Their fault. They removed all the real stressors but didn’t give us brains that can cope with not being stressed. Now we have to pull stress out of thin air—or grapefruit.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Grapefruit method?
Your ancestors would be panicking worse at the grocery store, they couldn’t possibly conceive of something like a refrigerator.
no they definitely could, people in the past would try to figure out how stuff worked and if they couldn't they chalked it up to magic and went on with their day.
remember that for most of human history people genuinely and whole-heartedly believed magic was real and it wast just a part of daily life.
This just reminded me of a moment I had, years ago.
I was so stressed from work, working on my 6th burnout for the year.
I was meant to be getting stuff for dinner from the supermarket.
I had money, that wasn't the issue. But I didn't have a shopping list. My partner and I had just briefly discussed myself 'picking up something' on my way home.
I was paralyzed. My thoughts wouldn't align or connect. I couldn't think of any dinner option we'd ever had. So I couldn't configure a shopping list in my head. I think I stood in the canned vegetable aisle and just stared ahead, trying not to cry.
I ended up sitting on a bench in the middle of the shopping centre trying to write a list on my phone. Eventually I had to call my partner and tell him I wasn't okay and he needed to come get me.
Long story lacking events I know. But this meme made me think. Short of family emergency/death of loved ones, work is the only thing that has placed that kind of stress on me. Even in grief I have a sense of one foot in front of the other for any particular task. But burn out made me immobile. Completely saturated my brain and made it stop working.
Our brains aren't built for that. They shouldn't be.
My wife works a high-stress job. Every day I make sure to tell her to please don't take anything that happens today (at work) too seriously. It's just a day job. I worry about how it's going to affect her in her old age. Some days, after work, you'd swear she's been chased by bear or something.
See my above response. It's honestly not helpful advice sometimes.
Often the only answer is quitting/doing something completely different. And that often isn't possible for people.
well that's very specifically why you're having a panic attack in a grocery store: we're evolved to handle occasional clearly defined threats like hungry lions, so when we're then instead exposed to constant low-level threats that we can't do shit about, our brains frazzle out.
We're constantly running at threat level: wolf-fight imminent. Its just we don't know where the wolf we're supposed to fight is. And it stresses us out
I'm pretty sure they'd be proud and confused
"Wow, look at the amount of food our descendant can choose from. They'll never go hungry. Look they're even shaking with excitement in the cereal aisle. Huh, they're crying while standing in front the boxes. Must be tears of joy. And now they've fallen over and curled up in a ball... Weird."
"I think they're having a panic attack."
"What? Why?"
"I think they can't decide which cereal to buy."
"But there's so many to pick from, they can just grab any one of them and be set."
"Yeah I think that may be the problem, they got stuck deciding which one to grab and shut down."
"But they can just grab any of them."
"But what if they grab the wrong one?"
"I don't understand."
"Don't worry, they don't either."
- Based on a true story (I didn't know they made a new kind of Honey Bunches of Oats and it broke me once)
skill issue
There's a good chance some of your ancestors became cat food. They probably understand stress
I'm pretty sure as they were fighting wild animals, they were all Y'know, this sucks. Let's invent things so our children's children never have to fight wild animals just to live.
I guarantee 30 mins in walmart with me, and I'd have made the first serial killer when I send them back.
The grocery store is not my friend. I feel this meme.