Are the media justified in how they raise concerns regarding different science?

motivation, addiction, and social anxiety

• I’m looking for advice regarding motivation, addiction, and social anxiety as applied to me. Therefore I will provide the following background information that I feel is relevant. I am 19, male, a college junior, living alone off-campus, studying Computer Science. I have long had mild social anxiety (my anxiety being a function of the number of people present and how well I know them). I am exceptionally bright (IQ~130, SATs 1500 to quantify it). I also have a tendency to get addicted to things for short(short in days but not in hours) periods of time (things being television, computer games, programming, etc.). I have not gotten addicted to anything harmful but it may be notable that my father was an alcoholic (who admirably hasn’t touched a drink in 18 years). I find it easy to preemptively avoid addictive behavior (like by not owning a television) but hard to stop once I started (an example of which being I decided to read for a little while this afternoon to take a brief break from work and did not stop my break until I finished the book slightly after when I normal go to bed). I often have difficulty motivating myself to do school work. I believe my lack of motivation/procrastination is encouraged by my abilities to learn months of class work the night before a deadline or exam (I do well with independent study and strict and frequent deadlines….unfortunately I have been hard pressed to find independent study programs that feature deadlines, none surely with deadlines that would make me have to work consistently). In high school, I knew all my classmates (all 40 of them) so social anxiety was rarely a problem. The material in high school was easy enough that my procrastination never caught up with me and left me plenty of time for me to be addicted to innocuous things. Now in college I face large groups of people I don’t know frequently (my class size being raised from 40 to 10,000). I still, as of yet, have not been “punished” by a course for my procrastination although I feel I will soon meet my match. I also have been having doubts about my major (loving programming but not logic) which hasn’t helped on the motivational front. Hence, I have been experiencing more inner conflict as of late. I seek help to motivating myself; to avoid addiction “in the moment” and to feel comfortable in situations that would raise my social anxiety. Knowing from past successful dieting, I tend to react well to discrete monitoring of related factors (in that case merely recording daily weight and exercise in excel spreadsheets and charts). I have considered writing a program to monitor my general activities, but my initial attempts at writing the program alternatively met with addictive concentration or procrastination, hence to produce my solution I had to solve my problem first, a paradox I haven’t remedied. In your answer I look for your advice rather than links to pure information (as it is hard to filter information regarding oneself without either falling prey to denial or to falsely apply symptoms to yourself upon reading them…a man who is his on psychologist is more a fool then the proverbial lawyer). Whether my problems sound serious enough to warrant seeking a psychologist or that a different forum would be better to voice these concerns in, may be part of your answer.

• Answer:

  You're describing me (a few years ago)! While I can't be said to have "solved" the problem, I do have some hopefully helpful suggestions for you. First off, about once a month go do something completely out of character. You might find something you actually like, and the worst that will happen is that you will waste your time and not have fun but it sounds like you're having a hard time being productive anyway, so this won't be much of a loss! One of the hard parts about breaking a habit like this is that your behavior patterns are reinforced by the few people you do know fairly well, so throwing yourself in an unfamiliar situation, with unfamiliar people, can be liberating. It's also a little scary, and most of the time isn't fun but you'll surprise yourself at least once. Order something you wouldn't dream of at a restaurant. Go to a club (I'm back from my first club experience - still buzzing from second-hand nicotine and THC). Pick a random campus event and go say hi. Be friendly. It will be forced and people will probably notice there's something a little off about you, but keep at it. If things go badly, remember that nobody there knows you and you can try something else later. Take an acting class. Second, figure out what motivates you. For me, using something I dread doing as a motivator is sometimes effective - by putting off the horrible thing, I assuage my procrastinating side, and can usually force myself to do something else I need to get done in lieu of that. Schedule your assignments and whatnot so you have deadlines a few days apart to minimize the problem of not being able to get 2 big projects done at the last minute. Third, interrupt yourself. If you have a habit of banging on something until it's done, set a timer. If you've got a palm pilot, there's an application called Big Clock (IMHO one of the best-designed Palm app UIs I've seen) that you can set to beep in 10 minutes. And 10 minutes later. And 10 minutes later. And 10 minutes later. Fourth, cultivate friendships. If you don't make friends quickly, you won't have very many casual friends. But that certainly does not mean you cannot have a few very close friends. Ask some of your more outgoing friends to take you places (see suggestion 1). (I can add more suggestions if you would like, but I think these are plenty to overwhelm you for a while. Ask if you need more!) Nth, be patient! You have spent 19 years becoming the person you are; do not expect to change in 19 days. If you're lucky you will see noticeable improvement in one area after 19 weeks. More likely, you will notice a year or two from now that you aren't the same person you were then and lots of things have changed. At 19, you're trying to figure out how to be an adult, and what adult to be - let that process work its magic but try to help it along by trying new things. And try to be happy. If you feel good spending 9 hours straight reading a novel then do that. Sure, it's reinforcing your addictive behavior but denying yourself all activities that take more than 2 hours will just make you a warped person - try to do your reading with the expectation that it will take 9 hours, and plan for it appropriately. These are, I suppose, fairly obvious suggestions. But take heart - they do work. -Haversian