https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Vm_cFuQI_Qo
So now I’ve noticed something and I want to sort of try to bring some light to it. There’s a lot of anxiety out there. Some people are anxious and they’re just exhibiting the symptoms of anxiety but they don’t know that they’re anxious. Other people they know they’re anxious but they’re not sure quite sure why. And so I want to try to get to the bottom of what’s going on here. What are the real problems? Why? What contributes to the anxiety that people are feeling? And you know how can we sort of put this in a frame that helps people to to calm down? So that’s what I’d like to explore with you today. Now as I mentioned there’s a lot of anxiety and some of the people don’t know about. They’re just acting anxious and you know we know what’s going on in the world. We see what’s going on in the world but I think there’s a lot to that. I’ve talked before about intelligibility and this idea that you know if you know what’s going on you can’t do anything about it roughly speaking you can kind of just forget about it right or if it’s not going to affect you or if you know you’re not going to get in its way. But your direct experience is only one way that you might come into the feeling of anxiety. So there’s a way in which your direct experience should map your world model right so you can make accurate predictions. But there’s also a way in which the signals coming to you from outside should match your world model and your direct experience. So whenever you have a mismatch on any of those things it’s a problem. So some of our signals come from our friends, some of the signals come from our news sources but unbeknownst to us typically some signals come from generally around us and so I’ve been trying to explain this to people lately. The reason why people are still anxious we’ll say after sort of all the dirty laundry has been aired and things are known about in the world is that the people around them are still anxious. And you know I don’t even know these people. What difference does it make? It makes a huge difference because the base level of anxiety that you experience around you not your base level but the base level of the people around you raises your anxiety level if it’s higher than yours right or it keeps it high or it keeps it higher than it should be anyway and that’s a problem that causes anxiety. Now like I said sometimes you’re acting anxious and you you don’t notice other people notice and I’ve seen a lot of that and and these people don’t they’re not aware so staying silent about it’s not cool because they’re hurting themselves and they have no idea they won’t know unless you tell them. Confronting people sucks, conflict is terrible but but making that sacrifice for others or potential sacrifice because it may end up to be fine is really important. So if you’re being told a narrative that isn’t doesn’t jive with your direct experience but may fit your worldview still a problem. If you’re being told a narrative that doesn’t jive with your direct experience and doesn’t fit your worldview could be a problem. But if you’re just outside experiencing other people, grocery stores, gas stations, you know out at the markets, whatever their anxiety level is being signaled to you and you’re receiving that signal and that’s definitely affecting you whether you like it or not. Monkey screams, tribe gets nervous, happens with all kinds of animals we are just animals who talk too much mostly and that’s part of the problem is that we don’t recognize these forces that are affecting us influencing us that cause our personal control to be hijacked to some extent when people are screaming at you loudly all the time you get anxious that’s gonna happen that’s part and parcel of how this works and it’s not so bad except when it is when it is so bad yeah and and it is bad and we don’t it doesn’t have to be loud it can be frequent so if you see people acting nervously with their body language or they’re not saying hi as much all those things can contribute to your anxiety and some people have a lot of anxiety they have no idea why they’re like no I’m not afraid of anything everything seems fine current events don’t bother me I don’t watch the news I’m you know and like fair enough but you do go outside and you do have these influences and you know that’s seemed to really help people but look I mean there are real problems in the world there’s some real uncertainty you can you know now go to stores and we have supply chain disruptions and stuff’s not on the shelves in some cases I’m seeing a wholly empty stores although some of those are there too from from the fallout from the shutdowns but any sort of change at that level where you see empty shelves you experience people not being as friendly you notice lines at gas stations that weren’t there before right and the problem is once you start to notice something like that once once your worldview is challenged in any way you will start to notice anomalies that were always there but you just paid no attention to this raises your anxiety level what does it mean I went out today and there was traffic and we don’t have traffic I live in this tiny town two-horse town there aren’t any people here so the fact that I couldn’t take a left-hand turn for a full minute was like a major like I was what is going on this is great it’s a minute I’m from Boston I’m used to like way longer but yeah I really it really freaked me out I was like why am I I don’t have to wait why are the cars coming in both directions at the same time it’s Armageddon I tried to get away from the yeah I’m whining literally over 60 seconds I’m not joking it’s rare to take 60 seconds take a left onto the main highway over here but but apparently it happens in the middle of the day so and that’s an anomaly that I noticed but it’s probably actually pretty normal I’m just not paying attention most times you know lots of factors to the weather that can get you all these signals from people any change any change in any sort of interaction can set you off down the anxiety path because once you notice it even if it’s something that has been happening all along but you didn’t notice it before you know by a blue car see blue cars everywhere that can really ramp up your anxiety and you won’t be necessarily fully aware of it in your head so it’s useful to tell people too if they’re being anxious to let them know hey yeah I get that you’re anxious you’re definitely anxious but you know there are reasons and here are the reasons then you can look for the reasons to go oh I see these people are signaling loudly their body language or their attitude or their you know sometimes people are just sort of like staying further away from you right that’s a common thing that people are keeping their distance they’re physically distancing it’s like oh that’s kind of off-putting like are they treating me as an enemy it’s gonna raise your anxiety level all these little things add up and people don’t notice them so it’s kind of worth worth to do that you know to to recognize that these things have a hold over you and just pointing it out may not be enough but but but it might be and it might help people and you know one thing to sort of ask yourself when you’re anxious is am I making narratives to explain simple things so I mentioned earlier there’s traffic I’m like oh my goodness there’s all this traffic what is going on but that happens like that happens right and so I don’t need to ask what is I can say oh there’s a little bit of traffic and and not worry about it right so another way in which you see people manifesting anxiety is you ask them a yes or no question and they did come up with this story is a dude no I’m just like literally like are you okay you can just say yes or no you don’t have to get like well you know the other day I was whoa whoa whoa why are you narrativizing simple things this is a sign of deep anxiety that you’re not processing correctly and you should notice if you’re doing it too but if other people are doing it if they’re teaching simple things and narrativizing them chances are they’ve got high anxiety and they’re just trying to over explain the world with no need and that’s one of the symptoms of anxiety especially anxiety we don’t recognize but look there’s reasons to be anxious we just have to manage it correctly so we’re not sort of trapped and we’re not getting constantly hijacked because it’s important that you take care of sort of the most valuable parts of you right and high anxiety will burn you out because it’s basically you know taking away from your agency by hijacking the most important parts of you in some sense while you’re doing something else which is always dangerous and those parts of you are the parts that I’m most grateful for you granting to me by watching my videos and that’s what you need to take the best care of which is your time and attention