often, they’re caught in an anxiety loop that wants to reinforce itself, and the act of worrying about it mostly encourages that anxiety loop to keep going rather than reassure it. I don’t think the winning move here looks like “thoroughly understand the situation until you are no longer anxious”. I think the winning move is more like “find something else to think about that is interesting so that the loop can wind itself down” or “I dunno, go outside and get some fresh air and take some deep breaths.”
This seems like an important caveat to TsviBT’s Please don’t throw your mind away, which offers similar advice but just says to think about whatever comes to mind and see where it goes; I can see this de-facto steering people’s thinking towards negative/unhelpful attractor states.
SquirrelInHell touches on this:
Goal-oriented thinking.
When working on real-life problems, your peak performance matters less than the ability to simply think useful thoughts at all.
For example, if your current top priority is “start my own company”, but you keep having insights about “what I’ll say to my current boss when I finally quit”… that’s maybe not the best way to make progress.
This seems like an important caveat to TsviBT’s Please don’t throw your mind away, which offers similar advice but just says to think about whatever comes to mind and see where it goes; I can see this de-facto steering people’s thinking towards negative/unhelpful attractor states.
SquirrelInHell touches on this: