Why it’s so hard to read a book right now, explained by a neuroscientist

Tags

Top Highlights

• Fear is about something that is predictable that you can understand. You know what it is, you know when it starts, you know when it ends. It’s contained.

• pathological anxiety. You can get into all sorts of difficult questions when you start asking what is pathological, but broadly speaking: That’s when it gets to the point where you’re unable to do things that you would normally do, more frequently than you would like. Probably the best way to describe it is that a person recognizes in themselves that their anxiety is making them have difficulty concentrating, have difficulty sleeping, and so on and so forth. Then it shifts from being something that is adaptive, normal, and helpful into something that is a bit more pathological.

• in general, anxiety is a normal, adaptive, helpful thing.

• Animal researchers are good at operational definitions because they can control the environment really well, and they make a definition of anxiety which I think is quite useful. It’s a distinction between fear and anxiety, which are both responses to negative things.

• Anxiety is about uncertainty. There’s no beginning or end. You can’t see it. There’s no spatial or temporal constraint.

• anxiety is about uncertainty. If you can’t see something, you don’t know when it’s going to end, you don’t know enough about it, you just show a long duration response.

• So much about recovering from anxiety and trying to avoid the feeling of anxiety is about trying to resolve that uncertainty.

• So why are people having difficulty concentrating? That’s part of the explanation: They’re trying to resolve an uncertainty that is unresolvable.

• Going back to the idea that anxiety is an adaptive function, anxiety promotes the ability to detect salient information. When you’re feeling anxious, you’re more primed to notice that movement in the corner, which is not an impairment. It’s a facilitation. That’s because anxiety is this adaptive state that promotes harm avoidance.

• So much about recovering from anxiety and trying to avoid the feeling of anxiety is about trying to resolve that uncertainty.

• anxiety is about uncertainty. If you can’t see something, you don’t know when it’s going to end, you don’t know enough about it, you just show a long duration response.

• Anxiety is about uncertainty. There’s no beginning or end. You can’t see it. There’s no spatial or temporal constraint.

• Fear is about something that is predictable that you can understand. You know what it is, you know when it starts, you know when it ends. It’s contained.

• Animal researchers are good at operational definitions because they can control the environment really well, and they make a definition of anxiety which I think is quite useful. It’s a distinction between fear and anxiety, which are both responses to negative things.

• in general, anxiety is a normal, adaptive, helpful thing.

• pathological anxiety. You can get into all sorts of difficult questions when you start asking what is pathological, but broadly speaking: That’s when it gets to the point where you’re unable to do things that you would normally do, more frequently than you would like. Probably the best way to describe it is that a person recognizes in themselves that their anxiety is making them have difficulty concentrating, have difficulty sleeping, and so on and so forth. Then it shifts from being something that is adaptive, normal, and helpful into something that is a bit more pathological.