The Antisocial Socialist

This may come as a surprise to you, but I am a highly anxious person. Which is to say that I am a diagnosed, mentally unwell, clinical depression-and-GAD with a cherry of PTSD on top person. Not just "I feel a little anxious sometimes" but "I'm under supervision by a medical professional about it" kind of thing.

I suffer from it. It's not great. I hate it, in fact. I wake up at 4 am on a regular basis, often from nightmares, heart racing, consumed by intense and specific worries. My heart races. In the past, though thankfully not for awhile, I've had panic attacks that are so bad I thought I was having a heart attack. 0/10, strongly do not recommend.

And hence this post is going to sound a little weird. 

If I had to define what anxiety is for me on a personal level, it's the ability to picture future or potential scenarios that feel as if they are currently happening or are inevitably going to happen. For example, thinking about the potential death of a loved one results in a physical and emotional reaction similar to if that death had actually happened. Extremely vivid nightmares that feel real. The sense—as I've written before—that you are leaning back in a chair and have leaned so far back that righting yourself is impossible, but the full tip over to the hard floor hasn't happened yet.

I can neither, at this point in my life, disentangle this from either my personality or my ability to write fiction, where conjuring the specific emotion resulting from a potential scenario is a slightly useful skill. Trust me, though, I've tried a lot. The best I can do is mute it with meds, which cause other problems, or create workarounds where I redirect the pathway of my future-thinking towards how I might deal with those scenarios. Yes, I've tried yoga. Yes, I've tried mindfulness. The latter is contraindicated for someone like me.

Conversely, I am very often around people who do not suffer from anxiety. They may feel anxious about a given situation—a job interview, an illness, even climate change in general when they think about it—but they're not constantly doing this. These people are generally assured that things will work out as they should, or that worrying won't help. "It is what it is," they'll say, or "it'll be fine." 

I don't really know what causes someone to have one personality type versus the other. Certainly, I have lived experience where things have expressly not worked out for the best. But I've met folks who live on the street who've had much worse lives than I do, for whom things are still not working out at all, and they're more optimistic than I am. It isn't just trauma, or even primarily trauma. I'm sure there's a genetic or familial component too—Jews are neurotic, and all the women in my family are like this, really. 

Anxiety is, in many ways, a motivator for me. I mentioned the depression as well. If anxiety is living too much in the future, depression is dwelling in the past. Depression brain tells you to sleep all day and eat chips; anxiety brain reminds you that if you do that, you'll be out of a job. And if you don't perform at 110% at that job, you'll be out of a job. Your employers have already started planning as to how they're going to fire you, in fact, so get on that now. You shouldn't have made this post public because if they find out you have a mental illness, it's over for you.

A disproportionate number of teachers suffer from anxiety. A disproportionate number of administrators do not. A surprising number of students don't (you hear that they're all anxious these days, but I promise it's not all of them). This makes for a lot of clashes, as you can imagine. It's frustrating for someone who does not have the reassurance that things will work out for the best to have to interact with someone who does. Especially when we're in a global pandemic. I'm a person who reads that there's somewhere between a 1 in 5 and a 1 in 20 chance of getting long covid, and so I assume I'll be that one. But I'm surrounded by people who either don't think it's a possibility at all, or don't think it'll be anyone they know.

But while anxiety is devalued, and sucks, on a personal level, it honestly has its benefits on a broader societal level. A common theory for humans evolving this tendency is that while you need people who are bold and confident to lead a community, said little community gets wiped out pretty quickly without the person who can't sleep because they're watching the grass for tigers. We spend a lot of time talking about wellness and self-care and living in the moment, but we are right now living the consequences of having all lived in the moment, without worrying one bit about the future. It's pretty obvious with the pandemic that we'd all probably do a lot better if we'd heeded the many experts who warned about the possibility of a coronavirus pandemic, or even if we behaved more like the people who think they'll contract long covid if they catch it than the people who don't believe it will happen to them.

Soft climate change denial is another great example of this. It's not outright Fox News MAGA denial of the climate crisis. It's the sense that you might have (that I sometimes even have) that while obviously man-made climate change exists, and is a problem, but...someone will have to work it out, right? Governments will have to cut emissions because this is untenable. And hey, there's probably some genius working on a solution right now. Tech will save us! 900 million people in China and 33 million people in Pakistan probably have very different ideas about how well that will work out. Each successive government kicks the can down the road, waiting for some better future where it'll get fixed.

And of course, I've been thinking about Barbara Ehrenreich, who wasn't a perfect person but in many ways was a brilliant person who changed my life. She died last Thursday, at the age of 81. Her book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, covers the pitfalls of optimism and magical thinking, from her own breast cancer diagnosis to capitalism itself. By subscribing to the belief that if we're just positive enough, everything will be okay, we risk substituting those happy thoughts for tangible action. Cynical cancer patients are have a better prognosis; nations that plan for disaster mitigation do better when extreme weather strikes, and so on.

I recently learned about chronic wasting disease, and hoo-boy my life would have been better if I hadn't. It's a prion disease, similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, that affects deer. We caused it by trying to domesticate deer in the 60s, and now it's escaped into the wild. It's transmitted through soil. It hasn't jumped to humans, but there's a good chance that it will. So far, the same eggheads sounding the alarm over coronaviruses are also sounding the alarm over this, but nothing is happening on a policy level. Everyone is just...kinda hoping it works out.

Politics is a career that, alas, tends to attract people who are confident and not anxious. And thus we have leaders who live in the moment, who plan for four years at a time maximum, who don't wake up at 4 am with nightmare scenarios of zombie deer and agricultural workers dying of heatstroke. Our society is structured, in fact, around the present, the eternal now during which we can never learn from the past nor contemplate the future.

And that's why anxiety is a gift that causes me a great deal of misery, but which I dearly wish sometimes that I could pass on to others.

Everything will not be okay. The sooner we wake up to this, the better.

 We all know there are people with very low executive function.

This is most of my students. They're smart as hell, but when it comes to things like remembering to bring a pen and pencil to class, they just can't, and if they're given a form to get signed at home, that form will inevitably end its life, crumpled, shredded, and unsigned, in the pocket dimension at the bottom of their backpack. They know the material but can't write the test. Etc.

There are people with very low executive function, who have developed workarounds.

This is me, and most of my closest friends. I can't make it out of bed in the morning, so I set my alarm two hours early to start waking me up. I can't remember anything so I keep three separate to-do lists. I can't motivate myself through any means beyond raging anxiety, so either I do a task immediately, or I procrastinate forever. I somehow manage to exist, but every day is a struggle.

Presumably, there are people with the normal amount of executive function, and they go around unbothered by life and everything is fine.

But I would posit the existence of a fourth class of people, and these are people with too much executive function to the point where it is detrimental to both their lives and society as a whole. These are people for whom executive functions are an end unto themselves. As long as boxes are generated and checked, and everyone is very busy, work is getting done and progress is being made. These are people for whom rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic seems like a good and feasible plan, because you are taking action and doing things.

I would posit that very early in life, and in many careers, an unhealthy level of executive function is rewarded. This is mostly the key to success in school, far more important than intellectual capability. And in white collar work, looking busy while accomplishing nothing is a useful skill. But I would also say that these are the sorts of people who end up promoted above their level of competence— school boards and governments are full of them. Everyone who has ever suffered through a PowerPoint explaining the new educational jargon through Venn diagrams has encountered this sort of person.

They are the sort who tend to be particularly impressed if you add "smart" or "enhanced" before a word but don't actually change anything.

Right now, they are making decisions that would better fall to people with perhaps lower capacity for navigating institutions and systems, but higher levels of intelligence, wisdom, and empathy. Life and death decisions.

I could be talking out of my ass. It has been known to happen. I'm pretty sure if I were a higher functioning sort, I could brand this into a PowerPoint somehow and make a decent living as an educational consultant, and I wouldn't have to go back into a plague box next week.

Harsh the first:

The truth is, no one wanted to admit there's no safe way to open schools in September. The left made a massive tactical error when it ceded the point by insisting that if we throw enough money and theoretical regulations at the problem without taking into account child behaviour and existing facilities, we could magically transform schools. This was never the case and we've enabled the mass experiment in how COVID-19 affects children by doing so.

One drowning death was so unacceptable that now I have to fill in a novel's worth of paperwork to take 18-year-olds to the park. One shooting death was so unacceptable that zero tolerance policies and armed cops in schools were commonplace for a few years. How many plague deaths before we realize we can't return to business as usual no matter how magic our thoughts and prayers may be?

Every single re-opening plan needs to start with this question of the acceptable number of dead children. If you cannot conceive of an acceptable figure, you shouldn't be reopening schools, period.

Harsh the second:

A math problem.

If you have a class of 15 students and one teacher, and each student has an average of 1.5 parents and .05 siblings, each of whom are in a class with 30 other students, each with an average of 1.5 parents and .05 siblings, and one person in the first class gets COVID, how many people should be quarantined for 14 days?

There are worse things happening in the world. So many worse things. And worse things happening to friends and loved ones.

But I am selfish, and the announcement a few minutes ago that dooms my school and possibly my career is the only thing spinning over in my head.

My school will close. We won't be able to staff it with the loss of one or two staff members enough to run courses.

Thousands and thousands of teachers will be unemployed. I am hoping I'm far enough up the seniority list not to be, but I don't think I am. As I predicted, the Goatfucker decided to attack high school rather than elementary, because no one gives a shit about high school kids, or teachers, and in particular no one cares about kids like the ones I teach.

But at least the cute kindergarteners are safe. At least this year.

Today has not been utter shit! This is gr8 because I expected utter shit.

Most important is that things are looking up for our hospitalized kid. He is stable and they were going to try to get him off life support today. So, fingers crossed.

It remains a tragic situation. The family is cash-strapped; we are taking up a collection for them. Both parents work and the mother isn't even getting any time off. I can't even imagine.

In less life-or-death news, my film class continued to be pants. Tomorrow is their last chance to demonstrate to me that they can actually use a fucking camera, so hopefully they'll get their shit together.

On the plus side, a good many of the kids in other classes are in proper panic mode and actually getting work done. So. Yay?

I did nothing all weekend except solder a thing. I fuckered my legs and spine running up and down the stairs, and fuckered my brain worrying about my kids. Bah. At least I'm in proper panic mode and finally getting things done.

I just really hope I don't need to flunk more than half of my film kids.

Dear Wind Mobile,

In a city as diverse as this one, have you ever considered that there might be many people walking down the street who suffer from anxiety orders, heart conditions, and PTSD? And that, perhaps, jumping out in front of them on a dark street and yelling in their face may not be the best way to advertise your products and services?

In fact, approximately 51% of the population has probably, at some point in their lives, dealt with street harassment, and are likely to interpret a man jumping out and yelling on a dark street as the attack of a potential rapist and not a jolly and lighthearted introduction to your company?

Furthermore, might it be wise, if you are going to pursue this method of advertising, to advise your salesmen that they may actually send someone into a panic attack while on the job, and that the correct response when being informed that they scared the shit out of a potential customer is not, "I hope you didn't poop your pants!"?

I actually am a current, and not a potential customer, but I'm seriously considering being a former customer.

No love,

Sabs

P.S. These headphones? Mean that I'm not open to talking to you or anyone else who approaches me on the street trying to sell me something.

Hyperbole and a Half.

Sometimes I think that Allie is the same person as me, except substantially funnier and more talented.

Via rohmie:
10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone.


Yes. This. All of it.

Another bit of common technology that I dislike.

rantipole6 posted this article about the "Marshmallow Test." Here is a video demonstrating it. I've been thinking about it all morning.

The test is simple: A small child is put in a room with a marshmallow. She is told that if she can sit there for 15 minutes and not eat the marshmallow, she will get two marshmallows. The experimenter then leaves the room and the child is alone with the marshmallow.

Sadism aside, this test is apparently a predictor of future academic and social success. The children who can delay gratification tend to get higher marks in school, are fitter, and have fewer behavioural problems than those who give into temptation. This is not surprising; think of the academic performance of a child who watches TV instead of doing homework, versus a child who studies first and then watches TV if he has time.

Because of a somewhat-misguided policy, I am only allowed to take off 10% for late assignments (and I seldom do that), which means that my kids often hand in their work late since they have no external motivation to complete assignments on time. But I don't need to take off late marks, because the students who hand in their assignments late (and thus have theoretically more time to complete the assignment than the ones who did it on time) almost always hand in work that is less complete and of lower quality than the students who are able to stick to timelines.

rantipole6 asks whether her readers are able to resist temptation. I responded that as a child, I'd have no problem passing the marshmallow test. I had much more self-discipline then than I do now. As you can see by the fact that this entry will be posted before I've finished writing my exams, as an adult, I'm terrible at delaying gratification, and accordingly, I'm far more stressed out than I need to be.

Another factor mentioned in that study is that children who have difficulty passing the marshmallow test can be taught techniques that will help them. The children who pass distract themselves by playing mental games. If a child is told to, for example, pretend that the marshmallow is a picture of a marshmallow with a frame around it, she is more likely to be able to hold out 15 minutes. Whether these tricks teach children skills that help them delay gratification outside of the test remains to be seen.

Now, when I think about it, I've always been a procrastinator. The difference is a matter of how I procrastinated. As a kid, I did the equivalent of imagining a frame around the marshmallow. Instead of writing my essay, I would write stories. I was seldom tempted by the TV. This didn't decrease my stress level (back in those days one did get in trouble for handing in late work), but it wouldn't decrease the quality of my writing either. Accordingly, while I wasn't necessarily the greatest at delaying gratification, it didn't seem to affect my academic performance. (Though, of course, it didn't help, and it resulted in me forming bad habits like blogging instead of doing my work.)

When I look at how my kids procrastinate, it's quite interesting. Some of the worst cases will not stop playing simple Flash games or refreshing Facebook (for simplicity's sake, I'll focus on the former waste of time, as I think the latter is a more complicated phenomenon). It doesn't matter how much I nag, wheedle, or threaten. They cannot seem to close the window, even if I threaten to send them to the office or tell them that they will get a lower mark on the assignment. It looks very much to me like a physical addiction. I can remotely control their computers, so out of desperation I sometimes log them out or blank their screens. They have been known to scream as if in pain when I do this.

The thing is, I am pretty sure they aren't getting any pleasure out of playing the games. I know, because I play those games too. (My weaknesses are Tetris and Space Invaders because I'm a 30-year-old hipster. Room Escape Games were also a problem for me for awhile.) It's repetitive, frustrating behaviour that's compulsive rather than pleasurable. They don't like the taste of the marshmallow; they just can't look at food without wanting to put it in their mouths.

So really, the issue for me is not procrastination per se. The results (quality of work and also mood, which is probably a bigger issue for me) differ depending on how I'm avoiding doing what I should be doing, which is one of the reasons "lifestyle experts" advise you to train yourself to do housework as a means of procrastination rather than, say, watching TV. If I'm procrastinating by writing, I'm not necessarily more productive than if I'm procrastinating by playing video games, but a) I have something to show for it at least and b) I don't get overwhelmed with guilt and stress to quite the same degree. Hey, at least I'm doing something.

How I can use this to help my kids is beyond me, particularly when they see even fun activities as "work," and thus less appealing than games/Facebook. But I can probably use it myself to be less of a fuck-up.

Thoughts?

( cut for people who don't want to read about my disturbing dreams )

Obvious symbolism is obvious.