Liberal Goes Full Fetal Position At Hillary’s Loss – Is Committed To Psych Ward

A great article here:

I found out Donald Trump had won the Electoral College while midstream in providing a urine sample for the emergency psychiatric staff of a New York City public hospital…

For the preceding witching hours of election night, I had lain in a fetal position amidst a cast of anonymous men nursing their own crises, my hands clasped tightly over my ears. It wasn’t that I minded the howls of the guy nearby who was shackled to his cot and monitored by an unimpressed brood of policemen. Instead, I wanted to spare myself any word of the far greater insanity unfolding beyond the hospital walls.

Drained of tears, too tired to sleep, I stared at the fluorescent ceiling lights —which, indifferent to our suffering, remained on throughout the night — and endured the passing time by willing my thoughts to vanish into the dull glow. For a second, I imagined someone would burst in and proclaim, “It’s all right, Hillary won!” and I would bound out of bed, awoken from this nightmare…

A while before, during the final hour of November 8, I had committed myself to institutional psychiatric care. A generation or two ago they would have said I was suffering a nervous breakdown: catatonic, plagued by involuntary jerking motions (my head furiously shaking “No! ”), speech patterns disjointed, weeping uncontrollably.

During the final hour of November 8, I had committed myself to institutional psychiatric care…
I tumbled from quite the perch of high expectations…

My fundraising scored me the hottest ticket in town: entrance to the VIP wing of the would-be election Victory Party at the Javits Center in Manhattan. (It has a glass ceiling!) I bounded into the space at 6 o’clock in a frolic of an outfit: a red belt, white skinny jeans, and a blue Hillary-as-Rosie-the-Riveter T-shirt, my hair lavishly coiffed into a confident pompadour.

At first the sprawling party was a lark. I hobnobbed and table hopped. I couldn’t wait for a catharsis 25 years in the making. My only concern was the inevitable hangover.

Then came the 9 o’clock hour…

“I want to die,” I replied.

Coping with stress is about two things, both of which this character failed to do.

First, accept reality unhesitatingly as soon as you are positive it is reality. Hillary lost. Accept it as a baseline, and reboot your amygdala with that as the baseline. This character kept waiting for someone to walk in and say, “Hillary actually won!” That is a very bad thing to do. Notice it is also the product of a psychology that is designed to expect free resources, to the point even the past losses can be rewound and turned into wins retroactively.

A large part of this is expecting victory, which turns a loss into a violation of expectation. If he had expected this loss to be his reality it would have been much less amygdala-hijacking.

The amygdala shuts off in response to a decision point passing, or at least it is supposed to work that way. As soon as a decision point passes and fate casts itself in stone, the amygdala should re-establish its baseline and look forward to the next decision point. Outside of learning lessons, the past holds no opportunity for you, and energy is best served focusing on the next opportunities.

Tom Brady drops a game as the Patriot’s QB? He doesn’t dwell on it. That game was lost. It happens. Learn what you can, and focus your amygdala on the next one. It is how things are designed to work. If Tom Brady kept in the back of his mind that maybe there would be a review of the game by the commissioners and they would overturn the loss, or maybe he could still win it by going back and appealing it – that all would stall his amygdala on the loss and prevent it from moving forward. That is stressful, for no purpose, at the very time your amygdala should be focused on your next opportunity. That is how you produce another loss, and a stressful life.

Second, feel the amygdala burn, and welcome it. When I encounter stress now, I stop, center myself, and focus on the feel. I welcome it like a good burn in the biceps, pumping them up, and making them grow in the future. I view it as pumping up my amygdala, to make me harder in the future. I embrace the stress, recognize its purpose, and recognize that the feeling of it is toughening me in ways other people are not tough. I think about how well I will handle more stress when it comes. By welcoming it and every facet of it, instead of fearing the idea of it, I reduce the load on the amygdala. I prevent the fast-forward effect which this character obviously entered, which ended with him actually thinking about killing himself to break a cycle where fear of amygdala produces more amygdala, activating more fear of amygdala, triggering even more amygdala and on and on. If you fear the amygdala hit, you make it ten times worse. Embrace it, and it will be defused.

Learn to hit pause when you are stressed, focus on the feel of the amygdala, and realize how that feeling signals your adaptability to the high-stress environment.

Welcome it, if for no other reason than it will help you to never be writing an article like this guy.

Spread r/K Theory because we need fewer mental patients voting in our elections

This entry was posted in Amygdala, Amygdala Hijack, Anxiety, Liberals, Politics, Psychological Manipulation, Psychology, rabbitry, Trump. Bookmark the permalink.
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7 years ago

[…] Liberal Goes Full Fetal Position At Hillary’s Loss – Is Committed To Psych Ward […]

James
James
7 years ago

AC: I don’t know if you are one person or many, but each day I see more postings from you than anyone else on your side of the Amygdala divide. And while I don’t agree with everything about r/K theory, I appreciate what I can verify with science. But, most of all, I appreciate the amount of work your site does in getting out an interesting and timely viewpoint. Thank you.

Theodoric of Elyssian
Theodoric of Elyssian
7 years ago

tom should have taken your advice about Deflate Gate 😛

Lovekraft
Lovekraft
7 years ago

I think what is lost on a lot of these people is the fact that they made a CHOICE in supporting their candidate. And in a society that minimize or eliminates the consequences of choices, their minds cannot correlate this fact. They want someone to make the choices for them, and when something goes wrong, due in part to their decision, they are at a loss.

Edenist Whackjob
Edenist Whackjob
7 years ago

You seem to know a lot about how the amygdala influences higher cognition. I’ve never seen anyone referring to how the amygdala influences thought processes on a higher level than fight-flight. Got any reading resources on that topic?

I’m not critical, just curious.

Edenist Whackjob
Edenist Whackjob
7 years ago

Oh, and that bit about feeling the burn is brilliant. Great self-help advice.

Edenist Whackjob
Edenist Whackjob
7 years ago

Btw, something I’ve thought about: the Scientology “tone scale” and how it relates to amygdala.

comment image

Covers pretty much all aspects of personality, including sexual likes and interpersonal honesty, things like that. Seems pretty clear to me that amygdala could be the key factor that this tone scale is mapping out.

Obvious disclaimer: Scientology is a cult, founded by a mythomanic sociopath, etc etc. It’s just that a lot of the ideas have some appeal to them.

Edenist Whackjob
Edenist Whackjob
Reply to  Edenist Whackjob
7 years ago

The worst person on the tone scale, if you ask me, would be the 1.1 – Covertly Hostile (aka Gamma in “game” theory):

http://www.whale.to/a/minshull_covert.html

Aesop
Aesop
7 years ago

“Second, feel the amygdala burn, and welcome it. When I encounter stress now, I stop, center myself, and focus on the feel. I welcome it like a good burn in the biceps………..Embrace it, and it will be defused.”

Great stuff AC. This really works when u remember to do it. Thanks for the reminder.

trackback
7 years ago

[…] diagnosing himself with “Post-Trump Stress Disorder.” Another Hillary volunteer was driven to a nervous breakdown after Trump won, while Girls creator and Clinton surrogate Lena Dunham suffered a meltdown on Election Night. […]

DirkH
7 years ago

“Second, feel the amygdala burn, and welcome it. When I encounter stress now, I stop, center myself, and focus on the feel.”

I’ve become a complete stoic over the years. What accelerated this was autogenous training. It reveals to you that you can control your impulses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autosuggestion

Edenist Whackjob
Edenist Whackjob
Reply to  DirkH
7 years ago

Do you mean “autogenic training”? Heard of that before. Got any good resources/stories to share?

Snaf
Snaf
7 years ago

I lean well toward K but I am disabled vet with bipolar that does not tolerate stress well any longer. In the moment, I will stand my ground with little to no real fear, but later I will be out cold with a nap, 12 hours of sleep, it varies depending on how much stress I was under and for how long.

What is going on with the amygdala response for someone like me?