GHDR Report 03/03: Blunting Fear and Anxiety

Happy Groundhog Resolutions Report Day! In the last post, I made a big list of questions and directives that would guide this year’s quest to become both happier and financially secure by creating stuff that I think is cool. However, there has been this nagging feeling I might not be capable of doing it.

It’s been almost two decades of me trying to make progress on this goal in one form or another, and I still find it extremely difficult and mentally draining. If this was really what I want to do, shouldn’t I feel more motivated? Shouldn’t it feel easier?

So bothersome and demoralizing. Let’s take another whack at fixing this.

The Underlying Premise Behind GHDR

Underneath all my complicated GHDR-ing, my Big Goal is simply:

1. to be happier and financially secure
2. by creating things I think are cool

This is the Holy Grail for many people compelled to invest time and money into creating something that didn’t exist before. The desire to make a living from this is not universal, but I am one of those people who believe it would work better for me because I don’t fit neatly into employment situations.

But I digress. I started this year by askings questions that I hoped would help me catch a glimpse of a path to the Big Goal. However, I am starting to fear that it is beyond my capabilities. The historical data supports this, as I find it extremely difficult to self-motivate.

This leads to this lamentation:

Naming Sticky Points

After getting that off my chest, I think that I’m facing at least two smaller lamentations:

• Fear: I am afraid to be myself, because I think that pushes people away.
• Frustration: Why am I not motivated? I can do the work, but I don’t.

These are not new lamentations. Since 2007 or so, I have applied rational self-examination and experimentation; this is what GHDR has been about for most of its history. It has greatly helped me to “know myself”, but it has not helped me that much in breaking out. The two lamentations remain stubbornly sticky, and at this point I don’t think they will go away.

In recent years, I’ve shifted to emotional care in my GHDR strategizing. My sticky points NOT rational. I simply feel this way, and it’s a byproduct of how lived experiences shaped my outlook on life. While a lot of that experience has been good, there have been chronic bad things that created a state of mind where annoying lamentations can move in.

Getting Specific about Motivation

Without getting into the hoary details of my past, I think there are two active but largely subconscious demotivators operating deep in my psyche.

• I am afraid that I am socially isolated because of the way I am; not expressing myself is the safe option.
• I am afraid that nothing I do matters or grants meaningful reward; doing nothing is the default option.

These are listed separately but are deeply intertwined with each other. With the benefit of hindsight, I can say that everything I have ever done that was worthwhile was because other people were genuinely interested and engaged with what we were doing. In other words, we were all intimated engaged with the outcome. Everything I have learned the hard way has come from being embedded with a group of similarly-motivated and committed people.

Rephrasing this,I can not “self-motivate” unless I have “like-minded people” around me. Again with the benefit of hindsight, what I thought was successful self motivation was actual due writing for an audience. My GHDR practice is a commitment I made to myself because I thought other people might find it useful. Writing publicly on the Internet scratches the itch to share. Receiving any kind of response at all created energy that made it feel worthwhile.

Getting Specific about Autonomy

Self motivation is important because I have to produce stuff that I can exchange for money to live. I want enough money to give myself freedom and autonomy; this is more important to me than social status through competition. However, I am also a neurodivergent person with a constellation of autistic traits. I’m also transgender. And a third-culture missionary kid that grew up overseas. And a minority both in my home country and my ethnic homeland.

I think it is safe to say I am different in a lot of fundamental ways, but this may not push people away in the way I think it does. Hmm!

There is a developing Autism-related neurotype called Persistent Demand Avoidance (PDA). While it doesn’t apply to everyone on the spectrum, the traits fit me extremely well. So, this I think is worth digging into more.

What I find interesting about PDA is that it’s said to stem from anxiety. I can see how my lamentations relate to anxieties that might be a root cause of my demand avoidance.

My current theory is that for divergent system thinkers like myself, autonomy simply means being able to support yourself under conditions that make you thrive as your own self. My two lamentations are in the way of that. Perhaps I can devise an experiment to see if they are the source of my avoidance behavior and demotivation.

Here’s a cognitive behavioral therapy-ish approach to my anxiety about connection:

And here’s a mitigation that combats the executive dysfunction that comes from my PDA traits by acknowledging that I need* external governance in the form of connection.

GHDR Goal Amendments for March

For this month’s GHDR initiative, I want to address the underlying anxiety that I think underpins both the social fear and my form of motivation.

To test whether deep-seated anxieties can be weakened by new positive experiences of connection:

As for the action plan for March to April, I need to put myself in places where sharing is possible:

Relaunching the Design Business is Still Going!

That said, I still have to relaunch my design business. In particular, I want to get the new store listings up for existing and new products, then hook up all the ecommerce stuff. I’ll adapt this to the PDA experiment by not planning the whole thing out as I have done in the past. While such planning looks impressive and makes me feel competent, all it does is create more stuff that I want to avoid doing because PDA DUH. Making more stuff for me to do is like stabbing myself in the leg repeatedly, expecting that I’ll be motivated to run. Ugh.

So that is the other focal point this month. This gives me two main tasks, which is very compatible with my Two Slot / Aux modelThis is based on the idea that in a single day, I only been able to focus on two separate projects, as they are comprised of many small decisions and drain my attention+discipline quickly. And then there is all the other stuff that just happens. The two slots+aux model page goes into the details. for preventing overload.

Many of the directives I listed in the February 14 Kickoff still apply. I can trust myself to apply them. The hard part, as always, is getting unmired from my persistently pathological demand avoidance.

Thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to testing these ideas and reporting back!

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