what is the "stressor"? It appears to me, like all you are saying is that there must be a cause of anxiety (stressor), but since that stressor can't be identified, let's just assume that the brain is the cause anxiety. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think anything has the potential to be a stressor in the sense that practically anything can be associated with something negative or fearful. Look at agoraphobia, for example, agoraphobics can withdraw to smaller portions of their own homes.

Of course, the brain isn't the only component involved in inexplicable anxiety. A panic attack can be chemically induced, for instance. Also, caffeine can make a person anxious. No one is suggesting that the brain is the only cause. However, the brain is what experiences and interprets interoceptive sensations. A jolt of adrenalin could be felt as thrilling or terrifying. The base internal sensations are essentially the same. It is only the context and our conditioning that is different. This is a very important difference because stress, when taken as a challenge, can enhance performance, and stress taken as a threat prepares the body for injury, sacrificing performance.

Right, I like this way of looking at anxiety, your body is telling you something but you do not know what it is. I like this better than saying that a specific part of the body, the brain is telling you something, because the worst cases of anxiety seem to be the ones when the brain isn't in control of the anxiety. — Metaphysician Undercover

Depersonalisation or disassociation is that ability to mirror your actions and the intensity of this can vary, sometimes even to a point of mental paralysis (ever thought about the universe as a whole? or of God as a singularity, the very nature of existence? You get all fucked up). It is being conscious of consciousness that reality itself almost fizzles away; we usually have this switch that shuts that down so that we can form some benchmark where reality is quantifiable but that does not work sometimes because, in my opinion, of boredom. I work with disadvantaged children and I see those who are very intelligent are often very aggressive because they are not adequately being stimulated intellectually. It is as though the scope of their intellectual capacity and the stimulation afforded to them by the external world is not enough that they become anxious or they shut down. Imagine being in a relationship with someone that you do not intellectually connect with? You become anxious or you shut-down.

So it depends on the way you are looking at the brain and the mind and while they are not mutually exclusive, you do have to network and map the connections by allocating them in the right order. If we strip down the individual, our identification with the external world is determined as children because our brain is not yet developed enough and so our mind relies on our experiences being interpreted for us on our behalf, but the brain is a cognitive tool, an instrument that has - when we are old enough - a intellectual capacity and this enables our mind to recognise ourselves or become self-aware through our rational faculty. But, that pivotal moment often arrives at a point where we have never used this part of our brain and so we are caught in this impasse where there already exists the comfort of a determined reality as given to us and so we have to choose (freedom) whether we want to go down the rabbit hole of the matrix, the very elusive and complex one of our own that has not yet been used or exercised (subconscious). We feel we are alienated from ourselves.

It is easier to go back to that determined state and conform to the masses - hence slave morality - as popular conventionalism alleviates the feelings of anxiety and the feeling itself is painful. It is no different to going back to an unhappy relationship rather than being alone. We are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain and so we confuse the sensation as being painful and attempt to alleviate it all the while our unconscious mind is screaming "no!" - it is like the battle between our brain and mind. When we actually start using this and our anxiety all but disappears, we realise just how easy it is and how much happiness it stimulates, but it is like this gauntlet produced by the fear work hard to prevent us from reaching it. As for fear, have a read of my response to fdrake - it is this mechanism that prevents us from proceeding to or transcending toward the next cognitive stage, to take advantage of the tool or instrument we have to actually think for ourselves.

As you described the situation, your anxiety preceded your accident, so it was not caused by the accident, if anything the anxiety contributed to the occurrence. It may be the case, that you are like I am, just a naturally anxious person, and your level of anxiety is prone to rising. Your experiences in the recovery period are not so much related to your anxious personality, but experiences which any person might incur, though the anxiety would contribute to the appropriate degree. But your anxious personality might be related to the incident occurring in the first place. And if this is the case you ought to determine how anxiety contributes to what you do in a negative way. — Metaphysician Undercover

There were a number of factors at play that I have had many people say that I am extremely strong-minded and willed. I have had childhood issues because my dad was psychologically and physically violent and my mother abandoned any affection for me and so I was pretty much on my own since I was very young. My siblings bullied me a lot and my worth here was only when I obeyed and did what they told me - so I identified my self-worth through this obedience - and therefore never had the chance to really understand what it meant to be 'me'. I never had my own identity both because I had no guidance and my environment forced me to be alienated from myself and to simply serve. That stayed with me as I grew up and though I left home very young, I continued to identify with the external world in the same way, as though my existence was worthless. There was no real angst here, it was that ingrained.

So, when I started this job I became attracted to a guy, but this guy was not normal himself and he was trying to get closer to me but doing a really bad job of it. I did not know what he wanted, he just could not say what he wanted but nevertheless my attraction toward him strengthened because I felt that there was a part of him I could identify with, a part that he himself has shut-away in order to manage his own environment. He was attempting to get closer to me through sexual advances but reacted to my confusion as rejection and therefore became aggressive.His aggression resurfaced those emotions as a child. You love your dad because it is natural to do this, but he treats you badly and you get confused and hurt. You like this guy, but he treats you badly. In addition to this, I started a relationship with my sister and her husband for the first time since I was young and who both swindled me that caused financial loss and reignited those days where I was bullied by my siblings.

This was an adult and so I could actually start seeing the facts, the actuality and so the 'me' or 'I' in this began to develop. It was as Hanover said both generalised and situational, both brain and mind as there was from the accident an increase in stress hormone glucocorticoid and the amygdala in the limbic system that manages our emotional responses is activated and remains activated because the hippocampus cannot translate that into past-tense from the influx of the stress hormone. The chemical imbalances affected my mood and physical experiences. In addition, I lost everything, I had no money, no family or support, no job together with those childhood experiences that I needed to confront and so while I had so many bad experiences hit me in the face in one go, I made every effort to work through them one by one. I got a new job/career, I started saving money again, I started writing, studying (finished a masters degree).

I have not had one moment of anxiety for a while now and I doubt I ever will again because I understand the system now. I have officially recovered and am at peace, but it just took a lot of courage to openly admit to that. I believe wholeheartedly in the honest, temporal communication. Anxiety only remains insofar as we continue to avoid the reason why it is there.

OK, I thought we were discussing anxiety as anxiety, not a defined medical disorder entitled "anxiety". — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a bit like complaining," I thought we were discussion bendy yellow soft fruit; not taking about bananas."

Thus authenticity precedes eudaimonia. — TimeLine

>:O

It is about ascertaining the correct - or authentic - way in order to reach this harmony and in my opinion the only correct way is this self-reflective communication, by piecing the puzzles by talking about it, writing it, drawing it and not escaping it by other means as already mentioned. — TimeLine

In my opinion, this is a self-created problem - you hold yourself accountable to living an "authentic" life, whatever that is supposed to mean, and then feel bad if you fail to meet that goal. I don't do that - I just don't care if I live an authentic life or not - I don't even know what it means to live authentically.

I have tried to live in a way that maximises my freedom for self-directedness, which is why I'm not in the corporate world and I can work when I want to - if I want to work at 12 at night, then I will do it. If I want to work in my pyjamas, no problem. Etc.

I am a sort of Diogenes - I play the clown and let people think I'm an idiot on purpose. Afterall, I'm looking for people who can see behind the façade anyway - and it's also good training in helping me deal with insults, which I've been working on lately, since I can sometimes be somewhat too thin-skinned.

So you seem to have spent so much time looking for a way out of a labyrinth that was really of your own making. You gave importance to those events, and allowed them to shape you - but I think you could have cast them off at once. Instead of untangling the knot, take the sword as Alexander did and cut it off!

So I don't see the need for authenticity. In my opinion, and I may be wrong, I think the reason why you're feeling much happier now is simply because your external circumstances are much better - ie, due to Lady Fortune, who sometimes gives, and sometimes takes away. It's easy to be happy when things are going well - most people are.

A phenomenological account of anxiety with no mention of personality, specific moods, a person's social history, their environment, their identity, their sexuality, their desires or even their body is insufficiently rich to account for an affective disorder with somatic components.

Authenticity itself is a behavioural-mental* property of a generalised ontological everyman, again with no development of formal structures for moods, social history, specific environment, relationships, gender, identity, sex, bodies... Even language and expression are essentially 'imperative otherness' - intrusive normativity - for an anxious person in Heidegger. A thou shalt and a call to guilt. Outside of his hermeneutic circle, they are also a means of self empowerment with an end of, at least, basic functionality.

If anxiety is given an adequate account in Heidegger it must be only in a restricted and formal sense. An 'unease within the categories (existentialia)' which 'brings the truth to light (aletheia and essentia)'. This is the sense that anxiety operates within Heidegger's thought. It is not an affective/somatic condition.

Anxiety is an affective/somatic condition, as well as a mood or sub-personality. There is no sufficiently rich notion of anxiety, affective/somatic impairment (no bodies, no passions) in Heidegger to begin to deal with mental health conditions. Perhaps it is more convincing if you haven't engaged long term with people who have severe medical anxiety. In lower anxiety people where, truly, anxiety assails them as a mood among others. Even when they give the mood special status in their worldview for how significant it is to them.

*Please don't misinterpret me as reading Heidegger as a Cartesian.

Perhaps anxiety is metaphorically similar to creation ex nihilo, but unlike the rectification of nothing, this 'nothing' is primal in us. Anxiety as an artifact of the necessary human experience of separation which a child undergoes as part of its determination of itself as an independent unified self. The feelings of anxiety a child experiences literally from the get-go, which are inaccessible to our conscious memory but perhaps retain unconscious somatic viability/memory, which can re-express them self when there are significant imbalances, stresses in our lives.

I have long held it against the many existentialists to not show courage and determination in the face of the ever-present angst and anxiety with respect to their own lives and seeing themselves in the future, not shaped by their own will.

I can confidently say that the lack of realizing one's will towards some external object is indicative of your level of anxiety about yourself in relation to the world. However, there are two ways to go about this problem. One is to focus on the process of building one's self-esteem by accumulating wealth, property, and other material goods. The second is to focus on nonmaterialistic things, or the 'good'. The first option is much easier to deal with because the progress is seen immediately and is more tangible. The second option is dealing with intangible abstract properties, such as virtue, ethics, morality, and everything else in the realm of what is considered 'the good'.

It's important to realize that it is much easier to display one's willpower with regard to some appetitive attitude of gaining power or prestige or finances. However, the inner truth or the inner realm of the human spirit is much harder to apply one's willpower towards because it is hard to quantify and only can be qualified when there is another to witness this change.

Off on a tangent, this seems true to a great extent in regards to philosophies of Cynicism and Stoicism. The Cynic has focused all his efforts towards the relinquishment of material desire (that which is outside of the self, and that which is good), where the Stoic is one who displays his willpower through achievement or good moral standing with respect to society (an 'impure' mixture as the Cynics would quip, of external goods with respect to good moral standing).

Which makes me wonder, do the cynics admire the Stoics? If not, then why should the Stoics admire the Cynics?

One is to focus on the process of building one's self-esteem by accumulating wealth, property, and other material goods. — Posty McPostface

I think you have this the wrong way around. One cannot acquire wealth, property, material goods, etc. if they lack self-esteem and self-confidence. So on the contrary, in order to acquire the external things, you must first acquire the internal ones.

The first option is much easier to deal with because the progress is seen immediately and is more tangible. — Posty McPostface

I don't think it's necessarily much easier, because it already presupposes at least some of the virtues.

If not, then why should the Stoics admire the Cynics? — Posty McPostface

Because they get the internal aspect right. Stoics have what are known as preferred indifferents (wealth, health, etc.). So the virtue is required to gain (or at least maximise your chances of gaining) the preferred indifferents. Remember what Alexander the Great said upon meeting Diogenes - if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. Because Alexander understood that the internal aspect that Diogenes got right was useful to him, and Diogenes actually did have what it took to be a ruler but chose not to use it.

Yeah, I don't think I need to point out the hypocrisy in this post and whom you seem to admire so much despite his narcissistic and egotistical personality towards everything external.

I don't think I need to point out the hypocrisy in this post — Posty McPostface

Please do point it, because I do not see it :P

despite his narcissistic and egotistical personality towards everything external. — Posty McPostface

You mean Alexander? Alexander certainly had his failings, but in many regards, he was a virtuous person.

I had in mind more like the current president of the US.

I had in mind more like the current president of the US. — Posty McPostface

But I didn't mention him in this thread?

DT has some good sides and some very bad sides, sure. What's your point?

To be sure, anxious thought is typically scattered and fleeting. It fears failure and disappointment as a moth flees a bulb. — fdrake

This is an odd analogy. The moth is actually attracted to the bulb, and would only flee the bulb if it touches it and gets burned. Do you think that Heidegger is implying that the anxious person is in some morbid way attracted to failure and disappoint, and only learns to avoid it by having gotten burned?

The intervention that changes an anxious person's life for the better is neither an engagement with finitude nor an engagement with their ownmost desires, it is an engagement with their anxiety itself in the contexts, boring day to day contexts, that it arises. An anxious person faces anxiety in a manner that flees from their ownmost being incessantly, and it is only through grappling with the every day and finding place in it that they begin, anew, to hone their ownmost being; to gain the capacity to flourish once more.

To recover and mitigate its effects is to accommodate yourself to your environment, to challenge those parts of it which are disabling, and to promote those bits which allow you to flourish. Far from 'fleeing into the world', as Heidegger would have it, this is the pattern of recovery. — fdrake

I find this very agreeable, but it seems to open up a division between the particular and the general. The "day to day contexts" refers to the particular occurrences of anxiety. What is implied is that we cannot turn inward to find a general principle for dealing with anxiety, we must deal with the uniqueness and particularities of each instance of anxiety. This may indicate something important about anxiety. It may itself be, a function of how we relate to the uniqueness of the situations which we find ourselves in, and our inability to negotiate these particularities through the application of general principles. Of course this would be to say something general about anxiety, which would be a turning back toward negating the premise.

The phenomenological segue from the everyday and the inauthentic to the specific and authentic only has a superficial resemblance to actual anxious thought and effective strategies to anxiety's resolution. — fdrake

So this terminology is a bit difficult for me. The "everyday" must refer to the particular instances of events and occurrences which we encounter in our day to day life. The "specific" must refer to some degree of abstraction, or generality, as in Aristotle's usage of "species" and "genus". In this case, "specific" refers to Arsitotle's secondary substance, not primary substance which would be the particular, or individual, "specific" implies some degree of abstraction. So authenticity is assigned to the abstraction, while the particular, individual occurrences are said to be inauthentic.

Would you say that from Heidegger's perspective, this is the first step to overcoming anxiety, and ultimately the fear of death, and finitude altogether? That would be to recognize the particularities of everyday life, as inauthentic, and to see the abstracted principles, by the means of which one makes decisions, as that which is authentic.

If anxiety is given an adequate account in Heidegger it must be only in a restricted and formal sense. An 'unease within the categories (existentialia)' which 'brings the truth to light (aletheia and essentia)'. This is the sense that anxiety operates within Heidegger's thought. It is not an affective/somatic condition. — fdrake

I like this description of anxiety, it avoids the bad connotations handed to it by modern medicine (if a child expresses symptoms of ADHT, then medicate it). Here, Heidegger claims that anxiety is what brings truth to light. This is probably due to the relationship between anxiety and the unknown, which I have been discussing with TimeLIne. Approaching the unknown is what produces anxiety and this produces the will to think. Thinking is what brings truth.

The "unease within the categories" is the source of anxiety. We always proceed in our daily life by applying general principles to particular situations. But the general principles cannot account for the uniqueness of the situations, so there is always an element of the unknown in all circumstances. This produces anxiety. The anxiety inspires us to think. I think that there are two principal reasons for the unknown. One is that the general principles which we attempt to apply are lacking in completeness, and the other is that our perceptions of the particular situations are lacking in completeness.

Death is about recognising our individuality or separateness but death is not the violence of the experience but rather the fear itself that encourages us to conform to the masses. — TimeLine

As I just suggested to fdrake, death, finitude, uniqueness, and individuality, are all properties of the everydayness of the particular. And this is the inauthentic. When we recognize the abstracted principles by which we act, as the authentic, this encourages us to conform. Conformation is a requirement to understand the vast realm of abstracted principles, and since this is recognized as authentic the will to conform flourishes.

Anxiety is just a feeling or a sensation without a language - subconscious - that is attempting to tell us something we disagree with or that something is wrong but that we cannot articulate because there is no language, no words to describe this. — TimeLine

A recognition of this anxiety, which concerns things which have no words for them, helps to bring about an understanding of the authenticity of the inner world of abstraction. There is a use of words, which is all about naming external objects, and this is day to day communication, the inauthentic. The real, authentic use of words is in describing our inner feelings. This is where we find sincerity, trust, and ultimately truth. So in day to day life, we mimic and imitate others, saying things and using words in the same way as others, because this is what gets us by. But the real, authentic way of using words is to describe things in the way that you personally perceive and apprehend them, not to say what the others want you to say, but to be truly authentic. Finding that there are numerous things which there are no words for, is a part of this authenticity.

It is easier to go back to that determined state and conform to the masses - hence slave morality - as popular conventionalism alleviates the feelings of anxiety and the feeling itself is painful. It is no different to going back to an unhappy relationship rather than being alone. We are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain and so we confuse the sensation as being painful and attempt to alleviate it all the while our unconscious mind is screaming "no!" - it is like the battle between our brain and mind. When we actually start using this and our anxiety all but disappears, we realise just how easy it is and how much happiness it stimulates, but it is like this gauntlet produced by the fear work hard to prevent us from reaching it. As for fear, have a read of my response to fdrake - it is this mechanism that prevents us from proceeding to or transcending toward the next cognitive stage, to take advantage of the tool or instrument we have to actually think for ourselves. — TimeLine

I come at this from the opposite direction as you, but we seem to meet, and have compatibility in the middle. I never had the urge to conform. I never had the appropriate respect for authority, all my life. I was always a free thinker. It wasn't until I started to study philosophy and I realized the power of ideas, that I recognized how ideas are needed, as the tools for thought. Then I recognized the need to conform, in order to understand, such that conforming ultimately empowers free thinking.

You seem to describe the opposite situation, having had the need to recognize authority, and to conform, all your life, and now realizing that breaking away from this authority gives you the capacity for free thought. So we are both in the middle, apprehending the need for a balance between authority and free thought, just having different reasons for being in this position.

In addition to this, I started a relationship with my sister and her husband for the first time since I was young and who both swindled me that caused financial loss and reignited those days where I was bullied by my siblings. — TimeLine

Considering the relationship between anticipation and disappointment, and the fact that you probably wanted a relationship with your sister for a very long time, I'd say that the disappointment here was immense, and unfathomable to me.

Of course, the brain isn't the only component involved in inexplicable anxiety. A panic attack can be chemically induced, for instance. Also, caffeine can make a person anxious. No one is suggesting that the brain is the only cause. However, the brain is what experiences and interprets interoceptive sensations. A jolt of adrenalin could be felt as thrilling or terrifying. The base internal sensations are essentially the same. It is only the context and our conditioning that is different. This is a very important difference because stress, when taken as a challenge, can enhance performance, and stress taken as a threat prepares the body for injury, sacrificing performance. — praxis

I think we are pretty much in agreement on this.

I play the clown and let people think I'm an idiot on purpose — Agustino

Geez, no wonder you identify with DT so well.

DT has some good sides and some very bad sides, sure. What's your point? — Agustino

And I suppose you think that's a good side?

The analogy with the moth describes the predisposition of a highly anxious subject to fret, and the fretting diminishes their agency in a cyclical and sometimes recursive manner. It was supposed to evoke the following cycle: anxiety diminishes a person's agency; as their agency diminishes, the diminishment is internalised and becomes a spur towards anxious behaviour (including thought) and further disempowerment. It is more difficult to fight anxiety the more severe it is. The more anxious you are, the more prone to anxiety reinforcing behaviours you are. The more anxious you are, the more you are drawn to anxiety. This is both a trap and a site of resistance.

I find this very agreeable, but it seems to open up a division between the particular and the general. The "day to day contexts" refers to the particular occurrences of anxiety. What is implied is that we cannot turn inward to find a general principle for dealing with anxiety, we must deal with the uniqueness and particularities of each instance of anxiety. This may indicate something important about anxiety. It may itself be, a function of how we relate to the uniqueness of the situations which we find ourselves in, and our inability to negotiate these particularities through the application of general principles. Of course this would be to say something general about anxiety, which would be a turning back toward negating the premise...

I like this description of anxiety, it avoids the bad connotations handed to it by modern medicine (if a child expresses symptoms of ADHT, then medicate it). Here, Heidegger claims that anxiety is what brings truth to light. This is probably due to the relationship between anxiety and the unknown, which I have been discussing with TimeLIne. Approaching the unknown is what produces anxiety and this produces the will to think. Thinking is what brings truth.

Turning inward has its place in diminishing the pathological coping strategies that attend anxiety, this should be accompanied with behavioural changes. Particularity can be troubling for more than essentially epistemic reasons, it can trouble an anxious subject through modal ones too. Anxious fantasies typically are not just failures of knowledge or familiarity, they are threatening possibilities given more emotive or evidential significance than they are due. They can also take the character of the truly fantastic: looking at a knife and intrusively imagining, or even feeling a shadow of, its potential for you to jam it into your eye socket.

The line between fantasy and reality in those imaginings can be blurred if the subject has anxiety co-morbid with post traumatic stress disorder. In these cases, the every-day can often become a reminiscence of the traumatic. Which if anything is a case of defective generality in thought and action consuming the particularities of life, epistemically anyway. It is the application of the general to the particular which is inauthentic in this case; calcification over crystallisation. A post-traumatic anxious subject's throat may close if they have nearly drowned (when triggered), or they may feel terrible, isolating cold due to an injury obtained from hiking in mountains (when triggered). What abstract story should we tell to exorcise the ghosts raping them? What words alone could suffice? None.

Those of particularly low self worth who have punishment fantasies may find their particularity oppressive - as they are the exceptions to the rules afforded to others. Particularity can be just as stymying as generality. Authenticity is an ally neither of the particular nor the general in the abstract, it is a way a person can learn to set the two in relation and act ('dwell') within it.

Further complications arise from schizophrenic co-morbidity. What generalised principle of action or law of thought leads someone to believe their friends and family have been replaced by dopplegangers overnight? That there is a conspiracy to observe them and control their activities? That they might be a robot or an ambassador to an alien civilisation? How can these fantasies be categorised in accordance with the trauma of the world when now there are many? How can there be many and still one, if the subject has insight? The phenomenological world and the principles of abstraction and grounding that derived it quake if the subject deriving them is pathological.

As I just suggested to fdrake, death, finitude, uniqueness, and individuality, are all properties of the everydayness of the particular. And this is the inauthentic. When we recognize the abstracted principles by which we act, as the authentic, this encourages us to conform. Conformation is a requirement to understand the vast realm of abstracted principles, and since this is recognized as authentic the will to conform flourishes.

Living in accordance with principles being equated with authenticity and therapeutic release of anxious symptoms is a bit too strong. To recover from anxiety is to change the range and nature of permissible activity in your life; expand what you do, contract your abuses; to be forgiving and understanding of yourself and your impact on others, to afford yourself whatever choices allow you to accommodate to life again, and to bend but not break when life pushes back.

An intellectually consistent and driven life is not a necessity for the treatment of anxiety and the promotion of agency - sometimes resistance and recovery means that you washed your clothes, showered and ate within the last two days.

Geez, no wonder you identify with DT so well. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why are you people obsessed about DT in a thread where I didn't even bring it up?

And I suppose you think that's a good side? — Metaphysician Undercover

What's a good side?

Now addressing your previous comments:

OK, I thought we were discussing anxiety as anxiety, not a defined medical disorder entitled "anxiety". — Metaphysician Undercover

I think Posty was quite clear that he was referring to anxiety as an illness...

Maintaining a reasonable amount of activity tires one, and helps one to rest and relax, as well as sleep better. Without an appropriate amount of activity, your efforts to rest and relax may be futile because you have no exertion to rest from. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, that's because you have an unruly mind which doesn't obey your commands. I used to have that as a teenager, and God was it a pain. If you didn't tire yourself during the day, you couldn't sleep at night. Always like a slave on a leash, I had to tire myself out by playing football, etc. Now that doesn't trouble me anymore - because I gained control over that aspect of my mind. I don't care anymore if I don't fall asleep, so it doesn't trouble me. No more switching from one side to the other, getting up, moving around the room, etc. etc. Just stay there, and not care - then you are at peace, even if you don't sleep.

Have you ever had difficulty getting to sleep, and found that the harder you try to get to sleep, the more difficult it is to get to sleep? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, so I don't give a damn, and I just sit in bed not trying to do anything >:O - and sooner or later I do fall asleep. So I changed strategy ever since I was a teenager, and I used to try very hard to fall asleep.

As I said, being active allows me to avoid being troubled by anxiety. So, if as you say, meditation allows one to avoid being troubled by anxiety, I don't see the basis for your claim that meditation is a better approach. As I've explained, I get enjoyment and pleasure from my anxiety, and being active. So not only do I avoid being troubled by anxiety, I also get benefits from it. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, meditation gives you control over your mind, not just avoiding to be troubled by anxiety. Being active gives you no such control - it just keeps you a slave. Control - like this:



Capisci? >:O

I don't like being a slave to my mind and its desires and so on so forth. I like being free. If I can't sleep and my mind is pestering me with thoughts, that is annoying. And I get it to stop by ignoring it and not caring what it does.

Since I've just demonstrated that your claims here are contradictory, your appeal to authority is of the fallacious type. You need to address my demonstration that what you have said is contradictory. I've argued elsewhere that it's very clear Wittgenstein is wrong on this point, due to contradictions such as yours, which arise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Wittgenstein is right. In order to doubt something, I must believe something else, since doubts have to be grounded - you must have a reason for your doubt. Why are you unsure about where the keys are? Is it not because you believe you don't remember where you put them for example? I don't see how your little sophistry avoids this.

Sounds like a trip to Chaing Mai would do you good. If you haven't already intuited this; you wan’t to consualt experienced “travelers” and or “internationals” rather than “tour guides” and “tourists”. You’re probably looking at $2,000 U.S.D. max total, for a 1-3 month pilgrimage to Thailand. If you have an associates degree of any kind you can get a job teaching orphans or elementry school children English for 800-1,200 U.S.D. Per month, its hard to spend over 500 a month there. I highly reccomend a trip there before too much changes in southeast Asia.

I know a cycling group that can show you everything you need to know in Thailand if you like. Especially if you’re interested in Vegan diets, Running, Cycling, Climbing, or Swimming, they know where the real temples are.

I also know a few anti-human trafficking groups that operate over there.

After some trouble on from the deepweb I’m giving most of cyberspace a bit of a brake, but I can still refferance you to a few people.

PM me about it if you like.

It was supposed to evoke the following cycle: anxiety diminishes a person's agency; — fdrake

I don't agree that anxiety necessarily diminishes a person's agency. This depends on one's approach to anxiety. As I described to Agustino, a healthy response to anxiety would increase one's agency. Therefore it is only in cases of unhealthy response that the individual spirals downward as you describe.

Anxious fantasies typically are not just failures of knowledge or familiarity, they are threatening possibilities given more emotive or evidential significance than they are due. They can also take the character of the truly fantastic: looking at a knife and intrusively imagining, or even feeling a shadow of, its potential for you to jam it into your eye socket. — fdrake

Now you've gone beyond anxiety itself, to describe fantasies. We ought to maintain a separation between these two. The appearance of such phantasms are more likel a cause of anxiety than to be caused by anxiety. Therefore we ought to maintain a separation between the conditions which cause such fantasies and the conditions which cause anxiety.

The line between fantasy and reality in those imaginings can be blurred if the subject has anxiety co-morbid with post traumatic stress disorder. In these cases, the every-day can often become a reminiscence of the traumatic. Which if anything is a case of defective generality in thought and action consuming the particularities of life, epistemically anyway. It is the application of the general to the particular which is inauthentic in this case; calcification over crystallisation. A post-traumatic anxious subject's throat may close if they have nearly drowned (when triggered), or they may feel terrible, isolating cold due to an injury obtained from hiking in mountains (when triggered). What abstract story should we tell to exorcise the ghosts raping them? What words alone could suffice? None. — fdrake

Again, the subject of our discussion is anxiety itself. We ought not talk about co-morbid situations in which the symptoms of anxiety might be confused with the symptoms of some illness. This blurring of the line between fantasy and reality might be a cause of anxiety, but we ought to maintain a separation between the cause of this blurring, (perhaps some form of illness), and the anxiety itself. To deal with anxiety is a different matter from dealing with an illness which causes hallucinations, unless the anxiety we are dealing with is caused by that underlying condition.

To recover from anxiety is to change the range and nature of permissible activity in your life; expand what you do, contract your abuses; to be forgiving and understanding of yourself and your impact on others, to afford yourself whatever choices allow you to accommodate to life again, and to bend but not break when life pushes back. — fdrake

I agree with this, but if the anxiety is caused by an illness which produces phantasms and hallucinations, then the approach is not to address the anxiety itself, but to address the reason for this other condition which may be an illness that is causing the anxiety.

An intellectually consistent and driven life is not a necessity for the treatment of anxiety and the promotion of agency - sometimes resistance and recovery means that you washed your clothes, showered and ate within the last two days. — fdrake

I agree again, dealing with anxiety may be very simple if the cause of the anxiety is simple, and well exposed. But if the cause is deeply hidden, or some underlying illness, then it is necessary to address this further condition.

I think Posty was quite clear that he was referring to anxiety as an illness... — Agustino

Your interpretation of what is "quite clear" is very far from mine. I think Posty proposed this as a matter of debate. Although it is clearly indicated that Posty thinks anxiety is something to be avoided, as the root cause of suffering, and says "I assume" that you do too, there is no indication that Posty is using "anxiety" to refer to any condition of illness. Suffering ought not be equated with illness.

Yeah, that's because you have an unruly mind which doesn't obey your commands. I used to have that as a teenager, and God was it a pain. If you didn't tire yourself during the day, you couldn't sleep at night. Always like a slave on a leash, I had to tire myself out by playing football, etc. Now that doesn't trouble me anymore - because I gained control over that aspect of my mind. I don't care anymore if I don't fall asleep, so it doesn't trouble me. No more switching from one side to the other, getting up, moving around the room, etc. etc. Just stay there, and not care - then you are at peace, even if you don't sleep. — Agustino

I don't know what you could possibly mean by "an unruly mind which doesn't obey your commands". This statement appears completely contradictory and the whole paragraph is nonsense to me.

This description you have provided, whereby a person is a slave to one's own mind is all incoherent nonsense. And so is this:

In order to doubt something, I must believe something else, since doubts have to be grounded - you must have a reason for your doubt. — Agustino

Doubts do not need to be grounded, they exist for no apparent reason whatsoever, just like anxiety. Certainty is what needs to be grounded, otherwise your certitude is nothing other than false confidence.

Why are you unsure about where the keys are? Is it not because you believe you don't remember where you put them for example? — Agustino

Don't be silly. I am doubtful about where my keys are when I remember where I put them but I am unsure if my memory is correct. I think I know where they are, but I'm not sure, that is doubt. If I believe that I do not remember where I put them, then I am sure about where they, i.e. sure that I don't know where they are. Doubt is when I think I know, but I'm not sure whether I really know or not.

Your false confidence doesn't allow you to experience doubt. When you think you know, you're sure you know, and when you think you don't know, you're sure you don't know. Therefore you've never experienced doubt. However, I'm quite sure that you've been wrong before, so you'd do yourself a favour to be more doubtful.

Authenticity itself is a behavioural-mental* property of a generalised ontological everyman, again with no development of formal structures for moods, social history, specific environment, relationships, gender, identity, sex, bodies... Even language and expression are essentially 'imperative otherness' - intrusive normativity - for an anxious person in Heidegger. A thou shalt and a call to guilt. Outside of his hermeneutic circle, they are also a means of self empowerment with an end of, at least, basic functionality. — fdrake

I will try to overlook the fact that you write annoyingly like Heidegger that it makes his Being and Time seem like a children's book. The development of our personality as children - due to our cognitive limitations - largely forms our identification with the external world and how we perceive and ultimately interpret our experiences that largely affect meaning. Our mind contains the instruments that enable us to think consciously and independently and thus as we mature, we begin to sense autonomous experience, but most often this experience shifts from our dependency on family or our immediate environment toward an identification to social experience such as friends and partners. How we identify experience is dependent on the quality of our mental states and how much we understand of ourselves, and thus anxiety manifests as this conscious alienation from any sufficient relatedness to our own being.

The phenomenological account of anxiety is a physical and emotional response to this alienation, from a capacity to fully recognise the 'self' and I believe the response is an attempt to direct us to this understanding as a thing as it is in itself, so where our perceptions are direct, realistic, rational and non-representational. Our understanding is relational and unfolds through social experience, but we each have the cognitive capacity to transcend this and become empowered to identify independently with our own understanding of our social history, environment, sexuality and ultimately identity - which is this authenticity - and thus human agency becomes autonomous.

Anxiety is an emotional and physical reaction where the authentic self is trying to communicate to the inauthentic self; becoming aware of why one has anxiety is really just unfolding and articulating something you already know but could not put words to it. It is not to abandon otherness, neither is it to deny it - free-will and determinism are not mutually exclusive - but to put it simply, authenticity is to interpret one's experience both past and present as one genuinely would want to and not through the lens given to them either from childhood or society.

Your interpretation of what is "quite clear" is very far from mine. I think Posty proposed this as a matter of debate. Although it is clearly indicated that Posty thinks anxiety is something to be avoided, as the root cause of suffering, and says "I assume" that you do too, there is no indication that Posty is using "anxiety" to refer to any condition of illness. Suffering ought not be equated with illness. — Metaphysician Undercover

What does "illness" mean to you? You are aware that doctors classifying something as "illness" is just that - a medical classification and nothing more. It doesn't mean it "really" is an illness, whatever that means. For example, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, hypochondria and OCD in my teens. According to the medical proffession, it is not possible to "cure" these illnesses - so according to them, I must still be suffering from them, but I'm not. A doctor would now say that I was misdiagnosed probably. So as you can see, this entire system of classifying mental illness is really meaningless crap - just putting a label on something and then adding a bunch of metaphysical assumptions to it (like it's "uncurable"). It actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for many - doctor tells them they are depressed, and they stay depressed their entire lives, because it's "incurable" >:O ! So I don't have to think anxiety is an illness to agree with the definition given by doctors.

I also don't like your naive view of saying "oh that's an illness, it's something different, let's not talk about it" - I don't see how these things are "illnesses", except that they are STATES OF MIND - or HABITS OF MIND - that decrease quality of life for those who have them. There is no illness beyond this here. So this attempt of yours to avoid talking about these things (which are actually relevant), is just that - you're avoiding because you know it will become clear that your views are wrong when we investigate these aspects.

I don't know what you could possibly mean by "an unruly mind which doesn't obey your commands". This statement appears completely contradictory and the whole paragraph is nonsense to me.

This description you have provided, whereby a person is a slave to one's own mind is all incoherent nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't really take you seriously when you claim to be so uneducated that you haven't heard phrases like "unruly mind", or being a "slave to one's own mind" before - and even think they are contradictory.

https://www.pocketmindfulness.com/understanding-monkey-mind-live-harmony-mental-companion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_monkey

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bj-gallagher/buddha-how-to-tame-your-m_b_945793.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls



So try as hard as you want, but if you really are surprised at the claim that you must tame your mind, then quite frankly, you're not very well read, and you should read more, because it seems that you identify yourself with your mind, which according to many philosophies is wrong.

You are still stuck entirely in the discursive mode, and know of no other kind of existence - completely stuck in your mind, and using all these strategies (tire yourself out, etc.) instead of identifying the problem - you have a monkey mind that you need to bring under control. In Buddhist thought, we say that the mind is like a bull, and you must tame that bull. It seems that you have taken the opposite approach and have allowed the bull to tame you.

Doubts do not need to be grounded, they exist for no apparent reason whatsoever, just like anxiety. Certainty is what needs to be grounded, otherwise your certitude is nothing other than false confidence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Anxiety is also grounded in beliefs. Doubts cannot exist "for no apparent reason whatsoever". We cannot doubt until we first learn to believe. How can you doubt something before you have a belief structure in place?

I am doubtful about where my keys are when I remember where I put them but I am unsure if my memory is correct. — Metaphysician Undercover

"I am unsure if my memory is correct" points to a belief that your memory may be wrong. You must believe that statement in order to be able to doubt your memory. Unless you believe "my memory could be wrong", you cannot doubt your memory.

Your false confidence doesn't allow you to experience doubt. — Metaphysician Undercover

Funny you say that to someone who has experienced OCD >:O - so, when you close the door, and then go back to check it 10 times to make sure it's closed, that, according to you, isn't doubt no? >:O >:O >:O

If I believe that I do not remember where I put them, then I am sure about where they, i.e. sure that I don't know where they are — Metaphysician Undercover

This is contradictory nonsense. You are NOT sure where they are - "I don't know where they are" isn't a place where they could be.

Picard will not guilt me to change my mind you small-headed rodent.

I don't even know what it means to live authentically. — Agustino

Quite.

In my opinion, this is a self-created problem - you hold yourself accountable to living an "authentic" life, whatever that is supposed to mean, and then feel bad if you fail to meet that goal. I don't do that - I just don't care if I live an authentic life or not — Agustino

Are you someone who takes the blue pill?

Authenticity is about how we identify with the external world and interpret representations and this is dependent on the quality of our mental states. The alienation from any relatedness both to our own being as well as to the external world largely causes this anxious experience, because something autonomous or individual within us is telling us - without language but with physical responses and emotions - that something is wrong with an experience in the external world. We are just unable to articulate it.

There are numerous ways one can overcome this. One of these - which most often occurs - is through conforming, by allowing others to think on our behalf until we reach a point where we silence the anxiety - which is 'our' voice - that we ultimately lose any identification to our own self-hood. Others drown it with drugs and alcohol, or suicide, or even losing their minds. Small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

My way is through authenticity, which is to be brutally honest with oneself about their past, the present, interpretations and trying to ascertain the difference between 'my' opinion and conditioned beliefs that have been given to me; it is a process of practice, like recognising that you are thin-skinned. To learn a new language of my own, giving sound to my voice by re-wiring the brain and so it is a lengthy process. It is basically about being subjectively honest to yourself and to have your own autonomous voice. I think you know what I am talking about since we've had this discussion like so many times before, don't be a Diogenes shmartypants.

I think the reason why you're feeling much happier now is simply because your external circumstances are much better - ie, due to Lady Fortune, who sometimes gives, and sometimes takes away. It's easy to be happy when things are going well - most people are. — Agustino

Wrong. Indeed, I was given the opportunity to work and develop a career in an organisation predominately with women who were very warm and protective of me during those difficult early stages - particularly following the harassment from men I had in my previous job - that I felt safe enough to start healing, so I was fortunate I got such an amazing job. I was also fortunate that I got an opportunity to holiday to Italy purely by luck, which rescued me from that alienation because it reminded me about culture and arts that I dearly love and allowed me to re-connect with myself.

However, what was 'fortunate' here was that I was rescued from the severity of that existential crises at a time where I was incapable of thinking correctly and not the anxiety. It stayed with me for quite some time as I slowly began to articulate 'my' voice and so slowly but surely the way that I started living my life changed because my interpretation of the external world changed, along with my perceptions and consequently my mental states. I transformed from a fragile, emotional mess who almost died and my happiness is now solid because I removed all the toxic people from my life and started a clean slate being aware of both my vulnerability and my capacity, and being proud enough to say that I respect who I am especially for never giving up on my virtue.

It is impossible to feel anxiety now; I have encountered numerous difficulties since then and I have had nothing affect me because I have formed a permanent environment for myself that will ensure this peace, just as much as I am now flexible and fluid enough to work with the ebb and flow both with positive and negatives, meaning that when I encounter a bad experience, I work at resolving it and not getting anxious about it. Sorry, buddy, but this peace is permanent and I know that from experience.

I don't agree that anxiety necessarily diminishes a person's agency. This depends on one's approach to anxiety. As I described to Agustino, a healthy response to anxiety would increase one's agency. Therefore it is only in cases of unhealthy response that the individual spirals downward as you describe.

I wanted to add the clinical dimension of anxiety to the discussion, please read my posts in that light. Someone who is mentally healthy deals with anxiety as a mood or as a response to stressors. Someone who has anxiety disorder has a much different, but related in some ways, experience of anxiety.

The dimension of fantasy is something which is very common in people with anxiety disorder. People without anxiety disorder typically do not have anxious fantasies of the same sort. People with it need to learn to cope with the anxious fantasies as part of learning a 'healthy response' towards anxiety.

The reason I brought in co-morbid conditions is that they matter a lot from the perspective of how to deal with anxiety. The things you would do to steel yourself against an anxious fantasy that you are a robot (believed sincerely with no insight) are a lot different from more generic paralysing fantasies of failure and self harm, which differs again from someone being transported back to their trauma if they have PTSD and anxiety. It makes a big difference in how the problems should be (and are) addressed.

Anxiety is an emotional and physical reaction where the authentic self is trying to communicate to the inauthentic self; becoming aware of why one has anxiety is really just unfolding and articulating something you already know but could not put words to it. It is not to abandon otherness, neither is it to deny it - free-will and determinism are not mutually exclusive - but to put it simply, authenticity is to interpret one's experience both past and present as one genuinely would want to and not through the lens given to them either from childhood or society.

It's entirely possible that 'one's ideal self' still has anxious coping mechanisms - in these cases anxious behaviour can be egosyntonic. Someone who relies upon their anxious behaviour to obtain their version of normalcy and safety - 'what would happen if I wasn't worrying all the time?- is a lot different from someone who experiences their anxiety intrusively - intrusions from normativity (like 'das man') or from obsessive fantasies (which have no Heideggerian analogue). If an anxious person experiences their anxious coping mechanisms and general anxious behaviours as something bad to be worked on, it's egodystonic and approached differently. This is to say whether anxiety (or subsets of anxious behaviours) is part of the 'real' or 'ideal' self depends on the person!

As I said to MU above, treat my posts as descriptions of clinical anxiety and based on it, not from people who have lower levels of anxiety, or from the usual anxiety mentally healthy people get.

There's a lot of crapping on clinical psychology in this thread. At the very least it should be given respect as a catalogue of symptoms, even if you don't agree that derived treatment plans are successful.

Are you someone who takes the blue pill? — TimeLine

Like this?

The alienation from any relatedness both to our own being as well as to the external world largely causes this anxious experience, because something autonomous or individual within us is telling us - without language but with physical responses and emotions - that something is wrong with an experience in the external world. We are just unable to articulate it. — TimeLine

:s I don't think anxiety actually manifests like that - this seems like an embellishment. I get that everyone's mind tries to find rationalisations, and you must explain the anxiety in terms of your past, etc. etc. To me that is nonsense. You are giving in to the anxiety when you're doing that, and fueling the same ruminative behaviour that is at the basis of anxiety. The mind may be diseased, but there is a place beyond mind, and that is where you can find healing.

There are numerous ways one can overcome this. One of these - which most often occurs - is through conforming, by allowing others to think on our behalf until we reach a point where we silence the anxiety - which is 'our' voice - that we ultimately lose any identification to our own self-hood. Others drown it with drugs and alcohol, or suicide, or even losing their minds. Small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it. — TimeLine

You are wrong, those people drown in drugs, alcohol, violence, hatred, sadism, and all the rest as a respite from their mind, which does not leave them alone, but constantly harasses them. If they could get a few moments of peace... But that psychological peace is nowhere to be found. Their mistake is in looking for peace outside of themselves, instead of inside. They look towards the wife, the drug, the violence, etc. etc. But the problem comes from inside, it comes from an unruly mind, which must be brought into submission.

You seem to have gone down the path of trying to untangle the Gordian knot from within, but it cannot be untangled - all you can do is hide it and forget about it for a little while. The knot must be cut off, with the sword. The mind may not be rescued, because old consequences will play on, but that is not relevant.

There is a story of Angulimala and the Buddha. Angulimala was the most blood-thirsty serial killer of Buddha's time - everyone feared him. He killed people in cold blood and not for money, or any other reason, but just for the sake of it. And he would take their index finger, and he strung them on a garland he would wear around his neck, to keep count of all his victims. He had acquired 999 fingers, and was finally looking to acquire the 1000th finger.

And when he heard the Buddha was around, he set his mind that his 1000th victim will be the Buddha. And so he jumped in the Buddha's way, with his sword out, and yelled "STOP!". But the Buddha just kept walking towards him. And he thought "This man must be crazy... Even my own mother doesn't know where to hide from me, everyone is hiding, and this man is coming towards me! And he is completely unarmed!". So he said to the Buddha "You should STOP! Do you not see this sword?! Have you not heard who I am?! Have you not heard that I have vowed to kill 1000 people, and behold you are the 1000th! Turn around!" But the Buddha did not hesitate, and said "Forget it - I have never changed my mind, and as far as stopping is concerned, I have already stopped long ago. It is you who needs to stop. And as for killing me, you can do it, that doesn't concern me. Anything that is born must die"

And behold that Angulimala dropped his sword and fell at the Buddha's feet, finally stopping his mind.

My way is through authenticity, which is to be brutally honest with oneself about their past, the present, interpretations and trying to ascertain the difference between 'my' opinion and conditioned beliefs that have been given to me; it is a process of practice, like recognising that you are thin-skinned. — TimeLine

The past is irrelevant - it doesn't matter if I was thin-skinned or not, all that matters is how I act now.

Wrong. Indeed, I was given the opportunity to work and develop a career in an organisation predominately with women who were very warm and protective of me during those difficult early stages - particularly following the harassment from men I had in my previous job - that I felt safe enough to start healing, so I was fortunate I got such an amazing job. I was also fortunate that I got an opportunity to holiday to Italy purely by luck, which rescued me from that alienation because it reminded me about culture and arts that I dearly love and allowed me to re-connect with myself. — TimeLine

What you call "healing" seems to be nothing but the passage of time, all the while being in a good environment. You have just forgotten the problems, if you just wait until fortune changes her whims, you may rediscover them. What you call authenticity is nothing but a game of the discursive mind - it is a running away from the real problems, which are structural limitations of discursive thought itself.

Sorry, buddy, but this peace is permanent and I know that from experience. — TimeLine

The mind can never be at peace for long.

What does "illness" mean to you? — Agustino

To be ill is to be sick, unhealthy. A physician may diagnose a person as having a particular form of illness, unhealthiness. So an "illness" is a particular, diagnosable form of unhealthiness. I agree that doctors are sometimes wrong in their diagnosis.

I also don't like your naive view of saying "oh that's an illness, it's something different, let's not talk about it" - I don't see how these things are "illnesses", except that they are STATES OF MIND - or HABITS OF MIND - that decrease quality of life for those who have them. There is no illness beyond this here. So this attempt of yours to avoid talking about these things (which are actually relevant), is just that - you're avoiding because you know it will become clear that your views are wrong when we investigate these aspects. — Agustino

I agree that a person with a decreased quality of life does not necessarily have an illness, nor would we say that this person is ill, because to say someone is ill is to imply that the person has a form of illness. Otherwise we'd have no standard whereby we could say one is ill. We'd just say that the person with any decreased quality of life is ill, not knowing what qualifies as a decreased quality. Instead, we assume that if the person has an identifiable form of illness, then that person is ill.

Where we disagree, is whether anxiety necessarily causes a decreased quality of life. I believe that anxiety is a very normal part of life, and adds to one's quality of life by increasing the fullness of one's experience. So for instance, if a person such as yourself has been misdiagnosed with anxiety disorder, but then medicated to the point of eliminating that person's anxiety, this would be a decrease in the quality of life for that person. The person really had normal anxiety, which is a good and fundamental aspect of living as a human being, and the medication removes this anxiety thereby lowering the person's quality of life. Therefore I belief that anxiety is necessary to enhance one's quality of life.

You seemed to be intent on proving me "wrong", in my claim that anxiety may be good, with a positive contribution to one's quality of life, so you moved to define "anxiety" as an illness, proving me wrong through a restrictive definition.

So try as hard as you want, but if you really are surprised at the claim that you must tame your mind, then quite frankly, you're not very well read, and you should read more, because it seems that you identify yourself with your mind, which according to many philosophies is wrong.

You are still stuck entirely in the discursive mode, and know of no other kind of existence - completely stuck in your mind, and using all these strategies (tire yourself out, etc.) instead of identifying the problem - you have a monkey mind that you need to bring under control. In Buddhist thought, we say that the mind is like a bull, and you must tame that bull. It seems that you have taken the opposite approach and have allowed the bull to tame you. — Agustino

You are working off the premise that the "monkey mind" is bad. Until you prove this premise, that the monkey mind is misbehaving, your insistence that I ought to tame this monkey mind, bringing it under some form of control, is just meaningless babble to my monkey mind. Sorry if this disappoints you, but that's just reality. All you are doing is insistently claiming that my way of thinking is inferior to yours, and I ought to conform mine to yours, but that's ridiculous. Who is really being childish here?

Anxiety is also grounded in beliefs. Doubts cannot exist "for no apparent reason whatsoever". We cannot doubt until we first learn to believe. How can you doubt something before you have a belief structure in place? — Agustino

Again, baseless assertions. Doubting is a condition of unknowing, so clearly one can doubt without having any knowledge, therefore without having any belief structure in place.

"I am unsure if my memory is correct" points to a belief that your memory may be wrong. — Agustino

This is what you've been doing all thread, taking a condition which is described as a lack of belief concerning something, then interpreting it as a belief that one has a lack of belief. It is simply my expression to you, in words, which allows you to do this. When I describe to you, in words, a condition of doubt, lack of belief, it is necessarily expressed as a belief in this, through the words. But in the real condition, not the representation of the condition, there is no such belief.

This is contradictory nonsense. You are NOT sure where they are - "I don't know where they are" isn't a place where they could be. — Agustino

As I said, it's certainty "about" where they are. I didn't say it is certainty as to exactly where they are.

Someone who is mentally healthy deals with anxiety as a mood or as a response to stressors. — fdrake

This I think is a key point, the assumption of "stressors". To begin with, the term is very ambiguous. But beside that, anxiety is related to our perspective toward the future, so to say that there is something past, or even present, which causes anxiety, as a "stressor", is to misrepresent anxiety in the first place. We ought to dismiss this idea that anxiety is a "response to stressors", and replace it with the idea that stressors one's response to anxiety. Anxiety predisposes us to what we may incur, and to what is perceived as impending, if it is misplaced, the result is "stressors". In this way, we can understand the true beneficial role of anxiety as preparing us for potential stressors, thereby reducing the negative impact by allowing us to reduce the actualization of those stressors..

The dimension of fantasy is something which is very common in people with anxiety disorder. People without anxiety disorder typically do not have anxious fantasies of the same sort. People with it need to learn to cope with the anxious fantasies as part of learning a 'healthy response' towards anxiety.

The reason I brought in co-morbid conditions is that they matter a lot from the perspective of how to deal with anxiety. The things you would do to steel yourself against an anxious fantasy that you are a robot (believed sincerely with no insight) are a lot different from more generic paralysing fantasies of failure and self harm, which differs again from someone being transported back to their trauma if they have PTSD and anxiety. It makes a big difference in how the problems should be (and are) addressed. — fdrake

The point though, is that the so-called "anxious fantasies" are probably not caused by the anxiety at all, but by the underlying co-morbid condition. The anxiety is probably just a symptom, like fever is a symptom of some illnesses, and swelling is a symptom of some physical injuries. In some cases, the symptom itself, swelling, fever, or anxiety, becomes a problem on its own, needing to be dealt with, but in many cases these symptoms are just the body's natural reaction to the underlying illness, and the proper procedure is to identify and treat that underlying illness, not the symptoms.

It is impossible to feel anxiety now; I have encountered numerous difficulties since then and I have had nothing affect me because I have formed a permanent environment for myself that will ensure this peace, just as much as I am now flexible and fluid enough to work with the ebb and flow both with positive and negatives, meaning that when I encounter a bad experience, I work at resolving it and not getting anxious about it. Sorry, buddy, but this peace is permanent and I know that from experience. — TimeLine

Wait, wait, wait - if you get kidnapped, taken to an abandoned warehouse, get hooked to the ceiling like the carcass of a dead animal, where you then have to watch as someone takes a jagged meat cleaver and disembowels you - you won't feel anxious? You'll be smiling and laughing and preaching to the serial killer how permanently at peace you are? Your palms won't be shaking or sweating, your brain won't be in a tangled, panic-induced hysteria?

Sorry, bish, but you're fulla shit.

Future scene of TL before she dies:

To be ill is to be sick, unhealthy. A physician may diagnose a person as having a particular form of illness, unhealthiness. So an "illness" is a particular, diagnosable form of unhealthiness. I agree that doctors are sometimes wrong in their diagnosis. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're not thinking very deeply about this. To be ill is to be sick, unhealthy - that's a tautology. My point is just that a doctor - meaning a person - just decides that these symptoms/behaviour correspond to an illness. The illness doesn't exist out there, the doctor calls it an illness. So take anxiety - a bunch of medical professionals have decided that these symptoms should classify as a mental health illness. So what? It doesn't necessarily mean that it is an illness. It's just what the doctors have decided to call it.

These classifications are man-made - they don't exist in reality. A doctor once classified me as having a pilonidal cyst - that thing is usually only treated by surgery. But I thought practically about it - I said, what is a pilonidal cyst really? It's just an infection located around the buttocks. How do you treat a bacterial infection? Antibiotics. So I went and found a doctor, and I told him, I want you to give me antibiotics for this, not surgery, otherwise I will go look for another doctor until I find one willing to treat me as I want to be treated.

So just because something is a "diagnosable" form of unhealthiness - that really means nothing. So we should treat conditions of health and conditions of unhealth the same way - if you're willing to speak about the one, you should also speak about the other. It's just a matter of categorising them - this one goes in that box, this other in the other box - but doctors could also decide to categorise them differently in the future. The categorisation is irrelevant.

I agree that a person with a decreased quality of life does not necessarily have an illness, nor would we say that this person is ill, because to say someone is ill is to imply that the person has a form of illness. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are talking nonsense, and you don't agree with what I said at all. I said on the contrary, having decreased quality of life in this circumstance is all that having an illness means. Otherwise having an illness is just a bloody stupid categorisation, that doesn't mean anything. Why do I care if someone says this is an illness and this isn't an illness?! If my doctor tells me that I laugh too much, and he thinks that's an illness, and I should take a pill for it, I'll tell him to go talk to the hand. He can show me all the medical textbooks in existence, and even if all of them say that laughing too much is an illness, I will refuse to acknowledge it as such.

Instead, we assume that if the person has an identifiable form of illness, then that person is ill. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's a silly assumption.

So for instance, if a person such as yourself has been misdiagnosed with anxiety disorder, but then medicated to the point of eliminating that person's anxiety, this would be a decrease in the quality of life for that person. The person really had normal anxiety, which is a good and fundamental aspect of living as a human being, and the medication removes this anxiety thereby lowering the person's quality of life. Therefore I belief that anxiety is necessary to enhance one's quality of life. — Metaphysician Undercover

I actually had pathological anxiety. There was no doubt about that.

The person really had normal anxiety, which is a good and fundamental aspect of living as a human being, and the medication removes this anxiety thereby lowering the person's quality of life. Therefore I belief that anxiety is necessary to enhance one's quality of life. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, if you mean that some level of anxiety is good and useful, no doubt.

You seemed to be intent on proving me "wrong", in my claim that anxiety may be good, with a positive contribution to one's quality of life, so you moved to define "anxiety" as an illness, proving me wrong through a restrictive definition. — Metaphysician Undercover

:s

You are working off the premise that the "monkey mind" is bad. Until you prove this premise, that the monkey mind is misbehaving, your insistence that I ought to tame this monkey mind, bringing it under some form of control, is just meaningless babble to my monkey mind. Sorry if this disappoints you, but that's just reality. All you are doing is insistently claiming that my way of thinking is inferior to yours, and I ought to conform mine to yours, but that's ridiculous. Who is really being childish here? — Metaphysician Undercover

>:O - wow wow wow, so until now you did not recognise even the possibility of "taming your mind", and now you finally recognize it. Well done, that is progress.

But to say more about this, it is self-evident. Having a monkey-mind is restrictive, and lowers your quality of life. You have to tire yourself out before you can sleep. I can just jump in bed even if I'm not tired, and I will sleep. I think it's clear that one is superior to the other.

Again, baseless assertions. Doubting is a condition of unknowing, so clearly one can doubt without having any knowledge, therefore without having any belief structure in place. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, having doubts isn't the same as not knowing.

This is what you've been doing all thread, taking a condition which is described as a lack of belief concerning something, then interpreting it as a belief that one has a lack of belief. It is simply my expression to you, in words, which allows you to do this. When I describe to you, in words, a condition of doubt, lack of belief, it is necessarily expressed as a belief in this, through the words. But in the real condition, not the representation of the condition, there is no such belief. — Metaphysician Undercover

LOL - what obfuscation! You would make even the Sophists blush!

Language merely reflects in words the underlying condition. Only creatures capable of belief can doubt, and not all of them can do it. It's a function that is built and predicated upon the possibility of belief. And that's precisely because there is a relationship between belief and doubt, which is what I was pointing to when I referenced Wittgenstein, which you didn't really like.

As I said, it's certainty "about" where they are. I didn't say it is certainty as to exactly where they are. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is what you said:

I am doubtful about where my keys are when I remember where I put them but I am unsure if my memory is correct. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is contradictory nonsense. You are NOT sure where they are - "I don't know where they are" isn't a place where they could be. — Agustino

There was no mention of certainty above.

TimeLine may be engaged in self-deception, that's what I was trying to draw attention to. All this blabber about going over the past, communicating it, etc. - may in truth nothing but self-deception. If that's the case, she has deceived herself that she really has overcome the problem, and the deception is very strong. And this isn't uncommon for anxious personalities to be faced by such deceptions, and to be incapable to achieve a meta-cognitive awareness of themselves. The temptation is to see themselves as invincible because only that can keep the anxiety at bay. That works, while outward circumstances are good.

The point though is that in such dire situations, everyone would be anxious and afraid. Even the Buddha would experience anxiety in his mind - he may not react to it fully, and internally may maintain some sort of equilibrium, but the mind will keep on doing its thing, which is being anxious in that situation. So anxiety (and the negative emotions) cannot be eliminated, but one can gain cognitive distance from them.

The point though, is that the so-called "anxious fantasies" are probably not caused by the anxiety at all, but by the underlying co-morbid condition. The anxiety is probably just a symptom, like fever is a symptom of some illnesses, and swelling is a symptom of some physical injuries. In some cases, the symptom itself, swelling, fever, or anxiety, becomes a problem on its own, needing to be dealt with, but in many cases these symptoms are just the body's natural reaction to the underlying illness, and the proper procedure is to identify and treat that underlying illness, not the symptoms.

Nonsense MU.

Turner, Beidel, and Stanley (1992, p 265, as cited in (15)) reviewed the literature on obsession and worry and outlined five main similarities concluding that obsession and worry (1) both occur in non-clinical and clinical populations (2), have a similar form and content in nonclinical and clinical populations, (3) occur in greater frequency and with greater perceptions of uncontrollability in clinical compared to non-clinical samples, (4) are both associated with adverse mood and (5) appear to have some shared vulnerability. Finally, although they are distinct experiences, pathological worry and obsession may share notable similarities in their underlying vulnerability and maintenance (14), and researches reported significant correlations between measures of obsessions and worry (16, 17).

Rumination is another intrusive thought that is defined as “repetitive and passive thinking about one’s symptoms of depression and the possible causes and consequences of these symptoms” (18). Rumination has been implicated in OCD and GAD (generalised anxiety disorder) (2). The associations between obsessional thoughts, worry and rumination that are related to both disorders may suggest that these cognitive symptoms derive from a common underlying mechanism. Therefore, while obsessional thoughts, preservative worry and rumination are all distinct in terms of content and form, they might be exacerbated by a common cognitive vulnerability (2).

See here for less technical bollocks and a much briefer overview. Rumination, preoccupation, obsession, frequent disturbing and uncontrollable intrusive thoughts are a cluster of incredibly common - near universal - pathological thought patterns in anxious disorders. Far from being isolable from anxiety, they are one of the core constituents and present themselves as a commonality between these disorders and their tightly correlated comorbids.

You're not thinking very deeply about this. To be ill is to be sick, unhealthy - that's a tautology. My point is just that a doctor - meaning a person - just decides that these symptoms/behaviour correspond to an illness. The illness doesn't exist out there, the doctor calls it an illness. So take anxiety - a bunch of medical professionals have decided that these symptoms should classify as a mental health illness. So what? It doesn't necessarily mean that it is an illness. It's just what the doctors have decided to call it.

These classifications are man-made - they don't exist in reality. A doctor once classified me as having a pilonidal cyst - that thing is usually only treated by surgery. But I thought practically about it - I said, what is a pilonidal cyst really? It's just an infection located around the buttocks. How do you treat a bacterial infection? Antibiotics. So I went and found a doctor, and I told him, I want you to give me antibiotics for this, not surgery, otherwise I will go look for another doctor until I find one willing to treat me as I want to be treated.

So just because something is a "diagnosable" form of unhealthiness - that really means nothing. So we should treat conditions of health and conditions of unhealth the same way - if you're willing to speak about the one, you should also speak about the other. It's just a matter of categorising them - this one goes in that box, this other in the other box - but doctors could also decide to categorise them differently in the future. The categorisation is irrelevant. — Agustino

I don't really see the relevance of all this.

I actually had pathological anxiety. There was no doubt about that. — Agustino

So you give me a long lecture above, about how any illness is nothing more than a doctor's opinion, and this doesn't mean that there is any real illness there. Then you go and contradict all that here. I really can't understand what you're trying to say.

But to say more about this, it is self-evident. Having a monkey-mind is restrictive, and lowers your quality of life. — Agustino

I disagree, and see no self-evidence. As we agreed, the monkey-mind allows one to increase one's activity. How is that in anyway restrictive? Thanks for your opinion anyway, though it is most certainly wrong.

Nonsense MU. — fdrake

You seem to be trying to change the subject, to "attention" this time. Can you not stay focused on "anxiety" itself? You keep heading off toward all these different conditions which are sometimes, but not necessarily related to anxiety. This only clouds the picture.

Rumination, preoccupation, obsession, frequent disturbing and uncontrollable intrusive thoughts are a cluster of incredibly common - near universal - pathological thought patterns in anxious disorders. Far from being isolable from anxiety, they are one of the core constituents and present themselves as a commonality between these disorders and their tightly correlated comorbids. — fdrake

You haven't addressed my post, which was to argue against the notion that these forms of thought pattern are pathological. Rumination, preoccupation, and obsession, are all common and normal thought patterns, which in an increased level may be symptoms of illness. That illness is not anxiety, because anxiety exists with these thought patterns in normal and common situations. Therefore anxiety itself is not an illness. But increased anxiety, if it is pathological, is a symptom of another illness.

You're no different from Agustino, insisting that these normal thought patterns (rumination preoccupation, and obsession), forms of thinking which are practised by many highly functional human beings, is somehow inferior, unhealthy, leading to a lower quality of life, and therefore ought to be controlled. But this premise, that these thinking patterns necessarily lead to a lower quality of life is false, and therefore the conclusion that they ought to be controlled is also false.