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>"Like, sure, I can give you a list of things I think you should do, but unless it comes from you you're never going to actual do it in the long term. We've see
by mrjangles 5y ago
>"Like, sure, I can give you a list of things I think you should do, but unless it comes from you you're never going to actual do it in the long term. We've seen that already. And, like, it's not my job worrying about whether or not you're doing what you're supposed to. It's exhausting having to think about it"
God this brought back some memories because I have had to say the exact same thing to someone, and the memory was just infuriating to think about, and I totally understand how Romy felt saying that. Then as I continued to read what they wrote I realized this person is indeed identical in just about every way (except not the same person).
The person I knew eventually cleaned up their act a bit, and what it came down to was that they were completely obsessed with themselves. A strange kind of narcissism (I know it is trite to say that, but in this case I'll use that word because it isn't obvious how). These problems he is having - extreme fear of failure, essentially - can easily be fixed.
Notice when you read this that he spends paragraphs and paragraphs going on about how he feels. When he talks about how he is letting everyone down, it is never about how he is letting everyone down or how they feel, it is how it makes him sad that they are sad. How stressed he is. How he isn't a quitter. Notice how when he talks about leaving emails unanswered for weeks the first thing on his mind is how sad it makes him to make life difficult for everyone even though he could simply answer the email. It isn't how hard it must be for them, it is how sad it makes him that things are difficult for them.
Now there is nothing wrong with worrying about your own feelings, but this kind of self destructive event which he describes came about solely because he was taking himself too seriously. In fact, he was completely and totally obsessed with himself above all else which lead to a complete and total neglect of everyone and everything he was responsible for. If anyone you know ever ends up this paralyzed from fear of failure just try to remind them to stop taking themselves so seriously and try worrying about something other than themselves for once.
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- kamranjon 5y agoI think narcissism is an incredibly inaccurate description, and I think writing people off as narcissistic tends to be a crutch people lean on when they are emotionally incapable of empathy themselves. The author comes to similar revelations in the post: “My perspective shifts. I realize how incredibly self centered I’ve been. How irrational it is to be worrying about how everyone else perceives my decisions and apparent failures.” Reflection can take time and it’s often a natural part of growth. I think this post is more about burnout. Your over-analysis of their “self destructive event” comes to the wrong conclusion. Not responding to emails when you are completely burnt out has nothing to do with your obsession with yourself. When you’re completely burnt out you go into self preservation mode and while that might appear like self obsession, that is a symptom of burnout, not the cause.
- srcreigh 5y agoYou said what I wanted to say better than I could. Thanks. I also want to add, to the GP, it's inappropriate and insensitive to say that the authors problem is easily fixed. And even assuming the authors main problem is narcissism, which I doubt, your methods would be laughably ineffective.
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- ohazi 5y agoCompletely agree. Narcissistic personality disorder is a thing, but it's almost the polar opposite of what GP described. It wouldn't even occur to a narcissist that they're making things difficult for someone else. If you have a voice in your head telling you that you should feel guilty about all the ways in which you're making things hard for others... sure you might have an anxiety or a burnout problem, but you clearly have empathy.
- mrjangles 5y agoI didn't say it was the psychiatric disorder NDP. I meant it in the common usage of the word, not the academic one. And my whole point was that it is indeed surprising because at first glance it seems to be the exact opposite - and this is what can make issues like this so hard to deal with when they pop up.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Internet Psychiatric Diagnosis (IPD) is particularly to be avoided. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
- kamranjon 5y agoDid this post get de-listed from the front page? I went back a number of pages and can't find it at all.
- dang 5y agoInadvertently, yes, because of a bug. We put it in the second-chance pool* when it was 3 days old, which was pushing the limit of how old a story can be and still get ranked on HN's front pages. Most likely it got taken out of that list when I restarted the server last night. Sorry! This is a technical limitation which hopefully we'll be able to relax before too long. * https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- dewski 5y agoSame. I bookmarked to read it, came back hours later, and couldn't find it unless searching for it.
- sjansen 5y agoMy perspective on the piece is completely different, and I think you're being unfair. Clearly your experience was painful, and I can understand why you hear echos in the author's essay, but I suspect that's more likely a reflection of how raw the experience still is for you than it is proof of the author's narcissism. From my own experience, there is significant overlap between burnout and depression. The root causes are different, but the symptoms are the same. The echos I hear are based on having experienced both. If you have never experienced either, it's hard to understand how completely they alter personality and decision making. Seemingly mundane problems become insurmountable. Trivial items become weirdly important, and critical items become... not quite ignorable, but hard to prioritize. It's very hard to behave reasonably when you feel like you're lost and drowning. Instead of making simple and obvious decisions, I found myself making completely irrational decisions. Looking back a couple decades later, some of my decisions were bafflingly silly. Others were tragic. In all cases, my decisions were based on overwhelming emotion not logic, experience, or my personal priorities. Perhaps you've gone two or three days without sleeping, and noticed yourself behaving like you were drunk but tired. Now take away the loss of coordination, increase the loss of executive control, and let it sneak up on you over months or years. That's the best I can describe the experience to anyone that hasn't had it themselves. I found the author's essay beautiful, cathartic, and helpful. It helped me to empathize with what he'd experienced, and reminded me how complex we each are as human beings. It gave me new things to think about as I consider my own career path and life. And it was interesting seeing the last two years of COVID from a European's perspective compared to my midwestern American perspective. In other words, from my perspective the essay was an example of humility and generosity, and I'm grateful for it. If we were all so willing to examine and share our inner experiences, perhaps the world would be a slightly easier place to live.
- mrjangles 5y agoWell I agree that the piece was beautifully written. All I can say is that the person I knew said that the number one thing they did to help fix the problem was, that whenever they started feeling stressed and overwhelmed, they would say to themselves "What is happening right now isn't about you". Your take makes a lot of sense to me too. Perhaps they are completely different things that we are describing. Perhaps they are the same thing seen from a different perspective.