Eupraxsophy

It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.

You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.

But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures.

The forthcoming edition of an American psychiatric manual will increase the number of people in the general population diagnosed with a mental illness - but what they need is help and understanding, not labels and medication.

A new study published in The Lancet today has found a common genetic thread running through five well-known psychiatric diseases: autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and schizophrenia. It was an international research collaboration, studying the genomes of more than sixty thousand patients of European ancestry.

Scientists hope the findings will clear up how these diseases are classified, moving from describing symptoms to identifying underlying causes. And once other scientists dig into the data, there may be some progress made on treating these five diseases.

One aspect of [suicide] survivors’ personalities that appears to have been left behind is whatever mind-tumble caused them to try to kill themselves in the first place. Since their attempts, none of the survivors I spoke with had experienced another impulse toward suicide. Nor had they spent much time seeing psychologists or hanging out in support groups. In Baldwin’s case, he attended just five therapy sessions after his jump from the Golden Gate.

“And after that fifth session,” he recalled, “the therapist said: ‘You know, I really don’t think you need to do this anymore. You seem to have it all put back together.’ And he was right.”

For each, it’s almost as if their near-death experience scared them straight, propelled them back to a point of recovery beyond even their own imagining. But that’s actually not so unusual; just as Seiden found that less than 10 percent of people thwarted from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge went on to kill themselves, a host of studies show that same percentage holds among those who carry out “near fatal” attempts but somehow survive. Beginning in the 1970s, Dr. David Rosen, a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst, tracked down and conducted lengthy interviews with nine people who survived leaps from the Golden Gate, as well as one who had gone off the nearby Bay Bridge.

“What was immediately apparent,” Rosen recounted, “was that none of them had truly wanted to die. They had wanted their inner pain to stop; they wanted some measure of relief; and this was the only answer they could find. They were in spiritual agony, and they sought a physical solution.”

Starting in 1993, the scientists followed over 1,400 children at three different ages — 9, 11 and 13, and interviewed them and their caregivers every year until the kids turned 16.

Based on the interviews, they categorized the kids into four groups: victims only, bullies only, both bullies and victims, or neither. To determine the long-term effects of bullying, the researchers re-interviewed the participants when they were ages 19, 21, 24 and 26, and evaluted them for a wide range of different psychiatric disorders.

(MORE: The Relationship Between Bullying and Depression: It’s Complicated)

“Bullying is not just a part of childhood, or some sort of a harmless activity between peers. This is actually something that has very detrimental, and very long lasting effects,” says study author William Copeland of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

All three groups who reported being involved in bullying experienced some long-term psychiatric effects in the form of anxiety, depressive, or antisocial personality disorders, or some type of alcohol or marijuana abuse. After controlling for family hardships that might also make these mental health issues more likely, the researchers found distinct patterns of psychiatric problems that distinguished the bullies from their victims.

Victims of bullying were nearly three times as likely to have issues with generalized anxiety as those who were not bullied, and 4.6 times as likely to suffer from panic attacks, or agoraphobia, in which they felt trapped or had no escape, compared to those who were spared bullying.

Bullies themselves showed a four times higher risk of antisocial personality disorder as adults compared to those who did not bully others, and children who reported being both bullies and victims seemed to fare the worst of all; these participants showed a nearly five times greater risk of depression as young adults compared to those who had not both given and received bullying behavior, and a 14.5 times greater risk of having a panic disorder.

These effects also showed some gender differences; women had a dramatically higher risk, at nearly 27 times, of having agoraphobia, while men showed an 18.5 times greater prevalence of suicidal tendencies.

“For bullies, it’s a completely different kind of problem,” says Copeland. “With the victims, it is all related to their emotional functioning. For the bullies, they had higher rates of antisocial personality disorder, which is kind of related to criminal behavior, so they’re having completely different problems in adulthood than the victims.”

I’ve long argued that the study of philosophy can be a great help to people who are dealing with personal and mental issues, especially philosophies like Stoicism or Epicureanism. Indeed, I speak from experience when I say that it’s helped me with my own struggles. It appears I’m not the only one that has taken notice of this potential.

The Stuart Low Trust provides support and companionship to isolated people in north London – many have experience of mental illness. They put on a startling range of activities: live music and comedy, classes on drama and cookery, talks on history, astrophysics, chemistry and classical music. On Sunday afternoons the trust’s remarkable philosophy forum convenes. For the individuals taking part, philosophy is certainly not mere navel-gazing. The ancient questions – how should I live? what matters most? who should I be? – are live ones for them.

When Rachel Paine, a philosophy tutor who helped set up the forum, is the speaker, 30 people crowd themselves on to purple sofas to hear her. She’s talking about personal identity and the narrative conception of the self. “What makes you the person you are?” she asks.

The usual answers have something to do with continuity – your body or your memories make you the same you over time – but she’s asking about the control we have over who we are. The thought is that the self might be deliberately shaped when you choose actions in line with the narratives you have about the kind of life you want to live, the sort of person you want to be.

The main group splits into four seminars, each guided by a volunteer with a background in philosophy. There’s discussion of what happens when your narrative fails, when your story is thwarted by factors outside your control, and you can’t be who you want to be. Others consider the connection between a life’s narrative and social identity, how the thoughts of other people can sometimes shape us.

The seminars merge back together, and Paine sets out a different conception of the self. The new idea is that a person consists in many changing selves, strung along over time like pearls on a string. The seminars split off again, and there’s discussion of Hume’s bundle theory here and there. One asks what the string connecting the pearls is supposed to be. There’s a moment of baffled silence, smiles, and more conversation.

Today’s topic was metaphysics, but in the past year the forum has considered how fiction can move us, Kierkegaard’s three stages of life, theories of perceptual experience, distributive justice, liberty, ancient Greek philosophy, trolley problems, God, truth and much more.

What’s striking is the group’s openness to new ideas. “It’s not like a debate among academics,” a group leader, Aaron Finlay, tells me, “where people just take up established positions and butt heads.” There’s a real sense of people trying to get at the truth, trying to do philosophy with honesty.

Harry Adamson, a Cambridge PhD who helped set up the forum, says that philosophical questions can play a powerful role in the lives of people who have experienced mental health problems. “Their lives can throw up abstract and fundamental questions that many people drift through life leaving unexamined. Their experiences generate answers that are often novel, plausible and powerful, and as they’ve lived the questions, the answers they reach take on a different significance. Apart from all that, their thoughts are listened to here with an equality of respect, which I’m sad to say doesn’t always happen.”

While it’s definitely not therapy or self-help, the participants say they get a great deal from the discussions. For some the debates are simply good fun, others come along to hear new ideas and discover different perspectives, and still others enjoy the camaraderie. One said the forum has helped in other ways too. He’s “much more in the world now”, less shy, more likely to speak up. “It’s a privilege to hear these ideas,” he says.

The philosophy forum is one of those rare things that defy the laws of social physics. Everyone gets more out than they put in, particularly the volunteers. “It’s the best thing I do,” one tells me. “It’s the highlight of my week.” As I follow Paine down the hallway from one group to another, I tell her I planned to ask why she and the other volunteers give up so much of their time to do this. Having come along and listened in, I say that’s probably a stupid question. “I know,” she whispers. “It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?”

As human beings living in the modern world, we must ask ourselves, “How does our being coexist with all our going?” It‘s an important question because every day we are constantly and simultaneously moving in multiple directions so rapidly that we rarely have the opportunity to connect with the being of our human nature. Being is not the same as doing, and we live in a culture of non-stop acceleration, of continual, frenzied, anxiety and competition-driven, on the go action.

Even our foremost pastimes, the movies, television shows, and sporting events we view—things we do to recover from all our work and busyness—exemplify this glorification of non-stop, nerve-riveting action, of violence, crime, sexual exploits, and destruction.

In this world, there is very little time for rest and relaxation, and when there is time we virtually recoil from it in horror, somehow believing that the moment we cease to act, we also cease to exist. Thus, our most revered and apparent sense of self is identified with anxiety and accomplishment. Many of us tend to resolve this predicament, albeit temporarily, by sedating ourselves with drugs and/or alcohol. When the work day is done the only way many people can change gearsor get relaxed is to crack open the bottle or load up the pipe. Our use of mind-altering substances also displays our need to return to the beingof our human nature; so why does our normal modern mode of living have to operate in antithesis to it?

By losing regular contact with our underlying non-anxiety driven, non-neurotic, but intrinsically stable, calm, and reflective inner nature, we have ceased to function as, or find fulfillment in, the inherent human being that we are. Indeed, we are becoming increasingly like the programmed devices with which our technological society inundates us, giving the outer impression of vast and dynamic possibilities, but moreover removed from the human heart. Because we lack a true connection with our inner being,we are terrified of being alone or of being at rest; and, paradoxically, through our compulsive obsessions with the frenetic, technology-driven pace of life: we have alienated ourselves from ourselves.

The more we aspire to be in touchwith each other via technological devices such as the cell phone, internet, and webcam, the further we stray from the simple human capacity to share space: to talk in person face to face, to be silent, to listen, to breath the same air, to break bread, to live closely together, and to feel the true embodied companionship of those we love, of family, friends, and even strangers. Having quantifiably more contacts in our cell phone, MySpace, or Facebook account is not the same as having more quality relationships that incorporate depth and richness. Sometimes “less is more,” but that‘s something our capitalistic, money-driven society does not easily grasp.

I’m not sure if I agree with the extent to which modern technology has afflicted us, but I certainly believe we should be concerned.