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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

#71

Post by JamesBarney »

“Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.”

No they don't. Your findings suggest that people who have more perseverance have reduced risk of depression and anxiety later in life. Additional research would be needed to prove that "we can increase perseverance by aspiring towards goals", and that "increasing perseverance reduces that individuals risk of anxiety and depression". And I would be very surprised if both of these are true.

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

#72

Post by aspenmayer »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #26
maybelsyrup wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

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 reall…

Thanks for your comments. I hope you keep posting here on HN, if you don’t already. There don’t seem to be many people on this board in your profession, and you write about the topics in a way that is clear and makes sense in the context of this community.

I responded below to another commenter, not on your behalf of course. I hope I didn’t misrepresent your point. Thanks for posting.

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

#73

Post by yesenadam »

Swizec wrote: post #9
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…

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…

Sorry to blow your mind then, but to quote an HN comment of mine:

It seems Frankl has been somewhat exposed/debunked. Would you believe he was at Auschwitz for only a few days, performed medical experiments on Jews himself, and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl#Controversy

There was a bit of a discussion previously about that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21901602

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

#74

Post by bmitc »

In another article, "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders Can Fend Off Perseverance Toward Life Goals".

Unfortunately, I find this article seems to be supporting the ol' "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" method of treating mental disorders. What were the other aspects of the study? Were medications monitored? What level of therapy was being given? I don't see anything in the article that suggests it couldn't have been the case that those that improved in their battle with mental disorders had also been under the effect of successful medication and therapy and thus their perseverance toward or even identification of life goals was made possible through that.

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

#75

Post by archibaldJ »

The heavy is the root of the light.

The still is the master of unrest.

Realizing this,

the successful person is poised and centered

in the midst of all activities;

although surrounded by opulence,

he is not swayed.

Why should the lord of the country flit about like a fool?

If you let yourself be blown to and fro,

you lose touch with your root.

To be restless is to lose one's self-mastery.

- Lao Tzu

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

#76

Post by mirimir »

JamesBarney wrote: post #71

“Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.” No they don't. Your findings suggest that pe…

Yes, correlation causality.

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

#77

Post by toohotatopic »

derefr wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 so…

OCD is not a coprocessor, a system enhancement, but a virus that is taking cpu time. It's there for a reason, but which is not evolutionary selection.

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

#78

Post by gooeykabuki »

ooobit2 wrote: post #42
eric4smith wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here are just a few. 1. Rearing children with the goal of making them read at 2 years old. Then with the goal of learning calculus at 10. Then others as they grow older. 2. Learning programming by writing a real system that actual people will use -- instead of code katas or reading programming books or attending a boot camp. 3. Marrying not only for love, but with the intention of building a business or farm to…

Alright. Because this personally applies for me, what about creating missions of past decisions made without missions? (This sounds naive, but I could use some insight.) For ex. I did my undergrad in IT Security. I did an MSDA. I ended up in professional sales. I don't know what to do with all this. I've been good at tackling hard subjects my entire life, but how do you craft a mission from a hodgepodge of difficult…

The venn diagram of your skills brings up Sales Engineering (also called technical consultant, solutions engineer, pre-sales engineer depending on the company) at an Internet/Security company as a potential career path. Have you heard of or considered that role?

That's a more focussed starting point which may lead you to find your mission.

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

#79

Post by gooeykabuki »

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…

Your comments through out this thread make a lot of sense. Thanks for outlining them.

Curious, when did you start thinking about your life in terms of mission (s) and what was the trigger for it?

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

#80

Post by Trasmatta »

eric4smith wrote: post #63
Trasmatta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah...your "mission" outcome shouldn't be tied to the performance of your child is some sort of task. Especially an extremely difficult one, like getting a kid to learn calculus by the time they're 10. That's a good way to foster resentment between you and children. A better mission might be to help your kids explore their own interests, find what they're passionate about, and then do whatever you can to foster and…

No, you misunderstand. I have a kid who I taught to read by 2 years old. That was a mission. She hated it and hated me for it at the time. But I just came off a 2 hour session with her teaching her SEO. She was jumping to do it, because that early reading taught her how to be self-sufficient in learning things herself from the very beginning. Another mission was to teach her how to find and learn anything she wants i…

I don't think you have the necessary evidence to show that forcing your kid to read by the age of 2 is what allowed them to be excited about learning SEO today.

> The point is that your mission with your kids is to actually force generic life skills down your children's throats. It's not an option!!!

You're presenting a false dichotomy, where the only options are either forcing skills down your children's throats, or being completely hands off. There's a way to teach them good skills that doesn't include forcing them to hit arbitrary deadlines for reading and calculus, and making a 2 year old hate you in the process.

I'm glad this parenting style has worked for you, but it's not a generically applicable way to raise kids.

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