From the article — quote from Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal:
[W]e’re lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it’s time to try something new.
The hardest thing about life as a human being is that we get trapped inside our own minds.
As Sousa’s research shows, there’s a biological basis for this.
So if you’ve hit a high-stress patch in your life recently, you have to assume — assume — that your capabilities in the area of “executive decision-making” and “goal-directed behaviors” are impaired.
And then, for your own good, you have to do something about it.
It’s the only way out of the trap.
(The worst part being, of course, that people who are in the trap don’t know it . . . and that when you’re under stress is when you most need the very skills that you’ve lost.)
