4 ms·

I assume there must be a finite amount of anxiety from sole cafe trips. I'm probably an above averagely anxious person, but after a few trips without disaster,

by dubeye 9mo ago

I assume there must be a finite amount of anxiety from sole cafe trips. I'm probably an above averagely anxious person, but after a few trips without disaster, it becomes a non issue.

munificent 9mo ago
> after a few trips without disaster 100%. Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy. Today, I can't remember the last time I walked into a restaurant without already having seen the inside on Google Maps, read several reviews on Yelp, and perused the menu online.
- fnord77 9mo ago
  > Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. Except when it is not. Exposure can make an autistic person's anxiety worse.
  - jomohke 9mo ago
    Interesting. Even when nothing bad happens? It has always worked for me.
  - galleywest200 9mo ago
    Pretty sure the exposure makes _everyone's_ anxiety worse at the start, that is part of the point.
    - bradlys 9mo ago
      Nah, it’s actually a studied thing. Exposure therapy can work for some subjects but it’s quite controversial due to it quickly becoming “trauma therapy”. It can easily reinforce someone’s existing beliefs and make someone actually weaker and traumatized. Happens a lot. Imagine an ugly kid asking every girl out at school, you think maybe he just needs to get a single success but it’s possible he gets completely rejected and/or the rejections are so immense that it overpowers any single acceptance. He won’t be resilient from this - it will haunt him for the rest of his life. Plus, there can be social consequences (and consequences with other exposure therapies) that will be lasting from making such a brute force strategy. Exposure therapy can make sense if it always resorts in good outcomes but that’s the issue - bad things do happen. And sometimes bad things happen more often to those who are “needing” exposure therapy.
      - munificent 9mo ago
        > Imagine an ugly kid asking every girl out at school, you think maybe he just needs to get a single success but it’s possible he gets completely rejected and/or the rejections are so immense that it overpowers any single acceptance. Just randomly doing shit that causes you stress isn't exposure therapy. It's just hazing yourself and rolling the dice as to the outcome. > Exposure therapy can make sense if it always resorts in good outcomes but that’s the issue I think you have an over-simplified notion of "good outcome" here. It's not necessarily about achieving the goal of the action, it's about seeing that the catastrophizing scenarios in your head aren't based in reality. In the example with the ugly kid, if he's afraid that asking a girl out will lead to her laughing in his face and publicly humiliating him, then even simply being rejected with compassion is enough to thwart that catastrophizing. But, of course, having him ask out every girl at the school is a terrible example of "exposure therapy". Strangers should not be used as unconsenting test subjects in one's personal therapy.
  - munificent 9mo ago
    I didn't say "exposure", I said "exposure therapy". A good therapy is designed with the patient in mind.
ghaff 9mo ago
And multiply by dinner eating. Which I have done solo many hundreds of times between business and other travel. Not something I think twice about. In fact, at conferences, I've sometimes been peopled-out by the end of the day and actively avoided going out of my way to setup group dinners unless they came together organically.

by dubeye 9mo ago

I assume there must be a finite amount of anxiety from sole cafe trips. I'm probably an above averagely anxious person, but after a few trips without disaster, it becomes a non issue.

munificent 9mo ago

> after a few trips without disaster 100%. Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy. Today, I can't remember the last time I walked into a restaurant without already having seen the inside on Google Maps, read several reviews on Yelp, and perused the menu online.

fnord77 9mo ago
> Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. Except when it is not. Exposure can make an autistic person's anxiety worse.
- jomohke 9mo ago
  Interesting. Even when nothing bad happens? It has always worked for me.
- galleywest200 9mo ago
  Pretty sure the exposure makes _everyone's_ anxiety worse at the start, that is part of the point.
  - bradlys 9mo ago
    Nah, it’s actually a studied thing. Exposure therapy can work for some subjects but it’s quite controversial due to it quickly becoming “trauma therapy”. It can easily reinforce someone’s existing beliefs and make someone actually weaker and traumatized. Happens a lot. Imagine an ugly kid asking every girl out at school, you think maybe he just needs to get a single success but it’s possible he gets completely rejected and/or the rejections are so immense that it overpowers any single acceptance. He won’t be resilient from this - it will haunt him for the rest of his life. Plus, there can be social consequences (and consequences with other exposure therapies) that will be lasting from making such a brute force strategy. Exposure therapy can make sense if it always resorts in good outcomes but that’s the issue - bad things do happen. And sometimes bad things happen more often to those who are “needing” exposure therapy.
    - munificent 9mo ago
      > Imagine an ugly kid asking every girl out at school, you think maybe he just needs to get a single success but it’s possible he gets completely rejected and/or the rejections are so immense that it overpowers any single acceptance. Just randomly doing shit that causes you stress isn't exposure therapy. It's just hazing yourself and rolling the dice as to the outcome. > Exposure therapy can make sense if it always resorts in good outcomes but that’s the issue I think you have an over-simplified notion of "good outcome" here. It's not necessarily about achieving the goal of the action, it's about seeing that the catastrophizing scenarios in your head aren't based in reality. In the example with the ugly kid, if he's afraid that asking a girl out will lead to her laughing in his face and publicly humiliating him, then even simply being rejected with compassion is enough to thwart that catastrophizing. But, of course, having him ask out every girl at the school is a terrible example of "exposure therapy". Strangers should not be used as unconsenting test subjects in one's personal therapy.
- munificent 9mo ago
  I didn't say "exposure", I said "exposure therapy". A good therapy is designed with the patient in mind.

ghaff 9mo ago

And multiply by dinner eating. Which I have done solo many hundreds of times between business and other travel. Not something I think twice about. In fact, at conferences, I've sometimes been peopled-out by the end of the day and actively avoided going out of my way to setup group dinners unless they came together organically.