The covid pandemic is still rather new and things will remain rather fluid for quite a while:
People with different genetic and physiological situations may be more or less susceptible to the virus than others.
Fear is not rational:
Graded exposure therapy is good for irrational fears, like a fear of flying:
You slowly escalate how much exposure you get to something - ex. for a fear of public speaking, you start with raising your hand at a staff meeting and then slowly escalate
As you get exposed to this stuff and nothing goes wrong, you slowly start to realize that you can survive in these situations you feared.
Would exposure therapy work with a fear of going outside, cos of the virus?
We have innate disgust mechanisms, which are rather powerful and help us survive.
The things we are going through are enforcing disgust and aversion practices
This will be difficult to unwind for everyone, particularly for certain personalities
There is risk, but (like other irrational fears) it doesn't benefit your life experience to have a lot of superstitious behaviour and a lot of conditioned practices associated with that, which are conditioning the process that is supporting the fear.
These behaviours start off as adaptive, useful processes that are protecting you from some unseen menace, but it's difficult to let them go later, when they have protected you before.
That's when it becomes superstitious.
Have you had people come to you wanting to give up (or take a vacation for a few weeks)
Yes. There are lots of memes online talking about "you don't have to be productive right now" etc.
This is valid to some people that are genuinely going through a huge amount of upheaval and tremendous uncertainty in their lives
But most people are just significantly inconvenienced
For those people that are just inconvenienced, this message resonates with their desire/inherent energy conservation circuits that everybody has (which gets people into the pleasure trap).
It gives them thoughts like "Oh, there is an excuse here that allows me to back away from competitive realities and, all things being equal, I should grab onto that, because that will save me energy in this competitive thing called life".
People don't recognize that in that process they are sabotaging their well-being a lot of the time
They are eroding their capacity to develop self-esteem
Self-esteem comes from a diligent progress towards an important goal.
So, if you've taken away the goal, you are really putting yourself into a situation where you're not giving you're not giving your own nervous system/your "internal audience" any positive feedback about your own progress in the world
This can lead to more feelings of helplessness, low self-efficacy, depression, more anxiety and everything you were trying to avoid by avoiding competition to start with.
The difference between self-esteem and self-confidence:
Even though people may not see it from the outside yet, you know the progress you've made - which fuels your self-esteem
Self-confidence has more to do with what can be seen from the outside.
When people are withdrawing from competition entirely and are just slacking off - which seem like a good idea for energy conservation - This is the same pleasure trap that you get into when your nervous system wants to eat crappy food
Your health and your happiness is sabotaged in this process
Self-esteem is the one thing that is most responsible in driving human happiness.
"This is not the time to ask much of yourself" - well, maybe, but it's also not the time to opt out of life either
This'll be context dependent, but most people are in a position to have internet etc., then should probably reflect on what meaningful progress they could be making towards improving their lives.
As a successful human, you are always in that process - if you're not in that process then you're not gonna be experiencing optimum happiness.
Would I have had as much self-esteem if I hired someone to clean out my garage, than doing it myself:
You might, but not if you weren't involved at all - in this case, you'd have the confidence, but not the self-esteem.
But if you oversaw the process and supervised etc. then it may feed your self-esteem
Specific tips for people to do when locked down in their homes to improve their self-esteem or confidence?
Everyone has some distance between where they are now and where they would like to be
Before the virus, you had some self-reflection on your goals and what you needed to do to improve your competitive station in life
People shouldn't suspend that now.
Competition still exists and the feedback mechanisms of your happiness are still very dependent on your place in that game.
Tell us about the pleasure trap and the role it plays during this particular time
A lot of people are giving themselves a free pass - "it's unreasonable to ask me to have healthy behaviours right now".
This was fine at the beginning when people were plunged into things, but if you're still in that place now, then your sabotaging your health and the self-esteem process.
It may feel like your doing the right thing, cos your nervous system is giving you all the feedback that this is necessary for survival.
At this point, it's really important to take stock of what your goals are and get yourself into a situation where you're making meaningful progress in your goals.
It seems like the most difficult thing to do is changing things when the only person that's watching is you
Social pressures are cited as the most common excuse for why people struggle with the pleasure trap - ex.: there is judgement or good food at the office etc. and that's why I haven't been able to make progress in my goals
But now it's just you - you don't have social pressure.
It comes down to what you really value - what are you really trying to do/change?
You need to have a pretty high level of compliance if you want to experience the benefits that ultimately shift the centre of balance and realize it's worth it.
But you can't know whether it's worth it until you've done it fully enough for long enough that you've felt the feedback that there is a benefit for doing this healthy thing
That's what's gonna convince you that it's worth it
So, now we replace the social pressures with new excuses like "home is chaotic right now" etc.
We're just replacing one excuse with another.
Anytime you are taken out of your standard life, it's a very disruptive situation and it forces your mind to run a couple of cost-benefit analyses on what's the best use of your time.
If you don't have an environment that is going to ease those decisions into the right direction, you're gonna go in the wrong direction.
In situations like now, when you've been disrupted, you're gonna hunt for a dopamine drip on the lowest branch you can find.
So, it's a question of "So, that happened. Now what do we do to confront this reality and get ourselves back into a self-esteem stoking process where we can move forward with our lives"
Rather than justifying it as something that is beyond your control, because it is in your control.
How would different personalities respond to the pleasure trap in lockdown?
This'll manifest particularly around conscientiousness (wishing to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly) and emotional instability
People with less conscientiousness will struggle more with compliance and need a particularly structured environment
Unstable personalities are more prone to celebrating and medicating with food in general.
Those that are super open with regard to their food choices will require lots of variety and novelty - they'll get regular orders of food delivered, as their seeking that variety, particularly if they are lower conscientious or relatively unstable.
Some of the higher conscientious people are leaping into the opportunities - taking advantage of the situation and that they have complete control over their food environment.
The advice hasn't really changed:
Know thyself and where your likely liabilities are with reference to this problem
Then alter your environment to compensate for whatever deficiencies you have in your personalities
You may have to revisit your environment, given the new reality
Figure out where the pitfalls are. Be honest with yourself - is it your openess? is it your lack of conscientiousness?
There will be some way for you to reverse engineer that environment and make it more protective for who you are and an opportunity for you to thrive and get back to progress on those goals.
Do the hyper-normal stimuli alter the motivations? (ex.: "Now my health goals are not so important, cos the food is so good")
That's the pleasure trap!
New environments bring new equilibria, which bring new rituals - people have gotten into a new groove and now they've conditioned that process (condition cram)
The condition cram is 2 parts:
Built-in capacity/interest humans have to get into (Calorie) rich food - cos it's ancestrally rare to get rich food.
When you repeatedly have rich food (doesn't take long, just a few times is sufficient), you're teaching your nervous system to associate the environmental cue and the behaviour.
Once you build that association, craving kicks in:
Craving is just the compensatory response your nervous system mounts against the unnatural process of the cram
The only way to get out of this conditioning is to:
Break it by force
Go through the withdrawals (usually takes between 3-5 days for people)
All things equal, the more moving parts you have (like kids vs. no kids) that this situation has disrupted in your life, the more difficulty you will have re-constructing that environmental equilibrium
If you're trying to find new ways to get along and organizing your daily life, it creates more fatigue on the system, which takes you further and further out of your groove.
Of course, there are personality effects as well:
Ex.: If you're low conscientious and part of your routine to stick to your goals was packing your lunch for work - if all that structure is gone now, then you'll need to make more decisions per day
The more decisions you try to make per day, the more times you try to count on your willpower to do the right thing - the more you set yourself up for failure.
But the pleasure trap doesn't speak willpower
The only thing that counteracts the pleasure trap is structural change and structural environmental protection - "You can't get sober working in a bar"
Environment is the only defense against the pleasure trap.
The more you're counting on your willpower to effect change for you, the more you are setting yourself up for failure.