Michael McMahon

One way to build up your resistance to arachnophobia might be to start small and habituate yourself to more innocuous looking insects beforehand. Indeed the attached images makes me look somewhat timid compared to those who can handle spiders and snakes in their hands! If you can touch a snail's shell then you can try increasing your confidence by touching their slimy body. A ladybird looks endearing even though they're a real insect when they open their stylish wings.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/ancailinrua.com/2014/01/03/donal-walsh-and-suicide-whats-missing-from-the-debate-and-where-do-we-go-from-here/amp/ Maybe if you’ve a personal relationship with the patient where you know the advice will be well-received then it might not be a bad attitude. Expressing a cheerfully optimistic and mischievously stoic sentiment to overcome your difficulties could help if it was in a very friendly context. But in my opinion the risk is that it depends on the tone of the statement. It might be misunderstood in a busy environment with innumerable interactions between staff and patients. Remember there are countless psychiatric hospitals and patients in any country. Adopting this confident mindset as official policy could create an unnecessarily tense or awkward atmosphere in certain situations.

Yes that’s true. That species looks mysterious and intriguing. Although if I met one of them dancing on the footpath where there was pulsating trance vibes in the background, then I might find the brainwashing music creepy but not the spider!

Wow that’s inspiring how you recovered from encountering such a huge species of spider. I’d almost be tempted to avoid countries like Brazil and Australia in case I meet their ginormous insects! But if I’d a free ticket I’d still go for the sun and scenery! Maybe there are traces of critical periods where being familiar with such insects from a young age can lessen fear.

That’s interesting. Maybe seeing other people being unafraid of spiders can be reassuring. Although the image below unsettles me. It’s ironic given that the big spiders are sometimes harmless compared to the poisonous bites of smaller ones. Yet the fact it’s bigger than a hamster immediately and subconsciously makes me compare the spider to a small mammal. I’m accustomed to viewing pets like hamsters as marginally sensory though in a non-rational, pain-free and non-memorising way. Increasing the scales of an average spider by a few dozen is disconcerting because it’s no longer fly-like and I’ve to momentarily reassess the insect. The weirdness of the insect compared to the shape of a little mammal potentially creates cognitive dissonance. Maybe I could view a hamster as thoroughly insentient to minimise my aversion to similar sized insects! Although then it’d be difficult to understand a spectrum of awareness from a hamster to a rabbit and so forth. I’ve seen mice and even rats on forest trails without them bothering me. Rats may have dangerous micro-organisms as seen during medieval times in the bubonic plague. Perhaps that could be another factor of our hesitation towards spiders and snakes where our evolved immune system might unconsciously bias us against unusual creatures. Personally I’m not creeped out much by rats. But I can understand how the contrast within a rat’s morphology is strange. Some of the rat resembles a harmless hamster while the elongated tail is like a worm or a little snake. The problem is there’s quite a gulf between our interpretation of whatever life is in a hamster and a worm.

Some criticism of suicide is generalised. It includes other confusing issues that aren't directly relevant towards voluntary self-initiated suicide itself. Therefore we've to disentangle each topic. Firstly there's the allegation that vulnerable people could be pressured by ill-intentioned people into suicide. The trouble I have with this argument is that mental health services extend beyond those with severe mental illnesses. Therefore any disabled or elderly person that was hypothetically being bullied into suicide would be equally entitled to attend counselling services. Psychologists can obviously work with mental health difficulties arising in both able-bodied and disabled people. Secondly assisted-suicide and euthanasia are separate to the debate on suicide itself. What I will say is that assisted suicide actually reminds me of self-defence policy more than euthanasia. For example, knives and guns are banned in hospitals for security reasons rather than solely suicide prevention. Therefore providing someone with a weapon for suicide which is legal to own at home isn't the same as euthanasia. After all the person is always free not to use the weapon on themselves. Therefore the difference between assisted suicide and self-suicide appears to be just the availability of lethal instruments. One might argue that taking lethal medication is quicker and less intimidating than other forms of suicide. Although all death is equally painful and really the different methods of suicide are just variations on the spectrum of pain intensity and duration. I can only guess that a quick death will be momentarily excruciating while a slow death is less severe but more prolonged. The only possible risk I can think of with assisted suicide is one of tone where a person wasn't sufficiently encouraged to live. However this is subjective and dependent on the patient's specific personal situation and of those around them. I don't see a slippery slope with assisted suicide because the patient is free not to use the weapon as I've said previously. I'm not necessarily advocating assisted suicide and my initial post was about suicide prevention. Perhaps a caveat I might have with euthanasia is that the mind and subconscious might have ways to slowly adapt to extreme physical impairment. So in my opinion a baby born with severe disability or a non-verbal patient can't really automatically be said to be in unbearable pain. Besides that point I'm a bit unsure at the moment and am neither advocating euthanasia nor particularly opposed to voluntary forms of euthanasia. https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/euthanasia-and-newborn-infants Just to mention that the assisted suicide debate might be germane to patients who are fully decided on suicide while euthanasia is often discussed in the context of paralysis where the person has physical difficulty with the action of suicide.

Supposedly it would be harder to move with 8 legs than 4. They’re moving chaotically while arachnophobes might misinterpret their motion as if they were moving intentionally. We mistakenly think it takes more conscious willpower for a spider to move than a quadruped when in reality they’re moving deterministically and automatically. That mismatch might create a creepy vibe.

I’m not disputing a functional fear of venomous insects. Humans originated in Africa and then migrated around the globe. Spiders are poisonous in southern Africa. The Sahara has dangerous vipers and cobras. So perhaps a fear of them is ingrained through primordial human evolution. Yet spiders and snakes have been harmless for millennia in temperate climate zones like Ireland where there are no snakes. So over time the initial physical, defensive fear has morphed into a creepy vibe. We can get angry if a pet dog bites and hit back in deterrence yet we don’t have the same frustrated sensation with insects. Hence a survivable insect bite could still induce a disproportionate amount of stress.

“Overall, schizophrenia is about 3.6 times as common among people with autism as it is in controls, the researchers found.” https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/schizophrenia-prevalence-may-threefold-higher-people-autism/ Some symptoms of schizophrenia: “Delusions. Hallucinations. Disorganized thinking (speech). Extremely disorganized or abnormal motor behavior. Negative symptoms.” Some symptoms of autism: Abnormal Tone of Voice Avoidance of Eye Contact or Poor Eye Contact Behavioral Disturbances Deficits in Language Comprehension Inappropriate Social Interaction Intense Focus on One Topic Lack of Empathy Problems With Two-Way Conversation Repeating Words or Phrases I notice that the symptoms of schizophrenia are superficially the opposite of autism; as if they were at opposing ends of a spectrum. For example the disorganised thinking style in schizophrenia contrasts with the obsessive and intense focus in autism. A complex word salad is wholly different to repeating simple words and phrases. I’m wondering if autism has a lowered understanding of mental empathy then is it like schizophrenia has an excess of that empathy? It might be as if a schizophrenic patient can project their mind too easily on their environment and attach themselves to strange beliefs. So then it’d be understandable that variations in that spectrum would result in hybrid symptoms like the link above. I’m not an expert so I don’t know. I understand empathy in this medical sense is all about a self-aware theory of mind and not the usual sense of the word concerning the morality of someone’s behaviour.

(This is an extract from a piece I wrote elsewhere. I only intended to write an improvised paragraph but more ideas kept coming to me. I didn’t research anything. Could someone tell if anything I said makes genetic sense or if it’s wrong!?) As I said before nonphysical doesn’t mean nonlogical. If something was spiritually created that doesn’t translate to “anything goes”. It doesn’t mean that it was created by a particular God at a specific time for this stated prophetic reason. Nonphysical doesn’t mean nonobjective and subjective either. Much like the existence of eternal hell for nonbelievers can still be defeated solely on logical grounds of disproportionality without even having to rely on materialistic arguments, the same would hold true for other nonphysical issues. So nonphysical claims would require probabilistic evidence and logical deductions of some kind which can in theory be open to philosophical rebuttal. So I don’t think the concept of impersonal or spiritual intelligence is completely out of bounds. I’m not endorsing anything in specific and I know the issue is fraught with controversy and theistic bias. I’m not an expert in this area. All I’m saying is that it might turn out that there was slight mystery in how it all began; be it the origin of life or the Big Bang... Non-human species are not rational and introspective. At best some species show limited self-awareness like being able to identify themselves in a mirror. So a sentient lion can be motivated to survive by the hedonistic impulses of eating tasty zebras and reproduction even though it’s non-rational. But some species are not only non-rational but also lack both self-interest and consciousness. When you’re in an endless forest it can feel spiritual in the way the trees are neither dead like a rock or alive like an animal; as if they were created like an art piece. A tree or an insect is a biological entity but it’s inert and can hardly be said to be motivated by its own survival. It only survives because of its hardwired genetic instructions. So that begs the question of what motivated the genes? To say that the genes want to survive because any genetic blueprint that didn’t want to survive was simply killed off seems circular and far-removed from technological modelling. We’d never say an airplane was built that way because all other designs crashed the plane. Think of an insect’s exoskeleton or the outer bark of a tree: any internal organ change would require simultaneous changes in the outer layers to accommodate a change in size. Animal organs are so complex that minor alterations would likely need a cascade of changes in its interdependent systems... No I’m not saying that evolution is wrong or that survival of the fittest isn’t involved; but maybe there’s mysterious ingredients and extra processes that we’re not familiar with. People can change their own physique through mental effort like dieting and exertion so for all we know there could even be an element of self-design where the changing mental attributes of an animal had a trickledown effect over the millennia on its nervous system and physical structure. If a cheetah knew it must get faster to chase down more agile prey, could that subconscious information eventually affect the genetics of its offspring? If our conscious mind can somehow move our body then the same would be true in a residual way for a non-rational mind. In a metaphorical way they’d have created themselves out of the endless abyss of existence. For instance it’s not inconceivable that their nervous system could subconsciously simulate desired movements which could affect their future progeny. Hypothetically that specific process wouldn’t be externally designed by random mutation or God but their own self-design. I’m not sure how a holistic theory could be tested; unless there were genes that somehow worked by suppressing previous genes in order to limit the complexity. Or else if there were genes that functioned like digital tracers that mimic the outpouring of conscious information at certain bodily locations and in doing so continuously tracks the growth of the organism. The genes would be like multidimensional shapes or geometrical coordinates that can open or close. They’d selectively release and close off growth and supplies of information. Therefore if the genes continuously modified the expanding growth of an animal that might imply the genes have more information than the initial blueprint would imply. Although I’m unsure what a biological version of a status report back to the genes to give updates on the development would look like. Another way to put it is where the genes had some self-awareness of spatial volume and the passage of time which would allow it to alter the gene activation in response to the environment. Are the specific genes being used wholly determined from the outset of the organisms creation or is there any display of feedback while the work is in progress to vary the genes that are employed? For instance the map of the Empire State building that shows all of it’s rooms, structure and content will be immense because of the sheer size of the building. But the instruction manual that shows the stages of how to build each section of the empire state building should be exponentially larger than that final map we just mentioned. After all it’s harder to construct something than it is to observe the finished piece. So if the genes only had slightly more information than the final phenotype that would again be an indicator of hidden simulated information. I’ll give a warning to say I haven’t fully investigated the above statements and my intuitions might be wrong. I’m not a geneticist so I wouldn’t know where you’d have to look. I understand there’s aspects we don’t fully understand yet like epigenetics and mysterious junk DNA. Is junk DNA chaotic, unintelligible rubbish or primordial rough work that’s so complicated we can’t understand it. When I said the endless abyss of existence I perhaps meant it in the notion of an infinite absurdity.

I think people are often afraid of spiders or snakes but not always both. These species are very different from each other so they’re usually not equally frightening. I’ve had to capture so many spiders around the house that I’m no longer too frightened by them. I can begin to appreciate their eccentric nature at a distance. But if they come close I confess I’d be very alert. I’ve never had much aversion to images of snakes. They just remind me of a large version of lizards. That picture is one I took abroad on holidays. Although I’ve never seen them in real life so I can’t say for certain how I’d respond. I get wry amusement when friends get scared of snakes on TV but I know that’s hypocritical because if I ever saw an actual tarantula I’m sure I’d be intimidated!

I don’t know. Maybe a sadist wants to feel like they own and possess whoever they intend to belittle. An extreme example is the violence displayed in slavery movies where it seemed both sadistic in terms of megalomania and psychopathic with regard to the exploitation.

Yes that’s certainly true. Being grateful and humble is indeed virtuous. I suppose an example of what a little bit of arrogance might be is if someone were to correct your sentence online by saying “as Phi alluded to”! (joke) One way we are limited is that we can’t always control the outcome of a particular course of action. We sometimes have to be adaptable in order to update and revise our plans if anything goes wrong or to retry something we failed at. Patience can be challenging sometimes. The ends don’t always justify the means! So perhaps we have to somehow try to balance a process oriented approach in the present moment with those general goals that we’re trying to achieve in the long-term. “A process person finds the joy in the journey, not the destination for example. A process person also emphasizes the importance of the discernment or discussion over the outcome... An outcome person tends to focus on the destination instead of the journey. An outcome person emphasizes the final decision as more important than the steps taken to achieve the outcome decision.” -igrc

“For pride to work, it must be paired with humility — a humility to know that no matter our skill set, each of us depends on what others have to offer. Since none of us can be an expert in all areas, we must be humble enough to recognize that we cannot be great at everything; there will be times when we need to rely on others. People who follow this advice are the ones for whom pride, like gratitude and compassion, becomes a virtue, not a vice.” https://ideas.ted.com/pride-can-be-a-virtue-but-it-needs-to-be-the-right-kind-of-pride/amp/ I sometimes view the words pride and humility to be like a qualifier phrase. So whether pride and humility are virtues or vices would depend on what exactly it is that you’re being proud or humble about. If someone is proud about an evil crime, then pride is obviously a vice in that instance. But I notice the odd time in movies that to make a villain more relatable they endow the character with a sort of nihilistic edge; as if the character had a distorted and warped version of humility. Overall I think it’s good and encouraging to be humble and occasionally it can be acceptable to be proud about something or other. “Qualifiers and intensifiers are words or phrases that are added to another word to modify its meaning, either by limiting it (He was somewhat busy) or by enhancing it (The dog was very cute).” -writingcenter.unc.edu “There’s millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and we’re a speck on one. That’s us; lost in space. A cop, you, me: who notices?” Tom Cruise justifies his job as a hitman by way of nihilistic apathy in the movie “Collateral”.

“Isometric exercise is a type of low-impact exercise that involves straining your muscles without moving or bending your joints. A prime example is holding your body in a plank position – you stay at the top of a push up without bending your elbows. Isometric exercises are good for maintaining your strength and stability. For instance, if you train by doing a plank pose, it can help you hold a plank position for an extended period of time, but won't necessarily help you do more pushups. Isometric exercise is often recommended for people who arerecovering from an injury, or who suffer from joint pain like arthritis. Evidence is growing that isometric exercise may help lower blood pressure as well.” https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.insider.com/what-is-the-difference-between-isometric-isotonic-and-isokinetic-exercises%3famp Exercise is healthy for us even though the exertion can get strenuous or tiring. So it’s counterintuitive that something good for us in the long-term can be painful in the short-term. But the self-sustaining biological body would innately know this concept as it’s designed from evolution to protect us. So I think it’s logically possible for the body to involuntarily self-induce pain of this kind in order to recover from or prevent an injury and to better withstand the ageing process. The body itself could consciously simulate the intense pain of exercise without the external stimuli. “Some bodyweight exercises have been shown to benefit not just the young, but the elderly as well. Older people undertaking bodyweight exercises benefit through increased muscle mass, increased mobility, increased bone density, decreased depression and improved sleep habits.” - Wikipedia

I think muscle strength is inherently related to maximum heart rate. For example, if someone injured or weakened their legs then they won’t ever be able to exert themselves to the same extent. But if they can’t exert themselves as much, then their maximum heart rate has been effectively reduced because they won’t be able to run as hard in the future. So this relationship is of an indirect nature. The runner vs sprinter comment is an analogy for how the body might be inadvertently weak in one area but strong in another. The difference is that running is voluntary pain that stops as soon as the race is over while chronic pain is involuntary and more prolonged. “To best sustain endurance activity, two systems must be effectively coordinated: ventilation and locomotion. Evidence has long suggested that these two mammalian rhythms are linked, yet determinants and implications of locomotor–respiratory coupling (LRC) continue to be investigated.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40362-014-0020-4 It’s quite a long article but it demonstrates a connection between breathing patterns and walking speed.

“The lumbar spine, or low back, is a remarkably well-engineered structure of interconnecting bones, joints, nerves, ligaments, and muscles all working together to provide support, strength, and flexibility. However, this complex structure also leaves the low back susceptible to injury and pain... The low back supports the weight of the upper body and provides mobility for everyday motions such as bending and twisting... Chronic back pain. Usually defined as lower back pain that lasts over 3 months, this type of pain is usually severe, does not respond to initial treatments, and requires a thorough medical workup to determine the exact source of the pain.” https://www.spine-health.com/conditions/lower-back-pain/lower-back-pain-symptoms-diagnosis-and-treatment A lot of our body weight is held upright by unconscious muscles in the back and hip region. We don’t feel how much energy they exert compared to our legs. So when we walk and run, we aren’t fully aware of the extra power that’s supplied by these concealed muscles to keep us erect. So when these muscles get weaker with age, people will have to exert themselves relatively harder to compensate for their increased effective upper body weight. Athletics may seem to be different than the weakness of ageing but ultimately all physical pain has as its source the basic need to move the body and maintain all of its systems against the various stresses and demands.

“To become a sprinter or a long distance runner, different muscle groups need to be trained in the body and there is a clear distinction between their physical appearances. A sprinter’s body is built for speed and power while the marathoner is built for long and slow endurance.” https://finishermag.com/running/can-a-sprinter-run-a-marathon/ Both sprinters and marathon athletes are great at running. Both have the requisite psychological endurance. But even if a marathon runner had the mental resilience to run a short intense record-breaking sprint, they still wouldn’t be able to do that because the two disciplines require contradictory physical attributes. The human body can’t efficiently adapt to the opposing demands. Maybe by actively reducing and weakening the contradictory muscular attribute, the body could passively and effortlessly improve a separate physical feature.

“(Proverb) A chain is only as strong as its weakest link: An organization is only as strong or powerful as its weakest person.” If something further down the kinetic chain is injured or weakened, then any muscle upwards from that location won’t be as efficient as it could be. A lot of our coordinated movements are dependent on a myriad of joints and muscle synergists. For instance it might be physically possible to play through an injury during a sports match. But if you use your upper leg muscles to run faster with an impaired ankle, you’d run the risk of more severely injuring that ankle. So maybe some types of chronic pain could be there in order to prevent overexerting an injured body part. https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/soccer/2014/11/12/7188643/why-do-athletes-play-through-injury “Shin splints are one of the most common running injuries. They are the result of tired or inflexible calf muscles putting too much stress on tendons, which become strained and torn.” https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/health/injury/a760234/shinsplints-how-to-beat-them/ It’s informative how an injury to the comparatively small calf and anterior tibialis anterior lower leg muscles can have such a large effect on the whole leg’s overall stride length and running footspeed. One way of visualising the spinal engine would be to walk at a slower pace with a smaller stride length. It’s almost possible to walk without an active foreswing. You could actively push back on the backswing leg and use the hips and arm swing to redirect and rotate that momentum to passively move the opposite leg forward.

“You can calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For example, if you're 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the average maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise. Once you know your maximum heart rate, you can calculate your desired target heart rate zone — the level at which your heart is being exercised and conditioned but not overworked.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/exercise-intensity/art-20046887 Maximum heart rate depends on intense exercise which is intrinsically initiated by the subjective mind. How hard you run alters the rate your heart beats. So aspects of heart rate are related to conscious psychological factors. Might chronic pain be able to affect the breathing muscles to reduce the degree to which you can exert yourself? This would therefore lower your maximum heart rate. Although this feature of the heart can only be indirectly gauged and it’s invisible to some extent. “Experiencing shortness of breath (dyspnea) or other breathing difficulties can feel scary. But it’s not an uncommon symptom of anxiety. Many people worry that a symptom affecting their breathing must come from a physical issue. In fact, your mental health affects your physical health in a number of ways.” https://www.healthline.com/health/shortness-of-breath-anxiety

“Hip strain itself might also prevent two-leggers from taking up galloping as a workout; treadmill gallopers reported that the gait was challenging and uncomfortable for hips and thighs, and several stopped galloping before the 4 minutes were up.” https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/01/video-why-humans-dont-gallop We have a poor stride width compared to a galloping animal. They often have a large width relative to their height and their legs go straight vertically down. We can increase our stride breadth but the legs would then be out at an awkward angle. A tightening of the hip flexor muscles would subtly alter stride width and might be a hidden reason for the decreased speed in injuries like shin splints. “Stride width is formally defined as the distance between your heels when each heel is at its lowest point during the stride (i.e. when your foot is on the ground). In practice, you can think of it as the lateral separation between your left and right footprints on the ground when you run... Again, a wider stride was associated with less stress on the tibia, whereas a narrower stride created more stress on the tibia.” https://runnersconnect.net/stride-width-injuries/ “One possible cause for shin pain is weakness of the hip muscles, specifically the gluteus medius. This muscle is located in the lateral him and abducts and rotates the hip joint. When the gluteus medius muscle becomes weak, it results in a collapsing kinetic chain. This collapsing kinetic chain allows your thigh to rotate and pull inwards abnormally.” https://www.agnesian.com/blog/shin-pain-may-mean-hip-weakness

“A positive feedback loop occurs in nature when the product of a reaction leads to an increase in that reaction. If we look at a system in homeostasis, a positive feedback loop moves a system further away from the target of equilibrium. It does this by amplifying the effects of a product or event and occurs when something needs to happen quickly.” - albert blog Our first-person thoughts and subconscious emotions are intricately connected. So if we are feeling down, our emotions could get worse and in turn make us feel yet more sad. This painful downward spiral could be attributed to positive feedback. Some bouts of mental illness might potentially be the subconscious bringing hidden, latent fears into focus so as to confront the problem head-on. This relates to the expression of getting it out of your system. Overall, mental illness could sometimes be a combination of both conscious, volitional thoughts and involuntary, subconscious emotions.

“Overdetermination occurs when a single-observed effect is determined by multiple causes, any one of which alone would be sufficient to account for ("determine") the effect. That is, there are more causes present than are necessary to cause the effect.” - Wikipedia We never consciously choose to get physically weaker with old age. There are many theories on ageing. Might some aspects of muscle ageing be unconsciously or even neurologically initiated? To be pessimistic, everyone’s heart could be termed a ticking time bomb since when it eventually stops beating we may die of a heart attack. Maybe the body compensates by deliberately slowing itself down to conserve energy. Though there might also be other factors for the decline in strength. Exercise is indeed always good but we don’t want to overexert ourselves too much when we get older. “Technically, there is really no reason that the human body should "wear out," as long as it can repair and renew itself. Therefore, something other than time must be at play to cause the inevitable effects of aging. The programmed theory of aging asserts that aging and death are necessary parts of evolution, not of biology.” https://www.verywellhealth.com/programmed-theories-of-aging-2224226

“A devil’s advocate is a person who takes the contrary view only for the purpose of debate, one who tests the strength of an argument through lively opposition. A person who plays the devil’s advocatedoes so in order to expose weak points in a philosophy and therefore examine a matter more thoroughly. A devil’s advocate is not trying to “win” an argument, he is attempting to examine a problem from all sides.” - grammarist web page The psychological intensity of pain can sometimes have a greater deterrence effect than the motivating reward of happiness. So maybe the subconscious mind could play the role of devil’s advocate in certain mental illnesses. Involuntary pain can cause uncertainty in the sense that it’s subjectively unclear how long it will last for. There isn’t a definitive timeline as to when it will end. Being able to withstand an irrational fear of the pain being permanent may indirectly give you the resilience to overcome pain of intermediate duration. The feeling of pain isn’t always connected to the actual source of the pain: “Referred pain, also called reflective pain, is pain perceived at a location other than the site of the painful stimulus. An example is the case of angina pectoris brought on by a myocardial infarction (heart attack), where pain is often felt in the neck, shoulders, and back rather than in the thorax (chest), the site of the injury.” - Wikipedia So maybe the nihilistic despair in an illness like depression could be the subconscious mind’s way of emotionally stress testing your conscious mind’s beliefs and values. “Catastrophic thinking can be defined as ruminating about irrational, worst-case outcomes. Needless to say, it can increase anxiety and prevent people from taking action in a situation where action is required. This can be especially true in a crisis situation... Catastrophic thinking needs to be managed, not discounted. There is often much to be learned from these persistent negative thoughts that may relate to old beliefs and core values that may drive emotional reactions and generate fear. These "icebergs," as Seligman refers to them, need to be examined to determine how meaningful, accurate, and useful they are to the individual in the present situation they are confronting. Flexibility in being able to question and change these beliefs and values is often the key to managing catastrophic thinking.” - Psychology Today

“It's not that complicated. We hate them because they're threatening and ugly.” - drumbo But then why don’t people find sharp objects creepy? Jagged rocks could trip you over and blades can be used as weapons. They’d be far more threatening in an evolutionary sense. Yet spiders can somehow have a slightly frightening effect. We don’t find smaller insects like flies creepy as they can be easily dismissed as automata. But the larger the spider, the scarier it can be for a few people. I don’t think anyone would be afraid of a lifelike robot spider. So I imagine the fear of spiders comes from misplaced sense of empathy with animals and pets. It goes awry when we apply it to more peculiar species. https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/tech-support/201501/3-things-being-cat-person-or-dog-person-reveals-about-you%3famp “The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent.” “Some scientists believe that the belief in creator gods is an evolutionary by-product of agent detection. A spandral is a non-adaptive trait formed as a side effect of an adaptive trait. The psychological trait in question is "if you hear a twig snap in the forest, some sentient force is probably behind it". This trait helps to prevent the primate from being murdered or eaten as food. However this hypothetical trait could remain in modern humans: thus some evolutionary psychologists theorize that "even if the snapping was caused by the wind, modern humans are still inclined to attribute the sound to a sentient agent; they call this person a god". - Wikipedia “All of their answers had one underlying theme, one unifying factor that made the person or situation creepy: the presence of an ambiguous threat. Not something frightening or strange, mind you. A killer on the loose is frightening -- there's no ambiguity in the potential danger there. And your nerdy, socially awkward cousin may be strange, but he's harmless, and therefore not creepy. Creepiness is a function of uncertainty. In a paper he wrote with undergraduate psychology student Sara Koehnke, McAndrews explains, "It is our belief that creepiness is anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether there is something to fear or not, and/or by the ambiguity of the precise nature of the threat (e.g., sexual, physical violence, contamination, etc)." - KQED