Thread by @SaRoseCav

A person whose voice I truly respect reached out feeling a bit perplexed by what she saw as a dissonance in this new piece by me.

So a brief (hopefully?) thread addressing those points.

chronicle.com/article/will-m…

Namely, she felt like the first half (on avoidance) was written by someone she wouldn't tend to agree with, and echoed points from the #toxicrigor/anti-trigger-warning crowd.

But loved the second half, and thought it read like "me."

I think part of the dissonance is that it is a bit of a strange position to take, at the same time both pro- and anti-MH breaks.

Namely, I’m all for breaks of all sorts, and for creating structural change that support them.

For students, for faculty, for humans.

Chapter 3 of Monsters is all about embodied mental health, how much of mental health is grounded in rest & treating our bodies well.

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710950/m…

I want support for these breaks to be woven into the structures of our lives.

In the absence of that power, at least into the Windex (thanks @karenraycosta) of our pedagogy.

https://twitter.com/karenraycosta/status/1630598538605256705?s=20

...Building courses that allow for flexible choices and students to autonomously adjust and modulate their work based on the demands of their lives.

I want instructors to build these courses *of their own volition,* rather than have further administrative oversteps of policies and mandates into their teaching that don't respect their workload, positionality, or context.

chronicle.com/article/academ…

I advocate for this approach (INSTEAD of campus-wide, across-course, all-students mandates) for these reasons of scaffolding student autonomy and competence AND for respecting faculty autonomy, competence, and workload.

BUT...and here is where I'm sure my viewpoint diverges from some people I'm used to agreeing with on most topics teaching...

I do also worry quite a lot that these sorts of campus-wide, across-course, all-students mandate join some other forces that are messaging to all students that anxiety is always maladaptive and a signal to withdraw or avoid.

I have threefold concerns about this – scientific, lived experience, and (admittedly quite anecdotally) what I’m seeing among truly so many of the adolescents and college students in my social and academic circles.

Scientific – this isn’t one of those single-study, weakly-powered, poor-experimental-design, WEIRD sample one-offs.

Avoidance is clearly very bad news, & indeed perhaps even a crucial element in the trajectory of milder anxiety symptoms to growing difficulty and dysfunction.

Genetics & neuro research is really pointing in the direction of many mental health struggles (i.e., different diagnoses) having in common a propensity for frequent & intense negative affect, followed by withdrawal/avoidance, followed by impact on ability to live one’s life fully

A recent important review of this work:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

Lived experience – I’ve written about my lifelong coping with panic disorder quite a lot and Mind Over Monsters is one part memoir so I’ll leave that relatively unaddressed.

chronicle.com/article/the-be…

Social circles – I didn’t really want to write this essay.

I knew it would kick up my own social anxieties & fear of rejection, and possibly cause problems in some professional relationships.

But most of my social circle is in the late teen phase of parenting, & (yes, anecdotally) it seems like nearly every conversation I have these days is about these issues of avoidance & withdrawal. Symptoms are mild; avoidance is not.

It is so inescapable, and so dismaying to me

I also hear it from my students – very fixed mindsets about anxiety, a lot of hopelessness about managing their own internal states.

One student last semester presented an article on avoidance vs. engaged coping strategies…

psyche.co/ideas/set-your…

and led a *fascinating* class discussion in which she posed the idea that their shared generation largely uses avoidant coping strategies, and both the why & the implications of that.

I sat back and let them talk, and it was so illuminating.

We have worked so hard to budge the dial on mental health stigma and on social & emotional awareness, and it is working.

This is wonderful!

But I do worry that some of that messaging to young people in particular has inadvertently been read as = negative emotions are always problematic, and we should retreat when they occur.

Anxiety is never fun, no matter what its level. As I know all too well, these systems in overdrive can be paralyzing. But if we convey to all students that they should withdraw when they feel anxious, that is going to increase anxiety substantially over time.

In the individual, but also in the population.

I join @lfoulkesy in her worries here.

rigb.org/explore-scienc…

I have been so struck in writing Emotion & Motivation text how everything keeps coming back to the tension/interplay between biological/behavioral systems of approach and withdrawal.

How much common ground anxiety and motivation share.
harpercollins.com/products/futur…

I want us to focus on approach (again, with systems and classrooms of safety, belongingness, play, and even joy) rather than withdrawal.