Archive for the 'Aaron' Category
Anxious Writing
December 21st, 2006 by Aaron
For the last few weeks I have been working on a writing project and going through the usual stresses this brings. When I work to get out a first draft, I put intense pressure on myself and create a lot emotional turmoil. I wind up miserable, longing for the later stages of the process. When the first draft is done, the fear of whether it will work at all is over and I can concentrate on refining my writing into something worthwhile. Before the first draft is done, it feels like the whole thing could go to pieces at any moment.
More Flow
December 6th, 2006 by Aaron
A little more on flow, to follow up what I posted a couple weeks ago.
Finding Flow emphasizes the importance of where we place our psychic energy (of which we have limited amounts). The best way I can think to describe psychic energy is it is where we put our attention and how much energy we devote to that attention. One of the problems we encounter with social anxiety is that we invest a lot of psychic energy in examining our attitudes towards ourselves. There is so much concentration on the internal battle that we don’t have as much energy to take on the challenges of the life.
A Moment at the Store
November 30th, 2006 by Aaron
So this is about dissecting a moment of experience. A moment when social anxiety came into play and I dealt with it fairly well. A small moment to anyone watching. But a moment that reflects a lot of what I have been trying to write about here.
Read the rest of this entry »
A Different Look at Goals
November 22nd, 2006 by Aaron
I just finished Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and had a few thoughts about it in regards to social anxiety. For this post, I’m interested in how the book suggests that satisfaction with life comes from a well balanced combination of goals, challenges and successes.
If you have no goals, or set easily achieved goals, you’ll experience no sense of challenge and therefore find your life stagnating. But if you set impossibly high goals you’ll find that you feel worse and worse about yourself as you continually fail to meet them.
Goals Become Burdens
November 9th, 2006 by Aaron
I have a problem wherein I often turn positive goals into burdens that I wind up resenting. And so the things I most want to do become the things I have the most trouble with.
It’s because I get hooked into worrying about what I should be doing. If I want to have a normal life, if I want to get myself on track, if I want to make myself over into something acceptable, I should be doing this, that and the other (my goals, in other words). Each moment I am not I am slipping farther behind.
How I Progress
November 2nd, 2006 by Aaron
Triggered by my last post, and Ryan’s insightful comment to it, I’ve remembered a few tricks that have really helped me in the past but that I seem to have lost touch with lately.
The first is a mantra: slow and steady progress.
It’s Only Life
October 25th, 2006 by Aaron
Lately, I have been trying to work at using phrase reminders when my anxiety flairs up. But I find it is a little at odds with what I have always seen as my natural disposition.
I have been a cynic for as a long as I can remember. I’m willing to concede that I am the disappointed romantic breed of cynic. But the cynicism runs deep and I have drawn from it often.
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