Advice please: Cognitive distortion preventing me from accomplishing anything
The cognitive distortion is called “catastrophizing”, I think.
I’m afraid of unexpected, strongly negative events occurring to me without warning. Nothing specific, just a generalized fear. That fear is crippling me. Worse, there’s a part of me that feels that fear is keeping me safe. “If I let go of that fear,” it goes, “I would start doing things and then I wouldn’t be safe any more.”
I haven’t filled out a job application in over a week, because doing so would force me out into the world if i got an interview, and into the world consistently if I got the job.
You are not alone—anxiety and catastrophization make things harder for a lot of people. The good news is that CBT has been shown to be more effective than placebo therapy for making improvements in this area. If as you say you can’t pay for a therapist, try working from a book such as Mind Over Mood. I hope you’re able to find some relief!
I’d like to second this recommendation. I used to catastrophise to a crippling degree, and I do it far less since my course of CBT. Mind Over Mood is excellent.
Some anti-depressants work pretty well for anxiety too. Are you on any medication?
Download a REBT form, and fill it out. They’re mostly very similar, but the ABC or ABCDE is probably what you want.
One reason why this might work when just thinking about it doesn’t: consciousness is basically talking to yourself, but internalized. When that’s not working right, you can force the process onto a different track by simply vocalizing the things you want to believe. Talking to yourself works.
A stop-gap would be to motivate yourself with fear: if you can’t avoid being afraid, try to use it.
For instance, imagine specific catastrophies that could occur where you would need money, to motivate you for a job hunt.
It probably won’t solve your problem long-term, but if it motivates you, then any port in a storm.
I don’t know if there’s specific evidence regarding this intervention, but in the absence of scientific evidence my fairly confident prior would be that it would be highly counterproductive—it would result in a spiral of SNS activation and paralysis.
I wouldn’t suggest it as a long-term strategy, because fear-based motivation can have negative consequences. But the first step in handling a fear/anxiety problem is to do something and if what motivates you is fear, then use what you got.
Even given this caveat I stand by my estimate.
New thinking skills are great (and already covered in the other replies). But if you have a serious problem drugs help too—and make it easier to learn the thinking skills as well.
What does your psychiatrist have to say about your crippling anxiety?
I haven’t been able to afford therapy for a while now. When I could afford it he taught me enough behavioral therapy to eventually overcome my previous entanglements, but this is something new for me.
Try your primary care doctor. I agree with above posters that some variant on CBT seems very applicable, but the kind of anxiety you’re describing sounds like medication might also help. It can be easier to change your thoughts when you don’t have a physical sense of danger/panic, and meds can help with that.
“feels that” is a phrase that always raises a red flag for me. I wouldn’t take up the matter every time I hear it said, but as the context is inviting comment, I will.
Every statement of the form “I feel that...” is false, because what follows these words is never a feeling, but an assertion, a belief. There may be feelings around that belief, but the thing itself is a belief, not a feeling. The belief here is “fear is keeping me safe”.
As long as it’s treated as a feeling, it cannot be questioned—your feelings are simply whatever they are, right? But recognising that it is a belief immediately opens the door to a flood of obvious questions.
Is it true? Why do I believe that? When did I start believing it? What experience gave rise to it? Was it justified then; is it still justified now? How shall I tell? What do I do, or not do, on account of it, and does it work? For it is written (by Eliezer somewhere, although I couldn’t find the exact quote), “the most important question that anyone can ask themselves is this: why do I believe what I believe?”
You give a clue to the question “does it work?”:
The answer to this one is clearly “no”.
You’re forgetting about aliefs. They fall on an intermediate level between pure emotions and propositional beliefs. And when someone says ‘I feel that X’, they probably mean ‘I alieve X’ and that’s not something easily modified by reasoning.
Analyzing mental processes like that can be useful but doing it in a productive manner is a non-trivial skill. Reading a self-help book about cognitive-behavioral therapy might be a good way to learn productive introspection.
Yes. But a skill worth acquiring.
I had something similar. I’ve always looked for what could go wrong. I just naturally see inconsistencies. It seems like a good idea—if you look for what can go wrong, you’re in a position to prevent it. But if you take the availability bias into account, the obsessing over what can go wrong leads to a distorted view of the world that expects more bad things to happens and acts accordingly. I spent effort avoiding and fretting over low probability negative events, while I let higher value opportunities pass me by.
One thing I’ve found—the bad things aren’t the end of the world. Unfortunately, in my fretting and not applying for jobs (hint hint), I screwed myself financially. Guess what? The world kept turning. Movies are still sometimes funny. Root beer floats are still tasty. And eventually I got a job and just recently started buying myself a number of toys I’ve wanted for a while.
Here’s what you might try. Picture the bad thing happening. Ok, it’s happened. What now? Does the sun explode? Clippy turns you into a paper clip? I bet you’ll get a new goal and move on. Thje world will keep turning. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll find the misery of fretting over some negative event was about a zillion times more unpleasant than the event itself, and failed to prevent it anyway. So knock it off. It’s not helping. It’s making everything worse.
Intractable problems occur when what you do to fix the problem makes it worse. Whenever you hear the catastrophizing voice in you head, say “Hello crazy person. Yes, that’s all very interesting, but you’re not helping. I prefer to go to my doom blithely whistling a tune. Now piss off.”
Also, intractable problems occur when you refuse to consider too many options. Try to at least see all your options, instead of immediately eliminating ones you don’t like. See them all, even ones you don’t like. They may not be the ideal, but some of them may be possible, and better than the other alternatives.
Another thing to try. Go to a job interview intending to fail. If you don’t want to go out into the world, you can always turn the job down later. You’re completely safe from having to work if you don’t want to. But it might be convenient to have the option, eh?
Last interview I had, I was already wrapping up another offer, and just went because I had already made the appointment, and thought the connection might come in handy later. I even got a bump in offered pay because the recruiter thought I was hesitant because I wanted more money. At the interview, I was relaxed and straightforward, and the recruiter called me and asked me back into the building while I was walking to my car in the parking lot.
And if you’re like most here, you believe that technology will be making life much better without you lifting a finger. With you just hanging out and taking a job as a janitor. I wouldn’t think that a janitor has a lot of pressure. Web access, a library card, a gym membership—life wouldn’t be so hard. So consider the janitor job a fall back position, and see if you can do better.
Warning: maybe stupid advice, but I hope people with more therapy experience can say if so.
Seems like some self-reinforcing behavior. Can you change your environment—go to a different place for a while, for example? Stay with people you feel safe around?
Also, what happens when you think about your actual odds of suffering a negative event, and the fact that they are not correlated to your fear experience?
If you can afford the time and money consider neurofeedback training. It can be very good at scientifically determining the likely source of your anxiety (e.g. too few alpha waves in certain parts of your brain) and gradually making adjustments.
Neurofeedback has helped reduce my level of anxiety.
I would make a list of specific fears; even though you said your fears were general, I’d bet that you probably have some fears that pop into your head. For example, list of all the fears you have about applying for a job. Then, if you have a close friend or family member, show them the list and ask them to evaluate the fears for you. That might help you to identify the unlikelyhood of something terrible happening; their advice might help you realize that a lot of your fears are unfounded or highly unlikely. And it might help you to figure out which fears wouldn’t really be that bad if they happened to you; for example, while a car accident would be bad, people gossiping about you is not nearly quite so.
Finally, maybe make a pro list (since you already identified the cons) of the good things that can happen if you go out into the world. You could compare the lists and decide if the stuff you can do if you overcome your fears outweighs how you feel now.
You don’t have to overcome all your fears at once, just make one slow babystep each day. The more times you make a small change, the greater your likelyhood of realizing that your fears are all in your head. So, think of something you really want to do (go to the beach? drive a car? attend a LessWrong event?), and start there to gain some momentum and have some positive experiences that you can’t have if you don’t get out in the world.
Then, you can approach something that is mroe challenging but could be extremely beneficial in your life (getting a job) with the confidence you gained from the positive experiences. Also, I am certain there are free mental health services available. I would look up your state’s Department of Human Services and see what they have to offer. That could help you get some control over your anxiety and fear.
It is worth reflecting for a moment whether you really want the types of jobs you are applying for. If you can figure out reasonably equivalent alternative jobs to apply for, that might help a bit with your anxiety. (If such a possibility exists in your economic circumstance)
It’s probably also worth trying to make your concerns more specific to yourself. Whenever I get ready to cold-call someone, I always worry—specifically, I worry that I’ll be so off-putting in my interactions with the target that he will immediately call/email/text all of his colleagues about what a jerk I am, preventing me from making professional connections with them even after my interaction skills improve.
But that’s not a particularly realistic concern. If I piss off the target that much, he’ll just hang up and move on with his life. Or not call back when I leave a message. If I hadn’t made than concern concrete, I’d never have been able to address it rationally. Then I found that my anxiety didn’t change level, but the explicit reasoning changed (to some other catastrophe). Personifying my anxiety, it seemed like Tim’s Anxiety was never giving me his true rejection, which made it easier to NOT take Tim’s Anxiety as seriously.
Edit to add: The other thing I noticed about my anxiety was what I called double-counting. There’s a rational amount of concern to have about the catastrophe I described about (it’s low, but it exists). And that catastrophe would be emotionally powerful if it occurred. But if you let the catastrophic possibility weigh your decision both rationally (i.e. expected value) and emotionally, you are double counting the possibility in your decision process. If you can be aware of your thoughts as they occur and decide whether the emotional weight or the rational weight is what you will consider, you might be able to more appropriately include it in deciding to act. The goal is not to prevent these thoughts—the goal is to change your reaction so that it doesn’t interfere with your goals. So it doesn’t matter whether you give the thoughts emotional weight or rational weight, so long as you don’t apply both weights.
Finally, the way to reduce anxiety is exposure. Can you find a job application that you don’t care whether you get an interview (even in some totally unrelated field), and spend tomorrow just doing that application? You don’t need to spend any substantial time on it, and it doesn’t matter if the application is any good, because you don’t want the job. And stop working once you complete and submit the application. Won’t it feel great just accomplishing something that you decided to do?
This is a relatively common psychological problem. It’s a common reaction to stress. You need to take it seriously, though, because for some people it can be a crippling, disabling thing. But there is stuff you can do.
First of all, acknowledge the truth of what your fear is saying—sudden catastrophe could happen without warning. But the flip side is that worldwide the vast majority of deaths don’t come from sudden catastrophe. You should fear eating more than you fear such catastrophe—in terms of the real risk of it. It’s fear, but not reasonable fear—as it’s not sufficiently likely to happen to make it worth worrying about it. Particularly given that you can’t do much to avoid most such disasters in the first place !
Secondly, it’s OK to be irrationally afraid of something. All of us do it sometimes. What’s not OK is to let an irrational fear take away your right to do something. Right where you are now, you’ve probably lost some territories to the fear, and you need to identify some losses, and start taking them back. Choose some target territories and go. You will get used to being in the territory again, and you will progressively lose your fear of it each time you go. Don’t tackle everything at once, but start identifying territories and taking them back one by one. And don’t accept losing any others. Expect this to take some time to work through.
That’s all that CBT generally is—keep exposing yourself to circumstances that you’re irrationally afraid of until you learn from experience that actually nothing terrible happens. Start with something fairly easy, and make it really easy by learning it’s OK. Then move onto something a bit harder that just got easier because of your first victory, and do that until it’s no problem.
Rinse and repeat until your fears are all reasonable ones. Which may never happen. But you’ll get nearly all the territory back.
Make sure you talk to someone about this even if it isn’t a therapist. But I think a therapist might be good, as might something like Prozac—although on that matter you can’t simply base your view on a blog opinion.....
Finally, mental problems are essentially normal—all of our minds are capable of getting a bit weird, and it’s the responsibility of your rational brain to learn what sometimes go awry, spot it, and nudge you back in the right direction. You really can win this one yourself.
haven’t read the rest of the comments, maybe someone already said this:
Here’s some more fear for you: Being irrationally afraid of risk and therefore not doing things is drastically more dangerous than the things you are afraid of. Do the math, it’s true!
good luck!
It seems there is a strong obsessive component there, are you familiar with the 4 steps to treat OCD? It might help.
Are you afraid of consequences (such as “people demanding I interact with them” or “being outside and feeling terrified”), or does the thought of going out directly cause fear? Here are a few tips, most useful for the latter:
Train yourself to flinch toward frightening things. Do everything you’re frightened of but not enough that you can’t do it at all. (e.g. tall buildings, roller coasters, horror movies, buying a newspaper, chatting with a neighbor)
Push through your fear. Each time you jump backwards, curl into a little ball and cling to the bedpost, peel yourself away again and put on a sock, tie a shoe, take one more step toward the door. If this works it’ll desensitize you. If the fear doesn’t let up before you can complete the frightening task, give up; it’s causing damage directly, and neglecting food, drink and sleep during that time makes it worse.
Cut up tasks into subtasks you can handle individually.
Find all the things that alleviate your fear and exploit the fuck out of them. Having a friend with me when I go out works for me.
It’s possible to stop a panic attack but it’ll be twice as bad later.
Meds are often cheaper than therapy—pill-pushers see you for shorter sessions, and they can give you samples. I cannot endorse black-market anxiety medication.
From what I read, it seems that the first step in applying desensitization therapy is to master some kind of relaxation technique. Then you put yourself in a (possibly artificial) situations that cause a manageable level of fear and apply the technique until the fear goes away. Maybe simply clenching your teeth and pushing through the fear works too but I suspect it doesn’t count as desensitization in the sense that the word is used in psychotherapy.
I expect the desensitization effect comes from doing frightening things with no consequences that reinforce the fear, and the relaxation and milder situation serve to make that feasible.
My personal method of dealing with anxiety and fear when I was younger was this:
I chose a reference point—a particular horrible scenario, and how I would deal with that—and compared subsequent worst case scenarios with that to see if they were in fact worse. If they weren’t worse, it wasn’t worth considering. If they were, I’d consider how to deal with them.
Your mileage may vary, though. I tended to have relatively concrete and specific fears. About the only fear which persisted in a strongly irrational way was that of permanent bodily damage—losing a hand, for example, although even just a permanent scar bothered me immensely. After I realized I was going to die eventually anyways, that fear went away.
No, it isn’t. You’re preventing yourself from accomplishing anything.
Start small—accomplish progressively larger tasks, starting with something as simple as taking out the trash. Every time you successfully complete a task, say, “See look—my ‘cognitive distortion’ is just an illusion.”
It’s an elephant/rider problem. Treating the mind as a unified whole isn’t helpful when one part wants to get out of the house and another part is terrified of doing so.
Ah. Thanks for the link. Why is that post not front-paged, or indexed somewhere in the wiki?
I was trying to make use of known research that people who believe themselves to be hard workers will work harder, while people who believe themselves to be smart workers will work less. Of course, explaining that would have destroyed the effect, which is why I instead opted to start my post with something intentionally harsh-sounding.
I don’t think that research is especially applicable here.