How the Brain Handles the Unknown (axios.com) 21
Uncertainty can be hard for humans. It drives anxiety, an emotion neuroscientists are trying to understand and psychologists are trying to better treat. From a report: Under the threat of a virus, job insecurity, election uncertainty, and a general pandemic life-in-limbo that is upending school, holidays and more, people are especially anxious. Before the pandemic, anxiety was already climbing in the U.S., especially among young adults, according to a recent study. Add the pandemic and its many unknowns: 35% of adults in the Household Pulse Survey reported symptoms of anxiety disorder in July. (In the first half of 2019, it was roughly 8%.) "We have anxiety for a reason," says Stephanie Gorka, who studies the neurobiology of anxiety and treatments for anxiety-related disorders and phobias at the Ohio State University. Anxiety alerts people to pay attention to their environment and is key to our survival, but if it is chronic or excessive, it can have negative health consequences, she says. But how exactly the brain responds to uncertainty and leads to anxiety is unclear.
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Re:Frost pist? (Score:4, Interesting)
My father was in hospice and my (adult) daughter had volunteered to spend the night with him in case he woke up and was confused.
She was awoken by a one sided conversation, where my father was talking to somebody, but there was nobody in the room. My father was trying to get them to put some eyedrops in his eyes, and then he commented that he was surprised that (the person he was talking too) had eyes that were all black. My daughter was shaken to the core, but my father had a pleasant conversation and ended it by going back to sleep.
It may have been an incubus nightmare, it may have been death (he passed a couple days later), but it solidified my admiration for my father's brave nature when faced (or imagining) something that would give any other adult there terrors.
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When we are dreaming, we are often able to accept things as normal that would terrify us to imagine while we are awake.
I've been shot, stabbed, burned, drowned, and all manner of other things while dreaming. I just shrugged it off, decided I must be dead now in the dream, then carried on.
NYU prof (Score:2)
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Fear is the Mind-Killer, that is why con-men frequently use fear to get people to make bad decisions
The news media (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonstop news media hype about the bogeyman is causing Americans to suffer from anxiety disorder. If they cared about Americans at all they would go back to reporting facts and recounts about what happened instead of conspiracy theories and speculation and posturing and hype.
There are real boogiemen out there (Score:4, Insightful)
At a certain point fear is justified and necessary. I get the boy who cried wolf but at this point said wolf is chewing on our arms.
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Obsessed haters of various types habitually change the subject of conversations to whichever race or nationality or group or individual they hate, even when others are discussing a completely different subject. That's what you have done here.
So, did everyone suddenly forget....? (Score:5, Funny)
What happened..?
Did EVERYONE suddenly forget about beer??
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Alcohol is a very bad idea for treating anxiery [inverse.com]
Re:So, did everyone suddenly forget....? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to go with science on most things, but sometimes they get it wrong.
Or, they go to extremes. That article was looking at people that BINGE drink for 10 straight days at a time.
But at the end of the week, after a few beers, I'm not worried or anxious about shit....except that my team might be winning on Saturday, haha.
That is stress I can deal with.
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I'm enjoying my medical marijuana card. Not smoking or vaping person but 5 drops of tincture under the tongue does wonders.
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LOL...I was thinking exactly that same quote just after I hit the submit button on my post, haha.
Thanks, have a great weekend and be safe.
Denial, and humor (Score:3)
Simple (Score:1)
It's Not Unknown... (Score:4, Insightful)
We've been dealing with highly contagious pathogens for thousands of years. There was a time when they were an unknown; Acts of God, but even when we didn't have a germ theory of disease, we had enough observational data to know how to deal with them, at least crudely. Quarantines long predate direct identification of pathogenic organisms. In some ways, I suspect our ancestors probably dealt psychologically a lot better with disease outbreaks than we are now, because for them, diseases like TB and cholera were simply a fact of life. Every once in a while, something really horrifying like Bubonic plague, would be unleashed, and yes, large portions of society panicked.
But the thing is we aren't in the 13th century. We not only know how to slow the spread, but we know at least some extent how to take on dangerous pathogens directly. Even three hundred years ago there was some primitive knowledge of inoculating; highly dangerous but at least somewhat effective. Now we have an entire branch of science dedicated towards creating vaccines, and an entire industry built on producing vaccines. The unknown, as much as there is one, is in precisely identifying the effects of the COVID-19 virus, and certainly it's a lot more contagious than cousins like SARS and MERS, but it is a coronavirus, and we know a lot about coronavirus species that infect humans and other mammals.
Mine says: Huh? (Score:2)
And then it says: WTF?
Where is... (Score:3)
...Huxley's Soma when we need it now more than ever. At least there's cannabis in some places.
Don't own anything of value. (Score:1)
Sleep and exercise (Score:2)
Great ways to deal with anxiety.
After that start writing, in detail, about what is making you anxious as then your brain will then present you with solutions about what to do about it.