things and rationalize past events and feelings. The idea that it has to be something complex and in a sense grandiose compared to "just being burned out" is often a very telling sign. Perhaps it's Twitter forcing the format a little, but I could see myself thinking like this during a hypomanic episode. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder (type 2…
I think that would just be a misdiagnosis. Seizures don’t typically accompany manic episodes and not being able to come up with words that are used in everyday situations is also an oddity.
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Research is conflicting, but burnout many times is not caused by the amount of hours worked, whether you are exercising, eating right, etc. Those may be components to it or make you less resilient in general, but burnout seems to really come from things like feeling lack of meaning/purpose, inconsistency in values, perceived or actual unfairness, etc. Another interesting perspective I have heard describes burnout as…
One issue with "self-care" is that it reinforces the idea that those problems are just individual problems. And to some extent, they are. But to let an employee go and send them on a quest to fix their personal issue is such a very easy distraction from more systematic causes. No need to fix work culture if it was just that one person. No need to question social norms that might nudge people into working an unhealthy…
Personal opinion, but where I think many may begin to really suffer from burnout is when they feel like they cannot do anything to improve or change their situation, and that it is futile to even try.
If nothing else, self care is something an individual who is struggling can control in the midst of a bunch of things they cannot.
Does anyone remember that Reddit post where a guy thought his landlord was sneaking into his apartment and leaving him notes? He insisted the handwriting was completely different. Then a poster suggested he get tested for CO poisoning, which it was, and the “different handwriting” was actually a part of his delusion. “Burning out all of the glucose and dopamine in your brain” isn’t a thing. “Functional Neurological D…
Also odd is that OP uses the term 'seizure' but I think he means 'seized-up', like an engine that wont run. He explictly mentions at one point that the EEG didnt show anything like epilepsy. But then he says things like "I'd work for 30 minutes, seize, sleep for 2 hours, then work, then seize, then sleep, ad nauseum." If he was actually having siezures (absence seziures or focal seizures or myoclonic seizures or toni…
But are you even able to see that someone had a seizure from looking at an EEG after it happened? I was under the impression that it sort of have to be happening while you're measuring.
I've been through multiple rounds of both MRI and EEG, mostly to be able to rule out things like brain damage as a precaution. I'm a little fuzzy on the details as this was done so long ago.