I'm one of those "don't care what other people think" people, though I'm self-aware enough to realize that's just posturing, or, more specifically, a strategy for dealing with social anxiety. I recently took a deep dive into Appraisal Theory (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Craig-Smith-22/publication/232438867_Emotion_and_Adaptation/links/00463536ae7d206717000000/Emotion-and-Adaptation.pdf) as a means to inform emotional states for an affective computing model, and one thing that struck me about anxiety is that it seems to be a composite of fear and uncertainty. Each individual then has strategies to deal with this state, such as boldly proclaiming a deficit of fucks, or avoiding engaging with the situation in such a way that the negative, feared result may come to pass. I have two daughters and one son that suffer from SAD/GAD, but for different reasons. One is autistic, and as she reached adolescence (along with her peers) her struggles with social cues and behavior led to negative social reactions which she couldn't quite understand, she had negative feedback but no way to process it into corrective strategies. This added SAD to her Autism and she lost several years of effective schooling.
As to the prevalence of SAD in our society, I have my own crazy theories: people are more distant, distracted, socially isolated, we are much more suspicious of the person standing next to us in line, especially when they wear one of these shirts supporting those people, and then we rush home or on to our phones to find people we can agree with on "social" media. We might not be murdering each other as much, but the #1 cause of murder is social interaction, and the less of that we have the less we're likely to get angry and pop-off. But this isn't a sudden occurrence that we can blame on the pandemic, though that didn't help. You can actually look back and see it in the rise of zombie media. In our collective conscience, those crowds out there are all just zombies, and Post-Apocalytic zombie stories are simply acting out our fantasies of finding our little group of survivors to fight against the horde together. That's the biggest pandemic of our time, isolation.
I immediately thought of how much pain folks who are faced with homelessness and forced to beg for survival.
They are definitely not living their values and they’re certainly not getting a whole lot of social approval, I can’t imagine how much persistent and latent anxiety they’re dealing with moment to moment. They’re trapped in a loop that requires serious interventions.
Great piece! Thanks Todd!
I'm one of those "don't care what other people think" people, though I'm self-aware enough to realize that's just posturing, or, more specifically, a strategy for dealing with social anxiety. I recently took a deep dive into Appraisal Theory (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Craig-Smith-22/publication/232438867_Emotion_and_Adaptation/links/00463536ae7d206717000000/Emotion-and-Adaptation.pdf) as a means to inform emotional states for an affective computing model, and one thing that struck me about anxiety is that it seems to be a composite of fear and uncertainty. Each individual then has strategies to deal with this state, such as boldly proclaiming a deficit of fucks, or avoiding engaging with the situation in such a way that the negative, feared result may come to pass. I have two daughters and one son that suffer from SAD/GAD, but for different reasons. One is autistic, and as she reached adolescence (along with her peers) her struggles with social cues and behavior led to negative social reactions which she couldn't quite understand, she had negative feedback but no way to process it into corrective strategies. This added SAD to her Autism and she lost several years of effective schooling.
As to the prevalence of SAD in our society, I have my own crazy theories: people are more distant, distracted, socially isolated, we are much more suspicious of the person standing next to us in line, especially when they wear one of these shirts supporting those people, and then we rush home or on to our phones to find people we can agree with on "social" media. We might not be murdering each other as much, but the #1 cause of murder is social interaction, and the less of that we have the less we're likely to get angry and pop-off. But this isn't a sudden occurrence that we can blame on the pandemic, though that didn't help. You can actually look back and see it in the rise of zombie media. In our collective conscience, those crowds out there are all just zombies, and Post-Apocalytic zombie stories are simply acting out our fantasies of finding our little group of survivors to fight against the horde together. That's the biggest pandemic of our time, isolation.
I’m so sorry your daughter is suffering from it. If I can help in any way let me know.
Love your theories on the rise. And agree with almost all of them. And I’m so glad you went beyond the screens caused it approach.
nother great piece.
I immediately thought of how much pain folks who are faced with homelessness and forced to beg for survival.
They are definitely not living their values and they’re certainly not getting a whole lot of social approval, I can’t imagine how much persistent and latent anxiety they’re dealing with moment to moment. They’re trapped in a loop that requires serious interventions.
thanks! and yes, nothing but spit in their face and a boot on their hands. an endless feedback loop to starve them of motivation.