Ask HN: Struggling with Anxiety as a Developer – What Are My Options?

Do you drink coffee? If so, try eliminating it completely and see if you feel any better.

I have a lot of thoughts. Also senior with ~10yoe. I am going to try to be helpful because you seem like you are really struggling. I am going to arm chair psychologist very intensely right now, so take what I say with a gigantic grain of salt.

A lot of the times stuff like this can be from our environments. There could be some one currently affecting your self esteem, and maybe you have gotten used to it. This could be at work or in personal life. This person could also be you. It could have also been the environment when you were younger. Maybe you needed to present an image of perfection to be loved and accepted.

If it is from the current environment it will be extremely hard to heal from and perhaps impossible, ie: you are living or working with someone repeatedly irritating this wound, which is likely not the case but should be mentioned.

If that is the case you have to learn to let it go. You are worrying about something that can't actually hurt you. what others think at work, be cold and robotic about it. You don't need to care insofar as it doesn't affect your employment. Unfortunately many people won't be super rational when it comes to gauging another person, and the best people to work with truly do not care unless it is impacting them directly. Then ideally they will confront you directly about it. "Hey fix this". It's not personal. We all make mistakes. Pretending like we don't is truly delusional. Please accept that if you haven't. If you have, then accept that others need to change and accept that.

The journaling and self awareness is huge. I would keep asking myself why, if I were you. "Why do I care" because of x,y,z. "Why". "I care because I like when other people like me" ... well ... why? determine if you like people who care about the things you care about at the end of your sequence of "why".

Psychedelics (IME shrooms) or meds may help you address these issues.I hesitate to recommend shrooms because of their sheer power. Maybe eventually? It might be good to use anti anxiety meds as training wheels if you feel they will help you make progress at the beginning faster. Because processing this stuff, sometimes your body will throw too much emotion at you.

When corporations say they're fast paced, don't worry too much about it. No corporation is going to say they are "Slow paced" because their customers and investors will literally run for the hills. Typically startups are fast paced (even if that speed is chasing their own tail, not to say all do that) and big co's are slower, so choose those since they appear to align with something important to you. Remember, at the end of the day your workplace is composed of humans like you who typically want a life outside of work.

When it comes to code reviews just accept that a) you are not perfect and b) you are trying. You appear to be trying hard enough. You will make mistakes, you don't need to project an image of perfection. Even if there is something wrong with your brain or your behavior that results in making the same mistake twice it's fine. It's not like your trying to make mistakes. Don't feel pressured to project an image of perfection. You are wasting your time, energy and happiness doing that. Just be yourself, let others deal with it. Granted you need to put on a filter for professionalism because it is a professional environment.

You may need to slow down and take a break. A vacation, maybe. Anything to slow down. Sometimes you can't do this.

I also wonder if you have any hobbies that give you release. Anything to focus on outside of work that you can focus on, that is engrossing to you, as opposed to being robotic or part of you trying to project an image of perfection. Try making music, suck at it, only if you are having fun and it is releasing emotion. Watch a movie. Do something engrossing. I think part of your issue is obsessing over these things that don't matter. Find something to obsess over that truly does affect your happiness, it will be awesome. This is very hard for some people.

This reminds me of a tweet I saw that was like "how did baseline human activities like singing, dancing, and making art turn into skills for a few instead of behaviors for everyone". Not to say those are the only things. For someone else it could be rapping, writing fic/nonfic/whatever, working out, just doing stuff that feels good regardless of what others think.

For many people working out also helps with confidence, and is important to our bodies.

And for the record, there could be serious issues with your diet, physical, or mental health causing / contributing to this. So take baby steps to improve all of these things, if you feel they truly need to be improved. If you expect perfection from day 1) you will likely quit 2) it won't be fun. Give yourself a metric crap ton of grace, no matter what you do. Learn to celebrate your mistakes as growth opportunities, because objectively, that's what happens when you make a mistake. I wouldn't be surprised if you punished yourself proportionally to your obsession with what others think.

A person before making a mistake So if you truly want to become better, then making mistakes will make you better.

Maybe you'll get fired for it (extremely likely you won't). Or people will be assholes. Learn to laugh it off. You learned, and no harm was done. Eventually you will do better work because you won't waste energy and time thinking about what others think, making you more efficient. Meaning you will ask questions that will speed you up, you will advocate for yourself, and there may be that benefit from you speaking up as well.

All of these things will make you a more likable person. I think it's safe to say that nobody (who isn't trying to pretend to be a perfect person, or isn't a narcissistic and far gone) truly, in their heart of hearts, wants to deal with someone trying to be perfect. We are humans not robots.

Some people go their entire lives obsessed with what others think and never live their own life which is actually quite sad. These people are often confronted with a choice: continuing to be deluded or dealing with their shit. Many choose delusion. That is the essence of cowardice imho.

Many people can not deal with the struggle you are bravely choosing to confront (and even ask others help with!) and live their own life deluded until they die, maybe it hits them on their death bed. I truly do not know. I can't understate how great it is that you are choosing to truly confront and deal with this issue that can be extremely, extremely deep rooted.

Or maybe I am completely wrong. I didn't get too much to work with.

If the shoe fits, I hope I have been helpful.

I am rooting for you either way.

Right now is probably a difficult time for finding many university and government jobs, due to the political turmoil and disruptions to federal funding. It's likely there are some real job postings among all the layoffs and hiring freezes, but it may not be a low stress thing to pursue...

Anxiety is a normal stress related state, whats not normal is that in modern life the stressors never end. Which is why a ton of people go into extreme sports, to hard reset what the mind percieves as a "stressor". If you climb and a SLCD gives, all the other stress in the world falls away forever . And it doesn't become as important after that ever again. After this Startups are bad for anxiety because half of them are basically cults, but if you are uncultured , you can sell your services as a service . Do that with some other webdevs together and you can hire somebody to do the paperwork ..

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