I mean, “anxious rumination” suggests something pretty extreme. For my part, I do think I’m very slightly anxious that something I publish will be poorly received, make me look foolish, or contain some part that’s wrong-in-an-embarrassing-way (or poorly-explained-in-an-embarrassing-way), etc. And I think my writing and thinking probably benefits from the thoughts sporadically triggered by that (slight, occasional) anxiety. But I’m generally in good mental health, and neither I nor anyone who knows me would use words like “afraid … anxious … desperate … painful … extreme …” to talk about how I feel and act when I’m writing and publishing.
OK I’ve definitely been misunderstood here. I’m using the impersonal-you to describe what other things have to be true for powering murphy-jitsu with anxious-rumination to work at all, partially based off personal experience.
I know you weren’t talking about me specifically, but I thought it would be helpful to relate my anecdotal experience as a data point. :) Your comment started “It only works if…” and I was suggesting that “only” seems too strong because it can work to some extent in a more mild setting. (Or maybe you were describing an extreme case for clarity.)
Here’s the thing—I don’t really think it does work all that well in a milder setting, at least not until you’ve gone through the hypervigilant hell of the full-flavor version and only then got your anxiety back down. If you can’t set that dial to “placid equanimity” or anything in the same zipcode, and you don’t crank that dial all the way to near-max (to the point where it eventually just plain burns-in), then I posit that you won’t actually end up sufficiently desperate to find all your plan’s important flaws, and may well fail immediately to coalesce (if it’s set way too low) or just plain get overwhelmed and shut down/quit too soon (if it’s set only a little too low). You need to end up—at least at the start—in the land of anxiety-beyond-anxiety, apprised of the certain knowledge that there exists no correct direction but forwards but that all the wrong directions look a little like “forwards”, too.
I mean, “anxious rumination” suggests something pretty extreme. For my part, I do think I’m very slightly anxious that something I publish will be poorly received, make me look foolish, or contain some part that’s wrong-in-an-embarrassing-way (or poorly-explained-in-an-embarrassing-way), etc. And I think my writing and thinking probably benefits from the thoughts sporadically triggered by that (slight, occasional) anxiety. But I’m generally in good mental health, and neither I nor anyone who knows me would use words like “afraid … anxious … desperate … painful … extreme …” to talk about how I feel and act when I’m writing and publishing.
OK I’ve definitely been misunderstood here. I’m using the impersonal-you to describe what other things have to be true for powering murphy-jitsu with anxious-rumination to work at all, partially based off personal experience.
I know you weren’t talking about me specifically, but I thought it would be helpful to relate my anecdotal experience as a data point. :) Your comment started “It only works if…” and I was suggesting that “only” seems too strong because it can work to some extent in a more mild setting. (Or maybe you were describing an extreme case for clarity.)
Here’s the thing—I don’t really think it does work all that well in a milder setting, at least not until you’ve gone through the hypervigilant hell of the full-flavor version and only then got your anxiety back down. If you can’t set that dial to “placid equanimity” or anything in the same zipcode, and you don’t crank that dial all the way to near-max (to the point where it eventually just plain burns-in), then I posit that you won’t actually end up sufficiently desperate to find all your plan’s important flaws, and may well fail immediately to coalesce (if it’s set way too low) or just plain get overwhelmed and shut down/quit too soon (if it’s set only a little too low). You need to end up—at least at the start—in the land of anxiety-beyond-anxiety, apprised of the certain knowledge that there exists no correct direction but forwards but that all the wrong directions look a little like “forwards”, too.