Just a quick post (am I really capable of such a thing? We shall see) to update followers on the issues I was wrastling with in February. I quit the Yale “Science of Well-Being” course after a few weeks, as it was targeted primarily towards those who had bought into competitive materialism all of their lives, which has never been me. Also it was a little too mechanistic in its attitude toward brain science. Research is good, but not everything can be measured. Identity, for example. But hey, go Elis. Really, go. You will probably be much happier away from Yale and its ilk.

Building on the theory that procrastination was a manifestation of crippling yet unconscious anxiety, I discontinued one of the supplements I use to manage depression. It boosts my focus, but it also boosts my frustration level at minor setbacks. Quitting it reduced my anxiety about getting nothing done, but I guess anxiety wasn’t the key problem, as I continued to get nothing done. I added it back in to my regimen last week, but at a substantially lower dose so as not to re-escalate my frustration level. I suspect dosage is something HSPs should always be mindful of. Sometimes I need more, sometimes less than the average dose, but rarely the same amount.

Meanwhile, I considered the emotional component of my dispiritedness. Four years of Trump, followed by an election which I went into knowing he had a good chance of winning, but which nevertheless deeply disturbed me with its state-by-state specific enumeration of how many Americans STILL supported him; the hope, fear, relief as votes were counted and recounted, and counted yet again; the post-election fictions raising the spectre of civil war, culminating in the attack on the Capitol; and through it all COVID ravaged the country, with thousands dying and millions denying it.

It was a lot.

It pulverized my beliefs about innate goodness, or at least the potential thereof, and the instinct to rise above pettiness and become our best selves in a crisis. It hurt me deeply that so many people were perfectly happy to throw me (as a demographic) under the bus, just so they weren’t minorly inconvenienced in their lifestyle (mind you, I’m not talking about people who lost jobs, but those who raged against the denial of their “right” to salon haircuts and restaurant meals).

Buddhism

I realized that I had to learn to accept humans as we are, and I didn’t know how to do that. Serendipity, synchronicity, or some kind of thing like that threw me some links on Buddhism for non-Asian beginners, and I explored that a little, not for the first time.

Every time I look into Buddhism, I’m struck to discover how much it has already influenced me, indirectly, through sources that may not themselves have been aware of the origins of what they were saying. Or is it that core Buddhist insights are also core human insights that many of us will come to on our own? Whatever the case (probably a bit of both) Buddhist concepts and perspectives have been working their way through American culture for a long time, since way before viral internet posts, but no less efficiently. I read Siddhartha, a European novel based on the life of Buddha, in high school, which was decades ago, and it was written long before I was born. Since I knew (and cared) little about Buddha at the time, the connection between the book – still one of my favorites – and Buddhism didn’t mean much to me. But the book itself made a huge, lifelong impression.

Buddhism initially did seem relevant to my current crisis, as it teaches that change, pain, and a lack of control over them are a given. At first glance, that seems like an accentuation of the negative, but I think the takeaway is supposed to be, therefore one might as well stop struggling with things one can’t control and look for happiness within. A lot of what I read resonated. But some things didn’t, and many of those things also seem internally contradictory with other points of Buddhism. My conclusion is that all religions are co-opted by powerful interests in their cultures, since they can serve as a way to manipulate populations to the advantage of the greedy and control-hungry. I have seen plenty of examples of that in my own country and lifetime.

I’m not sure how much all of this helped. Certainly it showed my struggle was neither new nor unique. Maybe that calmed me down a little. I’ve evolved my own beliefs about the meaning/purpose of life in the meta sense, and comparing those to Buddhism, I still prefer my version. This is one of the areas where I suspect original Buddhism has been most co-opted, laying out hierarchies and between-life chronologies that seem primarily designed to make people tolerate exploitation without rebelling. Not for the first time, I concluded I am not a Buddhist, even though some parts of Buddhism speak to me.

As for Buddhist practices, research has shown they are helpful, much like similar practices in many other traditions: They include a combination of a physical practice that relaxes muscle tension and breath suppression, thereby bringing you into the present, with a mind-stilling practice where you can take a break from do-ing and experience be-ing. Which I am still not practicing, despite my lifelong belief that it’s a good thing, and intermittent experience therewith that further validates it is a good thing for me.

Optimism

But maybe that’s OK, because even though my mental life is not my identity, or not all of it anyhow, sometimes the busy brain must be placated. If I am in pain because of conceptions, maybe that’s the level at which that pain must be addressed.

Just a couple of days ago, I ran across an article about “optimism bias.” Many years ago I read a book that claimed depressives have a more accurate perception of reality than the non-depressed, who are overly optimistic. This didn’t entirely make sense, as I was pretty sure I was looking on the cloudy side while I was severely depressed. Still, there was something there. I have noticed a difference in how I evaluate risk compared to some other people I know: I consider how problematic it would be if something bad happened, whereas they consider how likely it would be, typically concluding not very, and therefore they need take no precautions.

But I had never (that I remember) heard of “optimism bias” as an established psychological fact, nor did I know it consistently occurs in 80% of the human population, notwithstanding other factors.

80%!!

THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH!

Just to be clear, “optimism bias” is predicting positive outcomes to an unrealistic degree. It is not affected by experience or facts to the contrary, unless the facts indicate an optimism-biased person could be more optimistic than they already are.

Mildly depressed people are unbiased, which is what that book I read must have been talking about. Severely depressed people are pessimism-biased, as I have experienced, though apparently that is not an official thing the way optimism bias is (which is a bias in itself, no?). And even animals show optimism bias, which is also not impacted by experience, as contrary to their evolutionary interests as that may seem. Furthermore, animals in deprived circumstances without the ability to alter their situations develop learned helplessness (very similar to pessimism bias, I think), which is also not altered by real life experience when the circumstances become more favorable.

In case you don’t see where I am going with this, to me it means people aren’t necessarily hostile or uncaring, they just don’t believe I am at risk. And of course, their optimism bias is being manipulated by much more cynical people, whether Donald Trump or Russian disruptors, who truly don’t give a damn about me or anyone else, just want to destabilize the world for purposes of their own that I don’t really understand and probably never will.

Realism

Only 10% of people are unbiased, and I have a feeling that includes me (sigh. Like I’m not in enough minority populations already). I always thought my insistence on taking into consideration negative as well as positive possibilities was a Virgo thing. Though much maligned for criticalness, the real gift of Virgos is the ability to detect weak points – and yes, that could include your personal behavior (or their own), but being earth signs, Virgos are more likely to focus on practical contexts such as assumptions and plans. Now if you’re thinking: Oh, no, I was just beginning to think she makes sense, and now she’s talking about astrology,” well, I have three words for you: dark energy/matter. Together they make up about 95% of what lies between planets, and so little is known about them that their very existence is posited by inference alone. 95% ignorance, yet you’re sure influence of planetary movements through that utterly unknown medium isn’t a thing?? And I’m unscientific?!

But I digress. If you were wondering, yes, the remaining 10% of the population is pessimism-biased. That would include people with untreated or treatment-resistant depression. Have pity on them. They can’t help it, and they’re no more out of touch with reality than the 80% optimism biased, so stop and ask yourself if their take on life is really any less accurate than yours before you go getting on their case. You may be fortified by the belief that things will always work out, until confronted with something different, like massive stock market losses, or your house burgled. They are fortified by expecting the worst so that they are never disappointed, and occasionally pleasantly surprised. Their house may be burgled, too, though less often than yours because they actually lock things up when they leave, but it won’t shake their whole sense of security, because they didn’t have a lot of that to begin with. Can you say the same?

If you are an HSP, perhaps it occurred to you as it did to me that the percentage of humans without optimism bias matches the percentage of humans who are HSPs. This doesn’t mean it’s the same people, of course, but it does raise some interesting questions for further research. Especially since HSPs are more independent of cultural factors when interpreting stimuli than non-HSPs. Supposedly, culture has no bearing on the percentage of people with optimism bias, but I wonder. How can you really test that? Unless you were raised by wolves (and possibly even then), you were influenced by culture, so where do you find a control group for that? I am really curious whether the ratio of optimism bias among HSPs matches the general population’s, or is different. Ditto for the prevalence of optimism bias in introverts vs. extroverts. I strongly suspect that extroverts show above average rates of optimism bias, while introverts show below average rates of it.

I find this information about the prevalence of optimism bias more comforting than the notion that bad stuff happens and there is nothing I can do to stop it (a strong focus of Buddhism – you are supposed to chant 5 forms of suffering that will inevitably happen to you, and your powerlessness to prevent them, on a daily basis). It allows me to preserve my belief in near-universal human potential, which I’ve come to understand is pretty important to me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe that’s HSP-me talking.

Minimalism

So, short post accomplished? Guess not. Is anyone surprised? Not I. But believe it or not, it was shorter to write, as I have forgone my usual intensive fact-checking. So if I got something wrong, don’t blame me. I did it for you.

Prism