[HN Gopher] Ambition as an anxiety disorder
___________________________________________________________________
Ambition as an anxiety disorder
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-07-29 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (moontower.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (moontower.substack.com)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I don't really agree with the premise here. Some of this boils
| down to defining terms. What is anxiety and what is ambition?
|
| But on a high level, I'd argue anxiety and ambition are
| orthogonal.
|
| You can have ambition without having unhealthy levels of anxiety
| about it. Certainly not to the point of a disorder.
|
| Anxiety can push people to want to succeed. But is that the same
| as "ambition"?
|
| Where this falls apart is the article implies that medication for
| anxiety disorders is harmful to humanity as a whole.
|
| I have pretty severe anxiety and none of it helps me. It cripples
| me. There are things I want to accomplish in my life. I'm trying
| pretty hard for them, but managing a severe mental illness makes
| progress towards those goals slow.
|
| Somehow I manage to wake up every day and believe today can be
| better than yesterday. If not today, then there's always
| tomorrow. This never makes me anxious, this brings me relief.
| californical wrote:
| Mental health is tricky because its affects can be so complex
| depending on factors like personality, genetics, or even other
| mental health conditions. Something that fuels one person's
| drive could incapacitate another, under neither of their own
| doing.
|
| I think people can have strategies for turning challenges and
| disabilities into assets, but again it takes the right set of
| circumstances for that individual. It takes strength to know
| when your specific circumstances aren't lining up, and how to
| reach out for help (community, therapy, medication). And for
| some people, that condition may switch someday to enabling
| success rather than hindering.
|
| But to the point of the linked article, it talks about how
| maybe not _needing_ to strive for overwhelming success in the
| first place leads to better overall life. How anxiety likely
| can drive you either up or down, but contentness is maybe in
| the middle somewhere.
|
| I've had this thought before. Robert Herjavec has mentioned on
| Shark Tank how he "sleeps 4 hours a night because he's always
| working"... maybe that's just how he wants to be seen, but why
| does he even feel the need to project that image? He must have
| absurd anxiety, because if not, he would've slowed down and
| been happy with what he has ages ago.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > He must have absurd anxiety, because if not, he would've
| slowed down and been happy with what he has ages ago.
|
| Maybe ambition can create an anxiety if its own. Those who
| are at the top of their game in the corporate world, in
| athletics, the arts and entertainment, etc. can be subjected
| to hyper-competitive environments where they feel the need to
| continuously deliver, both extrinsically and intrinsically.
| Maybe they didn't "have anxiety" prior to it, but they had
| the personality to thrive within the same sort of uncertain
| stressful situations.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I want to poke at one thing you said, because it's relevant
| to how I see the article. :)
|
| > He must have absurd anxiety...
|
| If the author of the article had said this, I would read it
| as : "The only way I imagine behaving like he does is to have
| absurd anxiety."
|
| I think this is the trap the article falls into.
|
| Many times we lack the information or frame of reference to
| understand the motivations of other people. When that
| happens, we tend to use our own experience and motivations
| instead.
|
| Something I think about a lot when reading these articles
| because one of the "benefits" of being bipolar is having a
| very large frame of reference in regards to patterns of
| thought and emotional extremes.
| fossuser wrote:
| I've seen this go both ways.
|
| The other outcome is that people are so terrified of trying
| anything (maybe because of fear of failure, but not always) that
| they never do anything.
| civilized wrote:
| As a reasonably successful person I readily admit to this.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This is good insight.
|
| My limit3d understanding of the world showed me a certain close
| friend as an extremely anxious, borderline narcissist person.
|
| This person has over the years, progressed to a highly sucessful
| career, broadly admired by peers. But having known the person for
| years I know whata under the hood and the constant calls let me
| know about all the deep insecurities that are unfathomable to me.
|
| This person has an attention to detail and focus that I didnt
| think humanly possible. He will replay every conversation from
| many angles, looking for clues or things to attach insecurities
| too.
|
| This person would be a formidable spymaster for any king. Its
| incredible how much information iteration a person can do with
| the right incentive (anxiety)
|
| Here is the rub. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I
| used to see as a flawed, broken individual, I've come to see as a
| wonderful example of how nature has a purpose.
|
| You may need to keep your distance from these human
| steamrollerss, dont get in their path! but dont forget to
| appreciate the machinery at work. And of course, if there's a
| path that needs carving..
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| If it was really the case then an anxious person should be able
| to talk themselves out of anxiety.
|
| Aiming for a goal is great, but that's kinda not ambitious
| enough. Real ambition is reaching that goal with minimum effort
| and minimum headaches (or anxiety).
|
| By self-inflicting headaches and anxiety on the very get go , you
| are also automatically waiving the best and pretty much sole
| optimal outcome. Not very ambitious of you, isn't it?
|
| I don't know if this can help anybody.
|
| I drew inspiration from Bill Gates quote : "I will always pick a
| lazy person to do some hard task because they'll find the least
| resource intensive way of doing it" something like that, the gist
| was anyway.
| daenz wrote:
| War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Ambition
| is a disorder.
|
| Fits right in.
| Comevius wrote:
| This is just fetishization of a disorder's side effect, a sort of
| blindness not unlike sociopathic tendencies, known to drive
| people to the top. There is a price to be paid for this, and it's
| the inability to see the bigger picture. The inability to see the
| world holistically. The inability to see the forest. It creates
| shallow, surfacy social dynamics devoid of meaning. In our case
| it created one devoid of a future too. One can thrive in a sick
| world with sickness, but the world can't thrive without us
| finding a way to heal each other.
|
| All success is socially motivated, but there is a limit to how
| satisfying monetary success alone can be. Our brain is a social
| supercomputer that will always find this arrangement lacking,
| particularly because it falls short of the potential of our
| communal, often self-sacrificial nature, which are evolutionary
| adaptations and the key for our collective, long-term survival.
| There is a reason we are drawn to participating in something
| bigger than our fickle, unreliable, temporary selves.
| Understanding our lack of potential individually as opposed to
| communaly is the key to the future. It's also what enlightenment
| is, it's nudging this inconvenient truth in our brain into our
| consciousness, as we are normally protected from realizing how
| artificial and limited our selves are.
| sosodev wrote:
| I believe that my success can largely be attributed to deep
| anxiety. I have CPTSD from many terrible years of childhood
| trauma. As a teenager I struggled with intense depression and
| hopelessness. Then one day it was like something snapped. I
| suddenly had a fierce, insatiable drive the lift myself out of
| the shit situation I was in. I graduated high school a few months
| later and immediately left home.
|
| Five years later I received my bachelors degree in Computer
| Science. Now two years after graduation I'm making $300k a year,
| I'm married, I own a home, and I live thousands of miles away
| from my abusers yet I still struggle with anxiety and I still
| feel that drive to be more successful.
|
| I want nothing more than to be able to say that I broke a multi-
| generation chain of abuse. That I was strong enough to do the
| thing my abusers couldn't.
| elil17 wrote:
| Have you heard of post traumatic growth theory? Curious to know
| if this idea resonates with you.
|
| https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/11/growth-trauma
| sosodev wrote:
| I hadn't heard of it. Interesting stuff. I certainly feel
| like I experienced dramatic personal growth after leaving
| home with much of it in the categories that link mentions.
| [deleted]
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Maybe your success, and all the repliers', is simply a matter
| of getting life served on a silver plate e.g. everybody going
| to university comp science, good backgrounds, getting very good
| jobs. Of course you can't live with that privilege and have to
| build a story of being the victim of society.
| sosodev wrote:
| What? I had very little growing up. When I left home I had
| one suitcase, a small box, and nothing else. My abusers never
| gave me anything. I didn't go straight to university but was
| instead a transfer student from community college.
|
| Sorry to burst your bubble but I was most certainly a victim
| of circumstance. I can assure you that as a child I did not
| put myself in that situation.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I have taught high school English for quite a while. I've
| taught in poor rural, mixed-income urban and wealthy suburban
| districts. CPTSD is not a casual thing that comes about due
| to typical childhood difficulties, and wealthy parents can
| plow a bunch of resources into raising their kids while
| simultaneously damaging them in lifelong ways.
| josh2600 wrote:
| I think a lot of success in life is actually turning trauma
| into a motivating force. That doesn't really help to resolve
| the trauma, but it does create an illusion of safety you can
| buy into, often helping to provide a space for processing.
|
| I struggle with just how much traumatic processing is
| worthwhile. Like if you accept that everyone in life was always
| doing the best that they could in the moments in which they
| hurt you or themselves, or you replay the traumatic events and
| see them through your adult eyes, or if you try to
| recontextualize them some other way, at what point do you just
| put down the trauma and live?
|
| Trauma comes in waves. It never really goes away as far as I
| can tell, you just develop a new relationship to it.
|
| I am reminded continually of Dune.
|
| "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-
| death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I
| will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has
| gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the
| fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
|
| -- Frank Herbert, Dune
|
| I am continually reminded that there are deities in the South
| Eastern religions which have angry forms when they are unfed
| and benevolent forms when they are fed. The same deity can be a
| source of fear or a source of power depending on your
| relationship to it.
|
| A concept I've thought a lot about recently is, instead of
| turning away from anger and fear, feeding my anger and fear
| until they are no longer angry gods but instead, benevolent
| beings who help me to contextualize my reality. I have found it
| is possible, at least for me, to do this without any outward
| expression of fear or anger, only inner acceptance that those
| feelings are real, valid, and not something that serves me at
| this time.
|
| I'm not sure if these ramblings are helpful, but I hope you
| find peace on your journey, at least if that's what you're
| looking for <3.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > A concept I've thought a lot about recently is, instead of
| turning away from anger and fear, feeding my anger and fear
|
| Some schools of psychological thought say that anger is
| rarely a primary emotion. It's often a cloak for fear.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| _edit_ you claim $200k per year at a startup, exactly one year
| ago.. you got a 33 percent raise to $300k per year now in one
| year.. while working on old games in java too.. hard to
| believe, really...
| sosodev wrote:
| I work as a Site Reliability Engineer. I changed jobs not
| long ago. The Java game is just a hobby.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Half of that, or more, is likely stock options. It's not
| unlikely or even particularly remarkable for a large startup
| to have doubled its valuation since a stock compensation plan
| started.
| sosodev wrote:
| It's $200k base and $100k stock. Indeed at a large startup.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Same here, pretty horrible childhood by all accounts.
|
| Aged 20 I decided I was no longer going to let my life path be
| dictated by anybody else. For better or worse if it all went
| sideways I would need full control.
|
| Starting a business, being self employed and carving my destiny
| was the solution to that problem - and I forced it to happen
| when the odds were not great.
|
| No University degree, no network of wealthy or experienced
| business minded friends, no business acumen, nothing...just a
| shed in a garden to work from, a friend who could code much
| better than I could and the desire to be something other than
| what I was.
|
| There was a madness within me that I channeled in to working my
| fucking brains out. I networked my arse off, told everybody I
| met we could solve their software problems - and the rest is
| history.
|
| Learning through making mistakes is inefficient and foolhardy
| but as far as my monkey brain was concerned there was no
| alternative. Going back to the kid that I was before I was 20
| was a fate worse than death.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> I want nothing more than to be able to say that I broke a
| multi-generation chain of abuse. That I was strong enough to do
| the thing my abusers couldn't.
|
| STOP. If you are stopping a generational chain, that implies
| you have, or intend to have kids. Until you resolve your trauma
| you are extremely likely to over compensate and inflict
| something else on your kids. Another possibility is that your
| kids end up fearing the same thing you fear because they learn
| to be "over cautious" from you.
|
| At least you're self aware, so that's a good start. But you
| really don't know how that shit is affecting you - if you did,
| some CBT would go a long way.
|
| Good luck.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| This is not directed at you specifically, but I am close to
| someone with CPTSD and they have found Internal Family Systems
| therapy to be very helpful. Just sharing a keyword in case
| folks are looking.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Thank you, you're the second person to mention that and it's
| spurring me on to take a closer look.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Of course. No problem.
|
| If I'm completely honest - some of the ideas came across a
| touch 'woo woo' at first (which, is probably a "part" as
| they say), but I believe the core concepts are very useful.
| I don't have CPTSD, am I still happier for recognizing some
| particular patterns in my thinking/acting/motivations.
|
| Good luck!
| haswell wrote:
| I have a similar story, and I'm a bit further along in my
| career.
|
| - CPTSD [X]
|
| - Ongoing struggles with depression [X]
|
| - Many manifestations of deep anxiety that permeate my daily
| life [X]
|
| - Unstoppable drive to get myself out of my situation [X]
|
| - Self taught developer and later product manager making SV
| salary [X]
|
| - Still feeling that drive to be more successful? [ ]
|
| I'm in my mid 30s now, and 3 months into a self-funded
| sabbatical due to severe burnout. I do think my upbringing
| helped fuel my professional success, but at least for me, it
| was not sustainable.
|
| I'm now exploring philosophy and consciousness as a way to
| change myself, since external things stopped working
| eventually.
|
| Obviously I'm just a single anecdote, but if there's one thing
| I'd tell my younger self it'd be to face my demons head-on
| sooner, and be careful about relying too much on work as a way
| to channel my anxiety.
|
| The transition to nothingness in my sabbatical was rough at
| first, but has also been transformative.
|
| I do wonder if someone giving me advice sooner would have
| helped me avoid the burnout, or if I just had to experience it
| to really understand.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I'm very similar situations as all of you. However I'm
| farther behind. The drive to get out of this situation. This
| drive growing more and more only began in my mid 30s. I'm
| still looking for my first career dev job while grinding out
| leetcode.
|
| Your advice to your younger self is spot on. I still have to
| tell myself that sometimes as I'm not out of the woods yet.
|
| Then posts like this give me a second of pure self pity like
| I'm too far behind (I know I'm not).
|
| Thanks for your post.
| bmer wrote:
| I am glad that your story worked out as it did.
|
| For others who might be coming across it, let me provide my
| story, which pans out very differently.
|
| I was recently diagnosed with CPTSD (but it took a long time
| for doctors to reach that conclusion), although the anxiety was
| known for a long time.
|
| Here's how it began: I was close to the end of a prestigious
| university program (3 years done out of 4) when I "snapped". I
| suddenly ran out of energy. I could no longer bring myself to
| care to go to class, and I found great comfort in running away
| from things. This was the beginning of what would eventually
| become deeply ingrained avoidant behaviour.
|
| My ambition no longer matched up with the energy I had in my
| body. It no longer matched up with my ability to tolerate
| things. I could no longer live up to my ambitions, my dreams,
| my desires, my goals.
|
| I broke, and I was suicidal for a long time (on and off for 10
| years).
|
| I am slowly working my way out of my issues now. I am learning
| how to deal with deep seated anxiety as a way _to give me more
| energy_ so that I can achieve my goals. One of my doctors
| mentioned something crucial: anxiety _saps_ energy. Having an
| overactive amygdala is harmful, because when you are having a
| panic attack, your body floods with energy (in order to execute
| "fight or flight"), but very briefly. The cost of this flood of
| energy is a massive drop in energy that lasts longer than the
| flood did. This is a possible explantion (amongst others)
| behind my perpetual low energy.
|
| For me, part of the process of dealing with anxiety (amongst
| others, like mindfulness and self-kindness) is learning how to
| achieve my ambitions by making realistic goals, and learning
| how to feel pleasure in "small", consistent achievements (the
| depressed brain is excellent at making every achievement seem
| worthless). Feeling pleasure in these small achievements is
| important in order to fuel the necessary consistency of said
| achievements.
|
| tl;dr: in my experience, anxiety is unlikely to be a driver of
| achievement, and therefore unlikely to be a cause of
| _productive_ ambition.
| haswell wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your story as well. I mentioned my version
| of this in a sibling comment, and seem to have experienced
| some aspects of both experiences, but it took longer for me
| to snap.
|
| Recovery has been gradual, and I have much work to do, but
| one thing that I've found really helpful is directly
| examining what it means to be conscious. "Waking up" by Sam
| Harris was the start of a rabbit hole for me.
|
| This exploration gave me tools to reframe certain experiences
| as "the contents of consciousness" and helped me start to
| step outside outside of myself for the first time in my life.
|
| It's no silver bullet, and YMMV, but I've found it incredibly
| helpful.
| elil17 wrote:
| I believe this will a key question for humanity to answer in
| order to better ourselves: why do seemingly similar psychological
| phenomena seem to cause some people to become dysfunctional while
| causing others to become super successful?
|
| I think anxiety/ambition is a great example. It seems like it
| shows up in other places too. For example, people with bipolar
| disorder seem to make great artists. People with dyslexia seem to
| be better at certain non-reading visual tasks (such as recognize
| Escher-like "impossible" images) [1].
|
| We could have the "gain" of these phenomena without the "pain,"
| the world could be much better off. Obviously some important
| improvements could be made by changing how society
| treats/supports people we view as having disorders, but that's
| far from a silver bullet. More research into psychology,
| psychiatry, and neurology is needed.
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-advantages-
| of...
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Well, for every creative and productive bipolar person, there
| are hundreds or thousands that aren't. We don't hear about the
| non-successful ones. They are quietly hidden away and people
| don't talk about them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why do seemingly similar psychological phenomena seem to
| cause some people to become dysfunctional while causing others
| to become super successful?_
|
| Why do most T cells not make it out of the thymus?
|
| Random tweaks are unlikely to be useful. Occasionally they are.
| Selection with random variation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I always think of the example of a World War II military hiring
| colorblind people to analyze photos because they could see past
| camouflage.
| hinkley wrote:
| After watching many dog interactions at the dog park, it is my
| slightly informed opinion that what we call 'herding instinct' is
| in fact Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
|
| Especially for Corgis. Some get so visibly agitated by the chaos
| of a dog park that they act out and the owners stop bringing them
| after a couple of bad experiences.
| teach wrote:
| It's funny, I've always joked that I never got a PhD because I
| didn't have anything to prove to anyone.
| hinkley wrote:
| Meanwhile I successfully broke a gaming addiction by realizing
| that if I stopped fucking around I could achieve things that
| people other than fellow gamers would understand.
|
| Little did I know that aside from compensation, nobody knows
| what the fuck software developers are doing all day, and
| whether they've done something big or something trivial.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So much of computer work is neither scientific nor
| engineering. Perhaps they should rename the degree to
| Software Development, to be true to industry expectations.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| And most barely even know about the compensation...
| hinkley wrote:
| These days I talk about my hobbies. People seem to
| understand those, and sometimes I understand software
| better because of them. Which is why I routinely dive into
| Work Life Balance convos here with a 'get a life' speech.
| arcen wrote:
| Really liked reading through the article but I am not sure the
| Churchill and Hitler analogy really works, both are equally bad
| just that the west doesn't really care about Churchill's
| atrocities as much...
| flyinglizard wrote:
| No traumas here. Just the feeling that either I'm growing or I'm
| dying. It's like those animations where the hero runs on a bridge
| which is collapsing right behind him. It comes with a lot of self
| inflicted guilt for doing things other than the productive kind.
| I am miserable on weekends. It's not very balanced and I don't
| like it, but on the other hand I wouldn't want to moderate it and
| lose the drive. Balancing all of this is always difficult; kind
| of finding your own Lagrange point, and likewise energy intensive
| to remain there.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think you can analyze most human behavior as driven by some
| kind of anxiety if you want. i.e. I eat because I'm anxious about
| starving to death. But it's not considered a disorder unless it
| places you outside of fuzzy "normal" bounds and impairs your life
| in some way. Lots of people are ambitious, that's normal.
| wruza wrote:
| Anxiety is definitely different from hunger. You can get
| anxious about it when you're lost in mountains and know that
| it's a second week without food already and chances get pretty
| low. But daily hunger is nowhere near nor similar to anxiety.
| hinkley wrote:
| I used to look at people who exude Bad Ass Mother Fucker vibes
| and think, "ooh, scary," then later "ooh, jealous" and now all
| I can think is, "who hurt you?"
|
| Why does a grown ass man need to be the scariest person in a
| room? It's a lot of pageantry, and a random mix of bluff and
| impulse control. The scariest guy in the room is the one who's
| been doing martial arts for 10 years and still wears polo
| shirts and is quiet. Beware the person wearing roomy pants and
| comfortable shoes who just smiles gently when something vaguely
| threatening is said. Especially if they ask you please not to
| do what you're doing. "I don't _want_ to put you in traction
| but I will in half a heartbeat if you look like you 're going
| to hurt someone. Please don't make me."
| bluepizza wrote:
| It seems to be true for a decent chunk of middle managers, and
| other sorts of "in the middle" kind of talent. But it is
| definitely not true for the higher positions. The higher
| executives are usually the shark-like sociopaths turning middle
| managers into anxious messes.
| dexwiz wrote:
| A good indicator of a good middle manager is if they realize
| this or not. Middle managers that are always walking on
| eggshells are the worst, and they just pass all that anxiety
| downward. Good ones can take those tactics in stride and shield
| their employees. By extension, a good company will allow those
| managers to exist, but bad ones will weed out any resistance,
| only leaving the eggshell walkers.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Genuinely neither an actionable model nor evidence in some
| direction. Honestly, it appears this is part of that school of
| thought I see very commonly here in America[0] where everything
| needs some origin story and everyone has a disorder of some sort.
|
| Listen, I sometimes feel quivers of anxiety when I stand in line
| at the deli and it is almost my turn to speak. But that's not a
| disorder. And the parts that feed my ambition come from a
| different place. I am successful by most people's standards, but
| it wasn't fear or paranoia that brought me here but a very happy
| "I can do more" feeling. And as I win, I feel even more motivated
| to win and become more ambitious. And this is not a me story. I
| think the fact that many people are able to put The Motivation
| Myth into action proves that it's common to a lot of us.
|
| I run eng at a prop fund, so of course there's always the fear
| that we'll get beaten tomorrow in some irrecoverable way as our
| algos trade while we sleep. But that's a different kind of
| paranoia and if what the guys quoted experienced is like what I
| feel it's not like anxiety. It's different. I am never convinced
| that we are the best. We have to keep moving to stay winning and
| no part of our stuff is good enough ever.
|
| That's way different from the feeling I got when I first asked
| out a girl, which was a much more real fear that matched the deli
| line anxiety in quality though not severity.
|
| So no, I reject this model of motivation as anxiety.
|
| 0: it may be common elsewhere, but _I_ encountered it in the US
| first and most commonly
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I attribute some of my anxieties to my grandparents who always
| made it seem like there was no middle ground - you were either
| doing OK or going to be homeless and destitute. If you weren't
| near the top of your class - well, oh shit, you would be
| delegated to a low paying, remedial job if any at all. I
| attribute their behavior to growing poor and going through WW2 in
| an occupied country as tweens. I don't know why, but I don't
| resent their behavior, I know they always loved me dearly and
| were just looking out for me. To this day though, whenever my
| manager wants to talk to me, I reflexively think to myself, well
| pack it up kids, we're moving out to under an overpass.
| hinkley wrote:
| This may be the same sentiment that was illustrated in startup
| culture as 'default alive or dead'. If you have to spend every
| day fighting the chaos to be okay, you're going to slip at some
| point and the wheels will come off.
|
| Depression era people kept reusable things in spades and also
| cared a lot more about social networks (real social networks)
| more than anyone since. If you had a streak of good luck you
| banked some of it with your network, because you never knew
| when the other shoe might drop and you needed to make
| withdrawals.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _well pack it up kids, we 're moving out to under an
| overpass._
|
| This gave me a good chuckle, thank you!
|
| It's actually the same for me, only my parents were the cause
| not theirs and I honestly hate them for it.
| paganel wrote:
| > It's actually the same for me,
|
| Same anxiety here, even though I'm in my early 40s.
|
| In my case though is not the fault of my parents, but of the
| general socio-economic conditions back in my adolescence
| years (the '90s were hell for some of us in Eastern Europe)
| that saw my family move from middle-class status to almost
| destitute in just 2-3 years. My dad actually felt (probably
| still feels) pretty guilty about it all, even though it was
| not his fault, the socio-economic forces in play were just
| too great. I just hope I won't pass the same feeling of
| financial insecurity to my kid(s).
| Bloating wrote:
| parents are people too
| Apocryphon wrote:
| As Philip Larkin pointed out.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Basically every intelligent person I know has an anxiety disorder
| of some sort.
| la64710 wrote:
| For someone who is not aware of the inescapable links of
| everything in the surrounding universe , ambition can become a
| recipe for disaster. That's why sometimes it is called "blind
| ambition".
| medion wrote:
| Ambitious and 'successful' people (success as seen by the
| majority of the west - wealth, power etc) seem to almost always
| be driven by some kind of disorder or emotional imbalance. Hence
| the chaos of the world - a reflection of its powerful.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've started describing certain types of traumatic events as
| 'origin stories' for heroes _or_ villains. Too many doctors
| have stories of getting into medicine because of a loss. We are
| trying to play out our childhoods over again hoping that
| repeating a scene enough times will somehow blot out the one
| they can 't replay. It starts out noble and ends up sounding a
| lot like illusion of control (which maybe explains why some
| doctors are so bad at helping people with poorly understood
| conditions).
|
| Even as a software developer I can see some of that in myself.
| Almost nobody has a story about someone dying or a loss caused
| by bad software driving them into the field. I love to make
| things. I love to feel useful - to the verge of 'mansplaining'
| according to some. As a kid there were times where I was made
| to feel like I was just in the way. Clearly that affected me.
| I've no illusions about that being a coincidence. Any more than
| I doubt that the uber-successful people didn't have a monologue
| in their heads at some point that went something like, "One day
| you'll all be sorry," Jonathan Coulton-style.
|
| It's said nobody gets to be a billionaire without hurting a lot
| of people. Maybe you do it because you're a sociopath. Maybe
| you do it because you think it's just balancing out some
| equation in your head. Or maybe it started out that way and at
| some point you stopped policing yourself on that because it
| just made you feel bad about yourself, and you felt bad before
| you made all of these sacrifices so if you start feeling bad
| again what was the whole point?
| yakubin wrote:
| That's not the only version of success as understood by the
| West. There is also scientific success. I think most people
| would agree that winning the Fields Medal is a great success,
| not due to the money involved (which isn't little, but neither
| is it a fortune), but due to the accomplishment. Case in point,
| most people would say that Grigori Perelman is a successful
| mathematician: he refused to accept prizes such as the Fields
| Medal or the Millennium Prize. Similar goes for chess
| champions, athletics champions, all sorts of sports champions.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The unfortunate thing about anxiety is that it's just as
| possible, probably more so, to end up avoidant and
| underperforming rather than ambitious and overambitious.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-29 23:00 UTC)