Math Anxiety Affects Skills As Basic As Counting 210
thirty-seven writes "According to four Canadian psychologists, a study they have conducted shows that math anxiety, 'the feeling of fear and dread of performing mathematical calculations,' can negatively affect mathematical tasks much simpler and more basic than previously thought. In the study, participants were asked to count black squares on a white screen. The number of squares shown ranged from one to nine and participants were given as much time as they wanted before answering. When the number of squares was in the subitizing range (one to four), both math-anxious and non-math-anxious participants performed equally well, but when the number of squares was in the counting range (five to nine), the math-anxious group took longer and were less accurate. The University of Waterloo's news release about the study includes this interesting note: 'Previous studies have shown that a weakness in basic math abilities has a greater negative effect on employment opportunities than reading difficulties [do].'"
Isn't it obvious ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
Yes, but I think what this study was trying to test was how basic the task has to be for the fear response to have a measurable effect. Turns out, pretty damn basic.
Well... (Score:2)
Sort of, this is a pretty damn simple task. Would you really have guessed that somebody who was math anxious would have trouble counting to 9?
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Certainly. If you actually have a phobia of something, the smallest notion can affect you. Actually, what surprises me is that counting to four does not affect them.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
That's because one doesn't have to count to four; one just sees the items as 'four of them'.
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There are 5 lights!
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Certainly. If you actually have a phobia of something, the smallest notion can affect you.
I don't think that math anxiety is a "phobia" for most people; it is milder and much more widespread among the general population, I think. Wikipedia (not an authoritative source for definitions of psychology terms, I know) says a phobia is "an intense and persistent fear" and that mathematical anxiety is "anxiety about one's ability to do mathematics" and anxiety is an "unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry."
So it does surprise me that the kind of self-defeating a
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Assuming you have a watch. Most people now use the pocketwatch which is part of their cell phone, and you might need several button presses to a
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, and a part of science is all about confirming those things that seem "obvious."
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I thought it was for confirming the not so obvious things like the curving of light predicted by Einstein ;-))
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According to you own link:
> So Einstein was the first to calculate the correct value for light bending.
And just as I said in my post, science was used to prove that he was correct.
"It was not until the late 1960s that it was definitively shown that the amount of deflection was the full value predicted by general relativity, and not half that number."
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*This* many.
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was also "obvious" that the Sun orbited the Earth until a significant amount of data supporting the heliocentric theory was found. Science requires data not just peoples' "intuition" which is very often wrong.
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Insightful)
We do in fact feel a force, but because of experimentation and further exploration, we understand the fictitious force due to the nonuniform motion of two reference frames (or the acceleration of the non-inertial frame), in this case rectilinear acceleration. Intuition told us we were being pushed into the seat, but in reality, nothing is pressed against our chest.
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No they are not. The geocentric theory is wrong period.
How so? While pretty much completely useless, it's just a question of frame of reference.
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No it is not a question of frame of reference, it is a question of models. The solar system could be modeled in infinitely many ways. The geocentric model models the routes of the other planets with "epicycles".
Which model should we use? Enter Occam's Razor. We should use the simplest. Although you could work with a geocentric model, why would you want to when the heliocentric model also describes the motions of the planets, and does so more simply and more accurately? As an example of how difficult
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That point lies within the Sun its self. The degree to which geocentric theory is wrong is several orders of magnitude more than the degree to which ideal heliocentric theory is. Geocentric theory could not be extended and at the same time remain internally consistent as well as explain the orbits of various objects in space. Heliocentric theory O.T.O.H. can easily be extended by Newton and later Einstein to match observations to an extreme degree of accuracy.
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe they suck at math because they have anxiety... ?
Re:Isn't it obvious ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Math anxiety also inhibits the training one must secure to improve and thus conquer their anxiety.
Classical conditioning means numbers equal something to be scared of.
Operant conditioning means that avoidance of numbers rewards by removing fear.
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With chemical anxiolytics, you can substantially damp somebody's anxiety responses to things that usually scare them. With the right chemical anxiolytics, you can even do so without rendering them useless for other things.
Repeat the experiment; but have all participants(normal and anxiety groups) take a pill ~30 minutes before the questioning. Half of each group will get a placebo, half will get a milligram or two of Lorazepam. The effect of Lorazepam
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I think you'd need the no-drug group, as you said, since you might also need to account for the possibility of Lorazepam decreasing mental acuity as well.
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"Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved?"
I'll say: no, not obvious. Equally legitimate suppositions:
(1) It is the difficulty of the task which "will have an impact" on people's emotional state, not the other way around.
(2) People's fear reactions should make them more focused, attentive, and capable.
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Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
I don't think it's math anxiety that caused these results. I think it's anxiety in general.
I took part in a psych study about a decade ago (conveniently at the U of Waterloo) for a similar thing. I was asked to count arcs -- line-drawn half-circles, pointed in an upwards or downwards direction placed randomly on a screen. There would be somewhere between 5 to 15 of these on the screen, and instructions were to count all the "upward arcs" or "downward arcs" as fast as possible. After a few trials, I th
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Isn't it also obvious that if you have a floating helium balloon inside your car, when you brake the balloon will move forward inside the car, or when you accelerate the balloon will be pushed back?
Isn't it also obvious that if your friend has three identical boxes with one of them containing a prize, you choose one box and he opens it revealing that the prize is not inside it and he tells you that you have one last chance to choose, then it doesn't matter if you keep your current choice or switch to the la
fear of math (Score:2)
I would imagine that someone that was very bad at math would be anxious about having to use their weakened mathematical ability.
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I doubt it's that simple. It's like saying that lacking piloting skills affects your fear of flying.
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Bad example. Most people on a plane do not have piloting skills and frankly, they ought to be afraid of jumping into the pilot seat as should everyone else in the plane. Your example would be a more accurate analogy if being bad at math caused you to be more afraid of someone else doing the math for you.
nth post! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess this explains why so many "first post"s actually aren't...
Quite the opposite! (Score:2)
No, no, you got it wrong!
Posts that claim to be "first" but aren't usually are in the "subitizing range" [wikipedia.org] (you see, I not only did read the fscking summary but also borrowed a link from it).
These people actually have the much feared Reverse Math Anxiety Syndrome (RMAS). People with RMAS suck at dealing with numbers up to four, but are very good with numbers from five upwards. Have you ever seen the 137th post claiming to be first?
Oh God.... (Score:5, Funny)
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How can I major in CS if I can't even count!
When exactly did you spy on me?
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Just an anecdote but oddly enough most of the people I know that have gone on to high level math (>>Calc 3) tend not to be terribly good at doing basic math in their heads. It could be just my imagination or it could be that they rely much more on calculators/computers to do most of the actual calculations for them but it would be interesting to see a study on it. Perhaps study how anxiety affects basic math skills among those who are very advanced in mathematics.
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I think it has a lot to do with the frequency of calculations. Most high order math doesn't require dealing with large numbers, but variables. So you don't get a lot of fiddling with actual calculations in your day to day life, other than maybe adding up bills (which you tend to estimate on anyway- you round things up or down for easy adding). I used to be able to take a square root to 4 significant figures in my head in just a few seconds. I still remember how, but trying to do so would take me a minu
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I'm sorry, how do you take a square root to 4 significant figures in your head? I could never do Newton's Method without something to write on.
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Just an anecdote but oddly enough most of the people I know that have gone on to high level math (>>Calc 3) tend not to be terribly good at doing basic math in their heads.
Heh, I'm just the opposite. I'm very good at mental arithmetic, and I can multiply 4 digit numbers in my head usually faster than someone who reaches for a calculator, but I absolutely suck at math - especially trig (Calculus not so much). However I chalk it up to carelessness because I understand the concepts
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Maybe these people are generally like my math prof during my university years. He was an absolute math genius. Yet calculation (ya know, the good ol' 2+2=4) was not his forte. Not because it was hard. Quite the opposite. It was boring. Or "trivial" as he loved to say. He hated trivial stuff. You could literally see how teaching entry level math was a veritable chore and outright torture to him. How come these idiots couldn't wrap their feeble brains around a simple concept like double integrals...
These peop
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I doubt it. If you compare with a true math genius such as Gauss [wikipedia.org], you'll find that Gauss was incredibly interested in calculating things, ie obtaining an actual number at the end that's correct.
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Perhaps that's why people hated playing D&D with me - took to long to calculate things. On the other hand, it could be that they figured out that I was only there because my wife insisted.
Cognitive styles, poor teaching, and poor testing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I use and even sometimes teach factor analysis, item response theory (Rasch and multiparameter), structural equation modeling (okay, so most of those are flavors of the same thing), as well as a whole host of other statistical analyses. But as I prepare to go back to grad school for a PhD, and therefore need the GRE again, I'm struck--yet again--how absolute shit I am at arithmetic. Questions that require me to just manipulate variables around are no problem, but if they throw an actual value in there, and
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most of the people I know that have gone on to high level math (>>Calc 3) tend not to be terribly good at doing basic math in their heads
For your statistics: "Me too!"
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1 + 2 = 4?
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1 + 2 = 4?
For certain values of "4".
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I have long joked that I can't do mental arithmetic but I'll happily integrate the numbers in front of me (actually, it's no joke).
Yeah, but isn't it trivial to integrate constants?
Doesn't apply to Picard (Score:2)
Real math anxiety is... (Score:5, Funny)
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Usually the exception gives it away.
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Then it should blow when you're done stepping through the whole array. Or, if you're actually making sure something like this does not happen, you have your own tripwires in place to detect such routines that overstep their bounds.
Re:Real math anxiety is... (Score:4, Informative)
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Me? C++ is my language of choice. I could give it to you in java, but it costs extra. Not so much for expertise, see it as compensation for pain and suffering.
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How math is taught (Score:5, Insightful)
My impression, through my own experience and people I have spoken to, is that maths is hard to learn because it is generally abstract. For example I get the general feeling that more people pass calculus when they are given an application that help provide a visual context to the skill, such as physics. This is probably the same reason why computers sometimes detract people from using them. The only difference is that we spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to make computers easy, though I am not sure the same can be said about mathematics.
Having sat through a number of maths classes, and lectures, I find that the people teaching the subject, often fail to appreciate that what they find easy is not necessarily the case for others. This means they don't show the necessary steps or fail to find techniques to facilitate the understanding. Sometimes its almost as if they want to make maths hard to learn. Of course people end up get anxious since they end up feeling stupid.
Although we talk about car analogies here, in order to make things easy to understand to the, I find the same can benefit maths. By trying to understand what the skill set of your audience is and adapting the teaching helps. For example the 'sum' sign looks hard until (if amongst computer people) you explain its just a 'for each' with addition and the 'pi' sign is a 'for each' with multiplication. In certain cases it is equivalent to the linguistic differences between English and Chinese, in that they both can talk about the same thing, but the way in which they do so is not the same.
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"My impression, through my own experience and people I have spoken to, is that maths is hard to learn because it is generally abstract."
Something I blogged about 2 years ago:
So here I am thinking obsessively deep about what exactly that "biggest idea" should be in each of math and computer sci classes. And oddly I find that all the different math/compsci classes sort of get sucked into the same single, primary big idea in my head. My concern is that it's such a big idea that it can't fit into a single class, or really into the sequence of subjects already mapped out. Or that it will be comprehensible at the level of incoming students...
For today let's say it's this: Abstraction. Getting comfortable with it. Getting proficient with it. Knowing deeply what it implies (Getting rid of details. Panning out just the key big-league concept that you need to apply.) Being able to recognize that any knowledge domain will have a bunch of different abstraction levels, and being able to pick the right one you want to be working at. And being comfortable with forgetting everything else as long as yourk work lasts.
To summarize, I argue this: The whole point of a math class is to be abstract. If it's not abstract, then it's not math. If you didn't need to practice your abstraction skills, then you wouldn't need any math classes.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=65175992&blogId=425845770 [myspace.com]
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For example, a person good at math will see 3x+7y^2 +5 = 3x +7y^2 + c to be as simple as A+5 = A +c. They can group the complex group into a single piece in their mind. Or they can easily 'flip the chalkboard' around in the mind and realize that 7y = x is the same as x = 7y. If there is one thing that distinguishes a person who is goo
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More than one anxiety? (Score:2)
We're learning more and more about math anxiety (Score:4, Informative)
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Counting fugly breast moles sure is most definitely traumatizing.
Re:We're learning more and more about math anxiety (Score:4, Informative)
Causation (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the first time on Slashdot that I'll that say there's a legitimate call for "correlation is not causation". The claim in the article is that "anxiety about mathematics can adversely affect tasks as simple as basic counting". But the reported data is simply that "math anxious individuals, relative to their non-math anxious peers, demonstrated a deficit in the counting range (five to nine)..."
I don't see any support for the hypothesis that math anxiety "affects" or "impacts" (per the article) basic math tasks. I think an equally-well supported hypothesis is that people who suck at counting to 5 wind up developing math anxiety.
To test their hypothesis, they need to take equally-skilled people and somehow make an experimental group anxious about the upcoming task (or something). I don't see that happening here. Frankly, I'm highly skeptical of this whole "math anxiety" postulate. I think we've got to accept the fact that for some people, even basic arithmetic is monumentally difficult, and not blame it on their "feelings" towards the task.
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Anecdotally, I've seen people who did not start out with math anxiety but developed that later and observed a decline in counting skills. For example, my sister jokes that she forgot how to count after taking calculus. I'd say there's a pretty good chance that this really is causal, but of course further studies would be required to confirm that.
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You are correct to state that this study does not prove causation, but you have to also take into consideration that this study does not exist in isolation. There is plenty of evidence to support the idea that anxiety about a task leads to a decreased aptitude at performing that task. Causation can be implied, but it can also be the case that there is causation in both directions: feedback that an individual is a poor performer at math reinforces the anxiety, which in turn causes the poor performance, resul
Good research (Score:2)
Math anxiety? This is real? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always had trouble with math, not so much understanding it but actually doing it. It got worse over the years, not just with harder math, but any math. Eventually I could tell I was actually having anxiety attacks when asked simple math questions. Now days these anxiety attacks are actually bad enough to trigger my flight-or-fight response. It's overwhelming and hard to describe, but if I don't focus entirely on calming down, it feels like I will 'lose control'. At this point the problem makes itself worse - I can be asked something I KNOW how to solve but I end up having to concentrate so hard on self control that I can't even take time to think about the problem I was asked. Not being able to think about the problem means I can't answer it, which makes the anxiety worse, which makes it even more impossible to stop and think about the math itself.
It's been pretty crippling, both socially and in work. I do everything I can to avoid situations that will be problematic. I simply stone wall anyone who tosses math at me, shutting down with simple 'no's and 'I can't's, leading them to assume I'm unintelligent and/or uneducated - an assumption I let them have because it's easier than trying to explain what's really going on.
I've never encountered anyone who even remotely understood, so I thought it was just me having an odd, unfortunate personality quirk. I mean nerds and anxiety go hand in hand right?
Maybe I'm not alone...
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I sympathize and I am impressed that you confessed this here (of all places). If you get any smart-ass responses just ignore them. You know how it can be around here.
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None of my business but: Have you ever sought professional help?
I just realized your symptoms are similar to those I felt while pair programming with a guy who was capable of going back and forth between QWERTY and DVORAK keyboards.
math stress (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I just can't count the number of times I was too stressed out to do math...
My Story (Score:5, Interesting)
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Curious. I would think knowing how to write a memo that wasn't two or more pages long would have been the requirement.
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Study showed that 24% of all accounting graduates could not even READ a 2-page memo. So what happens when you get one who can't read AND can't count to 10?
Trust me on this one, there are some [transboutique.com] things that take more than a page to properly explain.
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And you'd be wrong [wikipedia.org].
Memo is just slang for "memorandum", which can be as short or as long as required. Just head over to Groklaw and look at the various filings. Gee, look - multi-page memos.
Memos can be quite detailed, including all sorts of things, such as who was present, who discussed each point raised, what agreements were reached, justifications for same, etc.
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Between the beer and a thc count so high, it would raise Jerry Garcia from the dead, you might have something.
However while i was in my technician class, the math was killer. i was ok using my text-book.
The minute I had to use the calculator that is part of the course I went for a shit.
The idea that I might have the same issues makes more sense.
Not that I am an idiot, just forgot how poor my math is.
Not too mention I am Canadian
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The schools lost the ability to teach mathematics properly a couple of decades ago, starting with the "new math" in grade school and the "dumbing down" of math in high school.
Grading to the curve just sealed the deal. But like a bad TV infomercial - BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! By insisting that students solve all problems using calculators, students lost the ability to guestimate what range an answer should be i
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If you can't count to 9, you shouldn't be in university.
Implement that rule and you'll have to close liberal arts departments everywhere.
You say that as if it was a bad thing..
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If you can't count to 9, you shouldn't be in university.
Implement that rule and you'll have to close liberal arts departments everywhere.
You say that as if it was a bad thing..
If you do, who's going to deliver the pizzas to the computer labs?
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Just goes to show how stupid management can be ... I'd give him an accurate scale and tell him to weigh out the right amount.
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...and toss in two more just to make sure the customer won't complain because he got 999 drill bits.
Seriously. That guy counting can't be cheaper than two more drill bits per pack.
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Well, I've seen core bits that are on the high side of $250 each ... but even then, just make a fixture that lets you stack them in a 10x10 configuration (think like a pool ball rack, but square), 10 x, you're done.
Or (again, assuming they're large bites, just lay out 50 side by side, put a couple of heavy blocks on either side, remove the bits, lay out another 50 ... it's not like you have to count the individual bits after the first batch of 50.
Because otherwise, if you're going to count them, you'll
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If a single bit is 250 bucks, you won't have THAT many customers that order a thousand at once. So having a person count thousands once in a blue moon works out. I was talking about mass produced trash.
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Because otherwise, if you're going to count them, you'll get somebody (who, me?) who will come up behind you when you're going "656, 657, 658" and start counting "227, 228, 229, 765, 23, 11-teen, ... hmmm, do you need any help?"
Ah, there's always one of those... in my garage, he's known as "the one who's about to get punched in the balls." ;)
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Hey, maybe those people are "anxious" about math because they're the ones that never did their math homework!
Maybe they were yelled at and threatened with violence when doing their math homework. Which made them distraught and unable to perform mathematically, which led to bad grades, which led to more yelling.
I know you'll dismiss that, since you're obviously devoid of empathy and compassion, but I thought I'd try to enlighten you anyway.
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Too easy.
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I know you'll dismiss that, since you're obviously devoid of empathy and compassion, but I thought I'd try to enlighten you anyway.
No I'm more of a results oriented person who believes that dwelling on the past is not constructive to future progress. The past exists to be learned from, not lived in. My own past is full of very real nightmares and ghosts, things have happened to me that make everyone who finds out gasp in amazement. The key to survival is getting over it, not using it a
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"Psychologists are great at making excuses for everything."
Yes, it's a tough life for a psychopath these days. How can one manipulate people if everybody else is so empathetic?
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing helps you get over an anxiety problem like people telling you you're just lazy, let me tell you. You're just not working hard enough, stupid! Only an hour or two (or three) on your math homework? And you still haven't made any progress? You'll sit there all night until you miraculously figure it all out, dummy!
And every time you look down at that sheet you break into a cold sweat. You get a head full of fog, and every stab at every problem is like groping around blindly. You desperately flip through your notes or pour over the text book, both of which are like trying to read Cyrillic. And all the while, everyone else in the class blazes through the material, leaving you far behind. It's because you're not trying hard enough. Work harder, moron.
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Basic anti-anxiety techniques can easily be administered by people much cheaper than psychologists(generic social workers, pretty much any teacher or aide with a little training) and there is a collection of anti-anxiety drugs with fairly favorable safety profiles that can be handed out by anybody who can write a prescription(which, if the experience with things like Ritalin is any
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