Have you noticed whether any other symptoms tend to co-occur with it (especially other things related to mood or emotions)?
Choice numbness is a special case of emotional numbness is a special case of disconnecting from the world. It comes with akrasia and not-akrasia (a thingy that prevents me from doing stuff I explicitly want to, but doesn’t react when I throw willpower at it—like running into an invisible wall in a video game). My field of attention gets restricted (I can only focus on one thing and not very much, objects in the center of my visual field become more interesting, I bump into walls), and my thoughts slow and confused. I crumble completely under any kind of pressure, even more than usually. I have to monitor motor control more finely (like moving a leg with my hand to remind the motor system how to move it, or focusing on a particular point and willing myself there). If there’s emotional numbness, my emotions will feel sort of like detached objects.
Have you noticed any other patterns in these episodes (how often it happens, how long it lasts, whether it has any particular triggers, and whether anything in particular tends to trigger its end)?
It happens when I’m dehydrated, tired, lacking balanced amounts of sunshine, at the wrong level of socialization, or at apparently random. The general state tends to last , curing it usually involves a complete reboot (change of context, rest, then sleep), but it can go in and out of choice numbness. Pressure to answer cements it.
Have you mentioned it to a medical/psychological professional?
Nope. I’ve had horrible luck with psychiatrists and therapists so far, and I expect anything doctor-findable would have been found by now.
That suggests a couple more strategies that you could use for deciding-while-numb.
One is to choose the option that is most likely to improve your mental state (or at least avoid making it worse), e.g. the option that seems most likely to increase your energy rather than draining you.
The other is to try to make your decisions while non-numb, as much as possible (especially for more important decisions). You can do this in different ways, depending on the context. When you’re numb you could put off making a decision until later (when you’re non-numb), or you could guess what you would choose if you were non-numb, or you could try to remember which option you were leaning towards when you had been non-numb and choose that one. When you’re non-numb, if you know of any upcoming decisions you could make the decisions right then (rather than waiting and potentially becoming numb), or you could at least note which option you’re leaning towards (so that you can use that information if you happen to become numb).
I don’t know the details of your experiences with doctors & therapists, but this really does sound like the sort of thing that they should be able to help with. Especially if you’re in this state often, figuring out if you can prevent it should be a higher priority than figuring out how to cope with it. Maybe you just haven’t taken the right test yet, or you haven’t found the right doctor or therapist. If you’ve had horrible luck so far, does that mean that regression to the mean will be working in your favor as long as you keep trying?
I agree with nearly everything you said there and think it’s good advice, so I upvoted your comment. However, I care about statistics and you made a common error here:
If you’ve had horrible luck so far, does that mean that regression to the mean will be working in your favor as long as you keep trying?
Regression to the mean doesn’t work that way. The fact that a random event came out one way several times in a row doesn’t make it more likely that it will come out the other way the next time. For instance, if you flip a fair coin and it comes up heads ten times in a row, the probability that it will come up tails on the next flip is still no greater than 50%. The only way that having found multiple bad psychiatrists will improve mixednuts’ chances of finding a good one next time appreciably is if he starts crossing off an appreciably large proportion of the bad psychiatrists in his area, leaving the good ones dominating the remaining population. This effect isn’t regression to the mean. The error you made is known as the Gambler’s Fallacy.
I’m familiar with the gambler’s fallacy. I wasn’t being very clear about what I had in mind when I referenced regression to the mean, so here’s my model. If someone has been to a few good therapists (better than the typical therapist) and they haven’t been able to help, then “find a better therapist” would be tough advice to follow. But if they’ve been to a few lousy therapists (worse than the typical therapist) then finding a better therapist should be doable, since they’ll have a good shot at doing that even if they just pick a new one at random.
Alternatively, if they’ve been to a few good therapists but haven’t found the right one, that’s evidence that “the right therapist for me” is a small category, but if they’ve been to a few bad therapists and haven’t found the right one, “the right therapist for me” could still include a fairly large subset of therapists.
Edit: The more general point is that being unlucky is a reason for optimism, since it means that things are likely to get better just from your luck returning to normal.
Agreed.
Choice numbness is a special case of emotional numbness is a special case of disconnecting from the world. It comes with akrasia and not-akrasia (a thingy that prevents me from doing stuff I explicitly want to, but doesn’t react when I throw willpower at it—like running into an invisible wall in a video game). My field of attention gets restricted (I can only focus on one thing and not very much, objects in the center of my visual field become more interesting, I bump into walls), and my thoughts slow and confused. I crumble completely under any kind of pressure, even more than usually. I have to monitor motor control more finely (like moving a leg with my hand to remind the motor system how to move it, or focusing on a particular point and willing myself there). If there’s emotional numbness, my emotions will feel sort of like detached objects.
It happens when I’m dehydrated, tired, lacking balanced amounts of sunshine, at the wrong level of socialization, or at apparently random. The general state tends to last , curing it usually involves a complete reboot (change of context, rest, then sleep), but it can go in and out of choice numbness. Pressure to answer cements it.
Nope. I’ve had horrible luck with psychiatrists and therapists so far, and I expect anything doctor-findable would have been found by now.
Thanks!
That suggests a couple more strategies that you could use for deciding-while-numb.
One is to choose the option that is most likely to improve your mental state (or at least avoid making it worse), e.g. the option that seems most likely to increase your energy rather than draining you.
The other is to try to make your decisions while non-numb, as much as possible (especially for more important decisions). You can do this in different ways, depending on the context. When you’re numb you could put off making a decision until later (when you’re non-numb), or you could guess what you would choose if you were non-numb, or you could try to remember which option you were leaning towards when you had been non-numb and choose that one. When you’re non-numb, if you know of any upcoming decisions you could make the decisions right then (rather than waiting and potentially becoming numb), or you could at least note which option you’re leaning towards (so that you can use that information if you happen to become numb).
I don’t know the details of your experiences with doctors & therapists, but this really does sound like the sort of thing that they should be able to help with. Especially if you’re in this state often, figuring out if you can prevent it should be a higher priority than figuring out how to cope with it. Maybe you just haven’t taken the right test yet, or you haven’t found the right doctor or therapist. If you’ve had horrible luck so far, does that mean that regression to the mean will be working in your favor as long as you keep trying?
I agree with nearly everything you said there and think it’s good advice, so I upvoted your comment. However, I care about statistics and you made a common error here:
Regression to the mean doesn’t work that way. The fact that a random event came out one way several times in a row doesn’t make it more likely that it will come out the other way the next time. For instance, if you flip a fair coin and it comes up heads ten times in a row, the probability that it will come up tails on the next flip is still no greater than 50%. The only way that having found multiple bad psychiatrists will improve mixednuts’ chances of finding a good one next time appreciably is if he starts crossing off an appreciably large proportion of the bad psychiatrists in his area, leaving the good ones dominating the remaining population. This effect isn’t regression to the mean. The error you made is known as the Gambler’s Fallacy.
I’m familiar with the gambler’s fallacy. I wasn’t being very clear about what I had in mind when I referenced regression to the mean, so here’s my model. If someone has been to a few good therapists (better than the typical therapist) and they haven’t been able to help, then “find a better therapist” would be tough advice to follow. But if they’ve been to a few lousy therapists (worse than the typical therapist) then finding a better therapist should be doable, since they’ll have a good shot at doing that even if they just pick a new one at random.
Alternatively, if they’ve been to a few good therapists but haven’t found the right one, that’s evidence that “the right therapist for me” is a small category, but if they’ve been to a few bad therapists and haven’t found the right one, “the right therapist for me” could still include a fairly large subset of therapists.
Edit: The more general point is that being unlucky is a reason for optimism, since it means that things are likely to get better just from your luck returning to normal.
That makes sense. Thanks for clearing it up.