Lack of intuition for "mental things"

[Alfred001]

I'm wondering if anyone has heard of a condition such as what I'm about to describe. Whether its something either science has described and recognized, or whether anyone feels the same or has any comments:

I find that I have no intuitive understanding almost AT ALL of what people would describe as "mental problems," by which I don't mean mental illnesses, but what would typically be meant by that phrase in sports, thought its not exclusively applied to sports.

 

So examples where someone underperforms for mental reasons, someone who's dynamite in practice but can't perform under the lights, or can't perform under other more specific conditions, or uses an excuse to fail etc etc.

 

I've played sports in the past and been that classic gym hero who can't perform at game time, but I had NO idea why. The concept that there is a mental side to sports to me was COMPLETELY foreign. When I'd hear people talk about the mental game during sprots broadcasts I'd think they were talking about intelligence.

 

I simply did not have the concept of "mental."

 

Much later I realized that this DOES exist and have managed to develop SOME limited intuitive understanding of it, but I can tell that I'm still far behind regular people, and when I see something that is a plain ex. of a mental problem (in this sense, not in the mental illness sense) even though I fully recognize the problem is not ability my inclination is still sort of to look for the problem in a different way.

 

My inclination is to think almost kind of that people's minds and psychology work mechanically. Very X causes Y sort of thinking. And I am beginning to become aware that this is like your car breaking down and you trying to understand why it is not working in psyschological terms, but it is still my natural inclination to think in this way even though I understand that human heads don't actually work that way.

 

I still struggle to fully wrap my mind around what it means when someone says that soemthing is a "mental thing" or "a problem of the head" and how to think about such things. Again, to be clear, I'm not talking here about pathological things, merely things like someone not being able to do something they are physically capable of or capable of doing under other circumstamces.

 

And it's a big problem for me because there are certain problems I have in life that I've long struggled to sort out and which I realize now that in spite of all my efforts I've not been able to solve them precisely becuase I've been failing to appreciate the they are of this kind of nature, mental nature, rather than the kind of strange almost mechancial way I've been looking at them and trying to understand them. Again, like trying to understand how a car works in terms of psychology.

 

So my questions are:

 

1. does this sound like anything recognized by psychology or neurology?

 

2. any ideas on how I might develop my intuition for mental things?

[swansont]

Sounds like the phenomenon of "choking" under pressure

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/09/21/psychologist-shows-why-we-choke-under-pressure-and-how-avoid-it

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-choking-under-pressure-133896043/?no-ist

[Alfred001]

Sounds like the phenomenon of "choking" under pressure

http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2010/09/21/psychologist-shows-why-we-choke-under-pressure-and-how-avoid-it

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-of-choking-under-pressure-133896043/?no-ist

 

I'm aware (now) of that phenomenon,

 

but I'm more curious about the lack of intuition about these kind of things.

[swansont]

I can't parse the part about about intuition. I don't see how intuition comes into play in the situation where one performs poorly in games vs practice. Are you talking about intuition about why this happens?

[DrP]

Used to happen to me on the golf course... I wanted to get my handicap down too badly and choked it all the time in the medals.. My best round in a medal ever was 5 under gross.... I got the mental part right for that round and a few others around the time. I had to get into the mind set of thinking that it was normal to be sub par... what else would I be expecting... shrug it off and continue... take the emotion out of it and feel chuffed afterwards in the bar.

Edited February 25, 2016 by DrP

[Ophiolite]

I can't parse the part about about intuition. I don't see how intuition comes into play in the situation where one performs poorly in games vs practice. Are you talking about intuition about why this happens?

The OP is saying he is aware of the problem - "choking" in a real situation - but he cannot personally find any sense in which this should occur. Even although he performs below expectations in some situations he does have any feeling that this is due to his internal attitude. He understands that it must be, but has not sense, no feeling, no intuition that this is so.

 

Do I have that correct Alfred?

 

I have the reverse problem. If I attempt to rehearse the delivery of a presentation I find it immensely difficult. I stumble and mumble, forget important points, ramble and generally make a mess of it. Put me into the real presentation situation and I perform close to flawlessly. The difference for me is that I know in the rehearsal the audience are not my real target audience and any mistakes I make are irrelevant. Once it is real, I'm firing on all cylinders and focused. I believe the sporting expression is "in the zone".

[Alfred001]

I can't parse the part about about intuition. I don't see how intuition comes into play in the situation where one performs poorly in games vs practice. Are you talking about intuition about why this happens?

 

No, not why it happens....

 

The OP is saying he is aware of the problem - "choking" in a real situation - but he cannot personally find any sense in which this should occur. Even although he performs below expectations in some situations he does have any feeling that this is due to his internal attitude. He understands that it must be, but has not sense, no feeling, no intuition that this is so.

 

Do I have that correct Alfred?

 

I have the reverse problem. If I attempt to rehearse the delivery of a presentation I find it immensely difficult. I stumble and mumble, forget important points, ramble and generally make a mess of it. Put me into the real presentation situation and I perform close to flawlessly. The difference for me is that I know in the rehearsal the audience are not my real target audience and any mistakes I make are irrelevant. Once it is real, I'm firing on all cylinders and focused. I believe the sporting expression is "in the zone".

 

.... something like that, yes.

 

Imagine you know a person who's a singer and in rehersal they sing great and then on performace night they don't, or maybe they do on perfromance nights, too, except if someone they know is in the audience.

 

Most people would look at that and say, oh, this is a mental thing. But to me... I suppose at this point, having read so much about this and researched it, I would, from knowledge, say so, too, but on an intuitive level I just don't feel it and am not naturally inclined to see it that way. And had I not read so much about it, I could not conceive that that category exists, that a problem can be "mental." That concept just didn't use to exist in my mind.

 

For ex. sometimes in discussing sports with my friends someone might say, I think A will win because they are more experienced, and I would always scoff at that, because I suppose you could say that in my mind there was no element other than physical. And I just felt, how the hell would experience make someone a better player. You have X level of talent or skill, you have Y level of athletic ability and that's that. I simply did not feel or see that there is anything beyond that. What difference does it make that you've played 100 games in your career rather than 50?

 

I suppose you might compare it to how autistic people do not have the same intuition that the rest of us have about what facial expressions or gestures mean. We know it instinctively, they don't.

 

And it doesn't have to be choking, it can be something like the Steve Blass thing, or something outside of sports.

 

I guess most people would say when looking at some problem in sports, either its physical (athleticism, talent, skills) or its mental. And that mental side I just have a hard time grasping intuitively.

 

 

Let me ask you a question, as I'm trying here to grasp how other people think about this in hope of developing my own intuition, as I HAVE improved much from the beginning:

 

If you got a guy who's great in practice but consistently choking in games.

 

How do you suppose he might overcome that

 

And here on this question I suppose I can kind of explain my own bizzare way of thinking:

 

I kind of on an intuitive level want a "mechanical" explanation of that. By which I mean, I expect that there is an answer that describes the dynamics by which this guy will now become not a choker any more. Like what happens to him that he goes from A to B. And I know that this way of thinking and these questions are probably nonsensical, but this is the way of thinking that to me feels intuitive. So you see how there is this mismatch between what feels intuitive to me vs. how things actually work with human beings.

 

Its like applying normal human intuition which works for Newtonian physics on the Quantum level. The way I feel is intuitive to think about these things is different than how the things actually are and I struggle to develop the intuition for how they ACTUALLY work.

 

I should clarify that when I say how might he overcome that, I don't mean what should he do practically to achieve that, I mean once he's overcome it, what has happened. What has changed?

[swansont]

IOW it's outside your realm of experience?

[Alfred001]

IOW it's outside your realm of experience?

 

That mental things are?

 

I wouldn't say so, because when I played basketball I was very aware of the pressure I would feel ahead of the games and that that was the problem, but I think the way I looked at it is, why is this happening, why do I feel this way? I didn't understand that this is just normal part of competition and that its normal to feel that way and that, as I would later learn, you're supposed to walk through that and perform in spite of that.

 

I can remember looking at my team mates, the guys who COULD do it in the games, when we were in the dressing room ahead of a game, trying to see whether they felt the pressure I was feeling and I couldn't see it on them, they were joking and seemingly very relaxed. I thought they didn't feel as I did.

[DrP]

The top pros of most sports these days train for 10,000 hours... 'they' reckon that after 10,000 hours of repetition you ingrain your skill so it is just intuitive and you are less likely to choke under pressure. Tiger Woods, for example, used to wake up in the morning every day and very first thing hole 100 6 foot puts... if he misses then starts again until he got 100 straight.... then it's off for breakfast and more training/practice. Most start SO young too (3 or 4 years old) - so they have their 10k hours ranked up WAY before they are even playing for serious money.

 

 

I saw some guy with the yips one sunday playing golf (another mental sporting problem). I had to say to him 'you gotta stop that because I can't even watch it and it is actually PAINFULL for me to watch' - It'll put me off too.. just hit the thing!" It seemed like a mental illness even to me - lol

[swansont]

The top pros of most sports these days train for 10,000 hours... 'they' reckon that after 10,000 hours of repetition you ingrain your skill so it is just intuitive and you are less likely to choke under pressure. Tiger Woods, for example, used to wake up in the morning every day and very first thing hole 100 6 foot puts... if he misses then starts again until he got 100 straight.... then it's off for breakfast and more training/practice. Most start SO young too (3 or 4 years old) - so they have their 10k hours ranked up WAY before they are even playing for serious money.

 

 

They're also competing in front of a crowd for a lot of that time, too. But there's probably some selection bias here, because the ones that regularly succumb to pressure will never get to that level.

[DrP]

Maybe Mr T - some reckon that the 10,000 hours is more important than the talent.. that the practice and repetition pays off over raw talent.... What you are looking for is someone with the raw talent and the drive to put in 10,000 hours!... This is not the only factor - they need supporting parents that will drive them to tournaments and buy the kit for them also.

[iNow]

I suspect root cause here is either (or both) performance anxiety and situational / context based distraction. We're calm when we practice because we're not being judged by peers. We're calm when we practice because it's quiet, and not in a stadium full of people or flashing lights or sounds where it's harder to focus the mind.

 

I'm just guessing, though. Take this with several grains of salt.

 

If there's any merit in my idea, however, you address it through mental rehearsal. You practice it in your mind, imagine yourself out on the field and in front of thousands of people dribbling the ball or kicking the goal successfully. You supplement that by meditating to become more attuned to slight cues in your thinking that precede the stress response and you breath deeply and calmly to settle them. You practice in context / in the situation over and over again... instead of playing in the gym, actually play on the field even when just practicing. If you're going to be performing in the pool, then practice in the pool, too. Finally, you remind yourself that the audience/crowd is irrelevant and that fear of their response or judgment is irrational and not worth your time. You're there to have fun and to enjoy the moment, not to please others.

 

Anyway, what you're describing sounds to me like pressure in social situations, a type of performance anxiety, or potentially a difficulty settling your mind when there are other stimuli like sounds, lights, smells, etc competing for your limited attention...

 

It's a bit like aiming at a target from a moving car instead of aiming at that target in a still quiet position like you might during a practice session. If during the actual game the car will be moving, then the trick is to start practicing the shot from the moving car all along so the context is as similar as possible.

 

[/my 2 cents]

Edited February 25, 2016 by iNow