In Science Daily, an article discussing a study by University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock on the effects and ways to alleviate performance anxiety: Succeeding in school: Stress boosts performance for confident students, but holds back those with more anxiety.
While the study seems to only be focused on performance anxiety in students, I think the coping mechanisms discussed can be broadened to other types of anxiety and generalised anxiety as well.
In 1986, Carlo Cipolla wrote an essay describing his views on the basic laws of human stupidity. Published in the public domain, it can be found various places around the web. This version is taken from the Whole Earth Review (Spring 1987 pp 2 – 7).
Following on from the last post about Perception and our senses, I watched this TED talk by Eli Pariser, who informs us about search sites tailoring their results based on data they have collected about our previous searches and meanderings around the web.
Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles” | Video on TED.com.
Given what was mentioned in the last post, one can see the potential danger in having a 3rd party present information to us that may cause us to unconciously invoke our personal filters on top of the filtering and sorting the search site is giving us. One can be led to the conclusion that the search results present the most complete picture of what is out on the web as possible, where in fact they are giving us what they think we want to see based on our history.
While this may be a boon in some cases (perhaps many cases, I don’t know), it is a detriment in other cases, as we may want to gather information without this “personalization” that the search company is giving us. It can blind us to information we may, in fact, really want and need in order to be informed, make informed decisions, and so on.
As humans are wont to grasp onto initial meanings for what they perceive, and those meanings are hard to change once set, this can be a vital flaw for anyone conducting research on the web. It feeds our confirmation bias and existing prejudices.
A few modern browsers allow for an “icognito mode” — where the browser doesn’t reveal any history or information about the user. It may be interesting to conduct a side-by-side search to see if, in fact, you are getting different results back.
This was an interesting read, as it intersects with my personal thoughts based on my experience studying how people work and how people perceive the world around them. In a nutshell, our senses are much stronger than we give them credit for, and our basic human ability to deal with the world around us is based on what we pay attention to.
Oscillatory Thoughts: We are all inattentive superheroes.
This article corroborates what I have learned, that people are constantly deleting, distorting and hallucinating most of their experience based on their limited attention to detials and the power of human mind to “fill in details” for understanding. In fact, the details are extremely rich in our senses, yet our prior experience, mood, thoughts, etc., create filters and bias in our ability to actually process that information, and make sense of it for ourselves.
Last night I was in a discussion with some people and we were talking about people’s inability to see things. It’s not that they cannot see, it’s that they don’t see, based upon their preconceived beliefs and prejudices about any particular situation. (in this particular situation, it was how parents were not realizing how they were causing pain for someone because of their (the parents) disapproval of the amount of time this person engaged in the activities to avoid more harmful behaviour).
To me, this is a matter of paying attention, of achieving more mindfulness and consciousness in any given situation. While obviously no one can be completely mindful in all situations, achieving more mindfulness in daily life is, I feel, a good thing. It does help one to recognize their own bias, and potential for those deletions, distortions and hallucinations we are all so prone to.
These are usually pretty much to be taken with a grain of salt. There’s some truth here, but it isn’t really me.
My Personality
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64
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81
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| You do not experience strong, irresistible cravings and consequently do not find yourself tempted to overindulge, however you are sensitive about what others think of you. Your concern about rejection and ridicule cause you to feel shy and uncomfortable around others. You are easily embarrassed and often feel ashamed. Your fears that others will criticize or make fun of you are exaggerated and unrealistic, but your awkwardness and discomfort may make these fears a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are not prone to spells of energetic high spirits. You are reasonably interested in the arts but are not totally absorbed by them. You do not like to claim that you are better than other people, and generally shy from talking yourself up, however you do not enjoy confrontation, but you will stand up for yourself or push your point if you feel it is important. You are not an overly cautious person. You will think about alternatives and consequences but make up your mind fairly quickly.
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http://www.learnmyself.com/personality.asp?p=Quick_Test&i=PI
introduction to meditation 2010.
Several podcasts that teach you how to meditate.
I first met Alecia as unmasked in #tss in 2007. She was someone like me, full of love for everyone. She was hurt, had been through an awful time health-wise and was suffering. Yet her heart was filled with love. I knew this to be a special person and I instantly fell in love with her. My love for her grew over the time we knew each other. It was wonderful watching her grow in her self and become stronger in her real self, to the point where her real gender took hold and became more real in her real life.
I made my feelings known to her about 5 weeks ago and happily she returned the feelings. Since then our love has grown and we’ve grown closer together as we’ve talked online. I love her tremendously and I want to take care of her in every way I know how.
She has a radiant beauty that she doens’t see, but I see every time i come in contact with her. Her picture I cherish and look at daily. Well almost daily. I know her to be a true woman and that shows in her picture to me. She is becoming more bold and is passing by being her true self in public. This is so gratifying to me. It means my theory is correct, that one passes merely by being one’s self, that no hormone treatments are necessary.
She is a wonderful person and has helped me tremendously, I am no longer deeply depressed. I am happy when I think of her. It hasn’t stopped the PTSD from happening, but I am stronger and can take it now.
I am still blocked on working on projects. I am forcing myself to write this as I know it will do me good. I cannot seem to muster up the enthusiasm for working on things i enjoy like programming, drawing, journaling. I seem to just exist. I chat and read email/rss, but that’s about it. It bothers me tremendously. I should be doing more. Ideas don’t come to me as they once did. I am flat, no creativity.
Work provided so much of a place for me to be creative and supplied my needs for innovation and creativity. Without that, I have to supply my own and it is hard to come up with things. I am worried that I’m stagnant and have no gumption for working on my projects. Programming used to be so rewarding. Producing software used to be so much fun. I haven’t gotten into the swing of things with iphone software yet. It seems so daunting, there’s so much to learn. And I haven’t touched my RonR projects in months. Yet I know what needs to be done with them. Snippets rattle around in my brain but I just can’t seem to put myself into the mood to write.
I’m going to discuss this with Shelley today and see if I can get some traction on this problem.
Just had another EMDR session, and made progress this time. Held the image and feelings in my head, and processed it through and had several changes in feeling in both body and mind and got breakthroughs. By the end of the session I could hold the image in my head and didn’t have the associated feelings. It felt pretty good. This holds promise.
I’m going to be vigilant for repercussions — this may not be the end of it, there may still be fallout from it, but at least I was able to go through it once and come out the other side. This bodes well for the process.
Just finished my online application for disability.
This marks my throwing in the towel on looking for work for now. I’m still going to respond to headhunters emails and calls, but I’m not going out of my way to search. I’m just not up to it. I don’t think I’m a good candidate right now, what with the dissociations and flashbacks happening to the tune of one or two a week. The ol’ insomnia is back again, too, throwing off my sleep schedule. I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Shopzilla.
I need to take time out. Time to heal up these fragments and disintegrations. Stuff I haven’t dealt with all my life. It’s about f-ing time, actually.
Some of what I’m dealing with.
From “Trauma and Human Existance”, Robert Stolorow, 2007.
In agreement with Krystal (1978), I view trauma as, in essence, an experience of unendurable affect. Furthermore, as shown in this vignette, the intolerability of an affect state cannot be explained solely, or even primarily, on the basis of the quantity or intensity of the painful feelings invoked by an injurious event. Trauma is consituted in an intersubjective context in which severe emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held. In such a context, painful affect states become unendurable–that is, traumatic.
It cannot be overemphasized that injurious childhood experiences in and of themselves need not be traumatic (or at least not lastingly so) or pathogenic, provided taht they occur within a responsive millieu. Pain is not pathology. It is the absence of adequate attunement and responsiveness to the child’s painful emotional reactions that renders them unendurable and thus a source of traumatic states and psychopathology. This conceptualization holds both for discrete, dramatic traumatic events and for more subtle “cumulative traumas” (Khan, 1963) that occur continually thoughout childhood. Whereas Khan conceptualized cumulative trauma as the result of recurring “breaches in the mothers role as protective shield” (p. 46), I understand such ongoing trauma more in terms of the failure to respond adequately to the child’s painful affect once the “protective shield” has been breached. A parent’s narcissistic use of the child, for example, may preclude the recognition of, acceptance of, and attuned responsiveness to the child’s painful affect states.
Lacking a holding context in which painful affect can live and become integrated, the traumatized child, as in my illustrative vignette, must dissociate painful emotions from his or her ongoing experience, often resulting, psychosomatic states or in splits between the subjectively experienced mind and body. Even if able to remember the traumatogenic experiences, the child may remain plagued by tormenting doubts about their accuracy or even about the reality of his or her experience in general, a consequence of the absense of validating attunements — the lack that I am contending lies at the heart of emotional trauma. The traumatized child will fail to develop the capacity for affect tolerance and the ability to use affects as guiding signals; painful affects, when felt, will tend to engender the eruption of tramatic states (Socarides & Stolorow, 1984/85).
Wheee! This is some fun stuff we got going on inside of us.
