I never thought I was anxious, but my sister pointed out I have structured my life to an unusual degree to avoid stimuli that could create anxiety: I don’t drive, I worked from home my entire career even before it was cool and at a dev job at a company of the ideal size to allow me to avoid office politics or excessive meetings, I spend most my time reading alone, my life is highly routine, I often eat the same foods day after day until I tire and move on to the next thing, and I travel rarely.
I have no idea if she is right or not. And if true, I am unsure if it matters if such things grant me some peace. But the idea that the shape of one’s life may be, in part, an unconscious treatment for mental flaws is a disquieting one. And it may be worth asking yourself: looking at the structure of my life, what symptoms might I be unconsciously treating?
To me, this doesn’t sound related to “anxiety” per se, instead it sounds like you react very strongly to negative situations (especially negative social situations) and thus go out of your way to avoid even a small chance of encountering such a situation. I’m definitely like that (to some extent). I sometimes call it “neuroticism”, although the term “neuroticism” is not great either, it encompasses lots of different things, not all of which describe me.
Like, imagine there’s an Activity X (say, inviting an acquaintance to dinner), and it involves “carrots” (something can go well and that feels rewarding), and also “sticks” (something can go badly and that feels unpleasant). For some people, their psychological makeup is such that the sticks are always especially painful (they have sharp thorns, so to speak). Those people will (quite reasonably) choose not to partake in Activity X, even if most other people would, at least on the margin. This is very sensible, it’s just cost-benefit analysis. It needn’t have anything to do with “anxiety”. It can feel like “no thanks, I don’t like Activity X so I choose not to do it”.
(Sorry if I’m way off-base, you can tell me if this doesn’t resonate with your experience.)
Oof, realizing it’s genuinely difficult to know whether a desire is terminal or instrumental.
Me; “hey subconscious is this a terminal desire or is there a situation change that would make this stimulus nonthreatening to me. Like, why do we want to avoid this thing, is it intrinsically bad, or are there contingent reasons?”
The subconscous: <hiding the reasons, which are fixable insecurities> “don’t worry about it.”
I have definitely multiple times had the thought, “I don’t have a problem with X!” Only to later realize that I was subconsciously structuring my life so that I would never encounter X. That means if I do encounter X, I might be unprepared and have a bad time.
I think this is very common. It’s like not noticing you have a hurt muscle, by subconsciously compensating with the other ones. That’s fine until you end up painfully contorted and some muscle somewhere finally sends a strong signal to make you unambiguously aware of the situation.
I never thought I was anxious, but my sister pointed out I have structured my life to an unusual degree to avoid stimuli that could create anxiety: I don’t drive, I worked from home my entire career even before it was cool and at a dev job at a company of the ideal size to allow me to avoid office politics or excessive meetings, I spend most my time reading alone, my life is highly routine, I often eat the same foods day after day until I tire and move on to the next thing, and I travel rarely.
I have no idea if she is right or not. And if true, I am unsure if it matters if such things grant me some peace. But the idea that the shape of one’s life may be, in part, an unconscious treatment for mental flaws is a disquieting one. And it may be worth asking yourself: looking at the structure of my life, what symptoms might I be unconsciously treating?
To me, this doesn’t sound related to “anxiety” per se, instead it sounds like you react very strongly to negative situations (especially negative social situations) and thus go out of your way to avoid even a small chance of encountering such a situation. I’m definitely like that (to some extent). I sometimes call it “neuroticism”, although the term “neuroticism” is not great either, it encompasses lots of different things, not all of which describe me.
Like, imagine there’s an Activity X (say, inviting an acquaintance to dinner), and it involves “carrots” (something can go well and that feels rewarding), and also “sticks” (something can go badly and that feels unpleasant). For some people, their psychological makeup is such that the sticks are always especially painful (they have sharp thorns, so to speak). Those people will (quite reasonably) choose not to partake in Activity X, even if most other people would, at least on the margin. This is very sensible, it’s just cost-benefit analysis. It needn’t have anything to do with “anxiety”. It can feel like “no thanks, I don’t like Activity X so I choose not to do it”.
(Sorry if I’m way off-base, you can tell me if this doesn’t resonate with your experience.)
(semi-related)
Oof, realizing it’s genuinely difficult to know whether a desire is terminal or instrumental.
Me; “hey subconscious is this a terminal desire or is there a situation change that would make this stimulus nonthreatening to me. Like, why do we want to avoid this thing, is it intrinsically bad, or are there contingent reasons?”
The subconscous: <hiding the reasons, which are fixable insecurities> “don’t worry about it.”
So, you’re introverted and like routine?
I have definitely multiple times had the thought, “I don’t have a problem with X!” Only to later realize that I was subconsciously structuring my life so that I would never encounter X. That means if I do encounter X, I might be unprepared and have a bad time.
I think this is very common. It’s like not noticing you have a hurt muscle, by subconsciously compensating with the other ones. That’s fine until you end up painfully contorted and some muscle somewhere finally sends a strong signal to make you unambiguously aware of the situation.