Ah, I'm flattered that I became the subject of one of your posts. But I really feel like now we're getting at the very essence of anxiety, not just social anxiety. It might well be the feeling that something needs to be done, because there is something wrong with the present state. And maybe it can't be assuaged by doing anything, because there actually wasn't anything wrong with the situation.
It does suggest the ultimate antidote would be learning to relax, feeling like you are at leisure and that nothing needs to happen. Relaxation shouldn't be impossible, no? We're not huskies.
But maybe we are huskies! Huskies that wear clothes and write blog posts and think we're above other animals.
I do think you're right, though, that on a fundamental level anxiety isn't just a random fear, it's the implicit belief that you need to SCRAMBLE to prevent the feared event from coming to pass. And the question is how to prevent ourselves from executing on this scramble.
It's reasonably well-established in behavioral psych that it's much easier to install competing mutually-exclusive behaivors in response to a trigger than it is to simply extinguish a behavioral trigger. Which is why people trying to quit smoking will start vaping instead (or swap to non-nicotine cigarettes, or chew gum)-- they are competing behaviors that can't be done simultaneous to smoking.
I feel like there's a real thing among nerds where we tend to not be comfortable just hanging out. (I was talking with a friend about learning to socialize and he said, "What? LEARN to socialize? What does that mean?")
Maybe we grow up getting praise for smarts and skills, not for presence and warmth? And, as you say, unstructured social time is ambiguous...
I remember at the reproductive frontiers conference a guy was discussing developmental problems very high IQ individuals often have in relating to their peers; apparently a VERY common experience growing up is the kid will grow bored with the games played by their age cohort, they'd invent more-complicated ones (or discover games made for adults), and then would discover to great sadness that their peers find these invented games weird and incomprehensible. A very lonely thing.
Ah, I'm flattered that I became the subject of one of your posts. But I really feel like now we're getting at the very essence of anxiety, not just social anxiety. It might well be the feeling that something needs to be done, because there is something wrong with the present state. And maybe it can't be assuaged by doing anything, because there actually wasn't anything wrong with the situation.
It does suggest the ultimate antidote would be learning to relax, feeling like you are at leisure and that nothing needs to happen. Relaxation shouldn't be impossible, no? We're not huskies.
But maybe we are huskies! Huskies that wear clothes and write blog posts and think we're above other animals.
I do think you're right, though, that on a fundamental level anxiety isn't just a random fear, it's the implicit belief that you need to SCRAMBLE to prevent the feared event from coming to pass. And the question is how to prevent ourselves from executing on this scramble.
It's reasonably well-established in behavioral psych that it's much easier to install competing mutually-exclusive behaivors in response to a trigger than it is to simply extinguish a behavioral trigger. Which is why people trying to quit smoking will start vaping instead (or swap to non-nicotine cigarettes, or chew gum)-- they are competing behaviors that can't be done simultaneous to smoking.
Be truthful, kind, and selfish; nice!
I feel like there's a real thing among nerds where we tend to not be comfortable just hanging out. (I was talking with a friend about learning to socialize and he said, "What? LEARN to socialize? What does that mean?")
Maybe we grow up getting praise for smarts and skills, not for presence and warmth? And, as you say, unstructured social time is ambiguous...
I remember at the reproductive frontiers conference a guy was discussing developmental problems very high IQ individuals often have in relating to their peers; apparently a VERY common experience growing up is the kid will grow bored with the games played by their age cohort, they'd invent more-complicated ones (or discover games made for adults), and then would discover to great sadness that their peers find these invented games weird and incomprehensible. A very lonely thing.
Chess club was great.