This is going to be fun. I plan on writing about two things, my mental health issues and common cognitive errors. First I’ll tell you that I’m screwed up and then I’m going to give you advice on how to think. At least I’m not clueless. I see how it looks. Lack of theory of mind is a pet peeve.
I’m going through a bad stretch right now; external factors have triggered depression. Some of you are thinking, “How can that be? I just saw you and you sounded great.” Others are judging by the light-hearted way I write. Depression is sneaky, it can’t always be seen from the outside and it is often difficult to see from the inside. I didn’t feel that I was depressed, I had to figure it out by observing my feelings and actions. The way it’s manifesting itself this time is my inaction. There are things that it’s important for me to do and I can’t even begin to do them. I wake up most mornings and want to go back to sleep, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. My normal schedule is to awake at 8 AM. I have been sleeping as late as noon even when my alarm goes off at 8. Rather than move it’s easier to close my eyes and go back to sleep. I don’t want my day to start. Even when I get out of bed it isn’t easy. I find myself sitting and not moving. I will sit in the same position while trying to do something as simple as getting a drink of water. Yesterday I got a phone call. When I talk on my cell the first thing I always do is put in my ear buds. Yesterday that was too much work. I didn’t eat breakfast until 2:30 in the afternoon.
I’m not writing depressing things but I’ve skipped writing a number of days as I lacked the energy to start writing. These are all signs of depression, it’s not all about feeling sad. I started telling my therapist about what’s going on and she said, “that’s depression” immediately. I started telling Bri about it and she said the same thing just as fast. If you’ve studied it or you’ve been there it’s obvious. If not you are might be confused. Just accept that you can’t put yourself in my place but that doesn’t make it any less real. There are lots of mental conditions I can’t get, like fear of flying. I just can’t see what’s scary about it on a visceral level. But it’s common. I get that I can’t get it.
Now on to cognitive errors. One common cognitive error is not internalizing that you make cognitive errors. Study after study shows that people are not very good at multi-tasking. They also show that people are worse at multi-tasking than they think they are. This is universal. When confronted with this, people’s response is, that’s other people, I’m great at multi-tasking. No matter how many times you point out confirmation bias, people will still argue with instances where they were right, and ignore the ones where they were wrong.
The reality of implicit prejudices is well documented, yet people don’t even consider it when thinking of themselves. When you find yourself thinking that Women, Blacks, Jews, etc., disproportionally show some negative trait, you should be questioning your biases. If you don’t have strong evidence, don’t believe it. Strong evidence is not anecdotal. I’m talking about systematic studies.
Humans are imperfect thinking machines. We come to many conclusions irrationally. It is not rational to think otherwise. Most importantly keep in mind that you are human and share this trait.
Hey I finished writing before noon. I got out of bed at 8:05. I hit the snooze once. Last night I did one of the things I needed to do but kept putting off, I applied for a job working the census. I should be good at that. I’m still not doing many things I should but I’m working on it. At least I got out of bed and I’m going to eat at what is for me a normal time. Nothing wrong with me eating breakfast around noon. That’s just personal preference. Wanting to eat at noon and waiting until 2:30 is a problem.
Wise Madness 