Do you get anxiety and what would you describe it as?

Post Reply New Topic

I get anxious whenever I am in the same room as any other person unless I am drunk or on drugs or they are my boyfriend. Being not-anxious around my boyfriend feels so unusual to me that I have trouble believing he is actually a separate person and not a kind of male version of me. He is one in a zillion trillion

ursaminor, I find your posts poetic. I enjoy them. Do you like Wittgenstein?

I do not understand.
My posts are not poetry.
How are they poetic?

Also, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a philosopher.

I have a few different kinds of anxiety. One kind is kind of like a performance anxiety, when I'm having a conversation with people. I'll struggle to put the thoughts I'm experiencing in my head into words and will often stutter, thereby not communicating effectively. I'll worry when I'm jumbling my words that I sound unintelligible and then become insecure - it's like my head is weighed down and my brain feels heavy. It takes more energy to process things and I become more timid when this happens.

Another type of anxiety I get is when I'm alone, and reflecting on different things that have happened during the day. I'll hyper focus on a few interactions and run over them multiple times in my head, feeling more and more insecure each time it happens because I tend to focus on the flaws of an interaction. I'll also worry about other things, like if I hear other people talking about me in a negative light, I will drill over that one negative statement until it tears me apart. I know I shouldn't do this but it's what I've unfortunately trained my brain to do. It sometimes results in panic attacks, especially when I'm trying to sleep at night.

Keep in mind that I have really bad anxiety. It doesn't keep me from living but I do need a lot of extra time to recover from daily interaction (that may be part of having AS as well) and I think it goes along with a form of OCD that I have. I think it makes me exhausted all the time, and I've recognized that it prevents me from accomplishing as much as I'm capable of doing, and from fully living a rewarding life, which is why I've been seeking out treatment. I don't want you to use my instance as a guideline for what all anxiety is, but as one example of how anxiety can manifest in an individual.

I like your posts because they are very simple and efficient.

Wittgenstein wrote in a very simple and efficient way, especially in the Tractatus.

Also, in some kinds of poetry, language is used in a simple and efficiemt way - in Haiku, for example.

That is why I compared your writing to Wittgenstein's and and to poetry.

LOL - ursaminor, you're a poet and you don't know it, that is beautiful, as is Wittgenstein.

I did my PhD research on Wittgenstein's approach to understanding understanding, but oddly none of my NT supervisors had the faintest idea what I was on about, when it seems so clear to me.

Me too! I did my PhD on Moore's Paradox in the end and got all technical over Assertion Theory but the real heart of it for me was Wittgenstein's work on the self and the world, solipsism and the first-person / third-person distinction.I have always been extremely confused and fascinated by the boundary between me and others and I have always felt that there is a metaphyical difference between myself (or anyone from their own point of view) and the rest of the world.

I remember the moment when I read Wittgenstein on this topic. Suddenly I was not alone in my take on the world ...

Moore's Paradox (of belief, not the analysis one) signifies to me that from on'es own point of view, beleiving something is the same as it being true. The world in my head IS the world in reality. Wittgenstein writes about Moore's Paradox in the Investigations and he I immediately saw that this topic was a fundamental link and similarity between his earlier and later work (of course!!). I wanted to base my PhD around that - the continuity and centrality of this incredible topic that blew my mind apart.

I showed my supervisor (NT) the paragraph in the Investigations where W explicitly says that Moore's paradox relates to his earlier work (just in case we are in any doubt he even puts "Solipsism" in brackets ... I wish I could give you the page ref but I gave away all my books because I don't like clutter). My supervisor said to me: "You have no evidence for this continuity". I was shocked and I read him the paragraph again in case he had missed somthing. To this he replied: "That paragraph? It's pointless writing about that paragraph. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS IT!"

So I ended up spending 3 yearsdoing the equivalent of stamp-collecting in the field of assertion theory. Then when I had my viva, the external examiner said, "All this technical stuff is good and I'm going to pass you, but can you tell me what it is that really gets you going about this topic?" I said: "The way it relates to the Tractarian stuff about solipsism" and he said, "I'm glad you said that because I think so too".

If only I hadn't listened to my supervisor!! !

Clik here for a thing of great beauty!