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Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

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Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#51

The way you describe your problem makes me think that you might need the assistance of a therapist to overcome it.

It may not help in the moment, but best money I ever spent was going to a therapist weekly, or more often, for about 2 years. Many universities offer free mental health services. Therapy didn’t fix everything, but it did help with perfectionism and especially with black-and-white thinking.

> Many universities offer free mental health services.

Perhaps they say they do, but they are always totally full and also really low quality

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#52
You'll get a lot of advice to try different techniques, and I would look at everything, pick a few that click for you, try them, see if they work, and try more things until something works. I'll give you three suggestions.

My first suggestion is to think, "I might fail at this, but I'll be better off if I fail at it today than tomorrow, and I'll be better off if I fail this morning than this afternoon." A failure right now is just a start. You will have time to fix it.

My second suggestion is to remind yourself that the fear is excessive and unhelpful. Don't think, "I deserve to feel this way, because I'm screwing up, and I should feel this way until I get my act together." There's only one reason to value fear: if it pushes you to take the right actions to address your fear. If it doesn't work that way, then the dose is too high to be effective, and you can let go of it without guilt.

Related to this, my third suggestion is to work on the overall level of stress and anxiety in your life. Think about the worst case and remind yourself that you'll cope. If you fail the lab, you'll survive. Lots of successful people failed a lab in school. Whatever else is hard in your life, remind yourself that it's not a disaster: for example, if you don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend and this causes you distress, remind yourself that lots of people your age are hopeless at romance and are happily married ten years later. If you're worried about disappointing your parents, remind yourself that many happy people disappointed their parents when they were young. Use these thoughts to reduce the overall level of stress in your life.

Most tips for dealing with fear and procrastination boil down to finding helpful ways of thinking about a situation and repeating them until they become habit. A systematic way to approach this is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, CBT. It's ideal if you can do this with a professional therapist, but unlike most forms of therapy, if you can't afford a professional to coach you, you can still practice it on your own.

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#53

This is not a simple "do this", except to say you need to see a doctor. You are not alone! Many suffer with anxiety for their whole life. What helps is therapy to learn to train your brain that many are anxious too and that you are normal. The ones who don't have chronic anxiety are people you can learn from. When you figure it out you'll have superpowers that most would kill for. You may choose medication to help yo…

A doctor is the worst person to go to if you have a mental health problem. They will immediately go to prescribe you dangerous, addictive drugs, like Zoloft or some other SSRI

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#54
I had anxiety for many years, and cured it by meditation.

But what you speak of, for my personal experience, is not anxiety.

Anxiety is when I am out and have too much coffee, and I feel like I'm going to pass out because the body feelings are causing me to freak out. Or I got too high and am panicking. It's an overreaction to sensations and experiences that I am unfamiliar with.

What you talk about, that crushing feeling when trying to do work, pure fear and avoidance, is much more in line with what I experience from my depression.

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#55

The best solution to getting past the anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle is to take small, manageable actions while accepting the feelings that go along with those actions. Start with the smallest steps possible. Maybe that means opening the assignment and saving it to your computer. Then put it down and walk away. Come back in a little while and take another small step, such as reading over the assignment or making an out…

A vehement +1 to this post. Reducing the conceptual size of the problem to something that you can just shrug and do will give you a step forward and knock a chunk out of your anxiety. If you keep at it, the anxiety will reduce over time.

One thing that's helped me is self talk. You should assure yourself that you're the man and that these challenges are easy for you to overcome. Don't be afraid to go over the top with this and when you do it, give yourself a pat on the back before you take the next step.

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#56

In any case, i'd strongly advise to avoid "therapists"; Instead, go to a properly educated professional with whatever the title is called in your country, like a "Doctor of Psychology" (someone with a professional doctoral degree in clinical psychology / a title with legal protection to be able to use it.) It often makes a lot of difference in terms of the result.

> a title with legal protection to be able to use it What country are you in where such a thing is not always required? I agree though. For every 100 therapists, I would say that maybe 5 know what they are doing, and maybe even up to 15 or 20 are willingly abusive or cause more damage

Netherlands : https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapie#Wetgeving (in Dutch) :

"With the exception of some therapeutic professions, the term therapist is unprotected in the Netherlands and Belgium."

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#57

I consider anxiety a low-level biological problem. It should have a biological fix. Trying to fix fundamental problem with self-reflection and psychbabble misses the point and tragically wastes years upon years.

Go on then, what is the fix?

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#58

Note, I have a bias as I had anxiety through ADHD. That being said both Anxiety and ADHD have the same exact dopamine problem which means that analogues of dopamine and serotonin treat anxiety if it's cause is genetic in nature. I do not know if the poster has a genetic version of anxiety, however if they do here is what I take for my ADHD that works for anxiety: L-theanine ashwagandha(its what is in Maca!) L-dopa an…

I'll add my own experience:

I call it the ADD-anxiety-depression circle. Can't do what needs to be done -> anxiety about it and just everything -> depression because it's all too much -> can't do what needs to be done -> repeat ad infinitum.

I found that I must fix all three of them at the same time, because any of them can trigger the others very fast.

No anxiety? Skip straight to depression. No depression? Still can't do shit and am always anxious. No ADD (am doing everything)? Things are objectively great yet I feel anxious and depressed. It's a horrible cycle that only gets worse.

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#59
Have you ever tried water fasting?

The reason I ask/suggest is that when water fasting (which isn't starvation mode, starvation mode happens when you're regularly enough eating calories keeping your digestive system going - but not enough to actually provide your body with what it needs) is that when fasting your body 1) burns more calories so you'll have more energy available (to your body and brain) than if eating food, and 2) your body produces more adrenaline - so you have more mental energy too.

I wonder if this relatively simple/quick "hack" could give you an experience that may help you have the mental energy, and get rid of brain fog that some foods you eat may also be causing you, to see if this shakes things up enough where your focus and therefore concentration sharpens?

Start out with 24 hours while drinking a ton of water, and based on seeing how you feel - see if you can make it to 3 days (72 hours); starting at 7pm means at 7am you're already at 12 hours, and 7pm next day already 1 of 3 days done; you have to drink a surprising amount of water, I usually stop at 4pm so I'm not having to get up in the night. I recommend weighing yourself each morning and logging it just to have some numbers to passively start developing a more thorough understanding of how your body works in relation to food.

Perhaps it sounds too simple, too good to be true, but I have had this experience and others too.

Here's a 30 minute video by Dr. Jason Fung explaining by water fasting is good, healthy, and safe for us (arguably unless you're underweight and don't have fat reserves to burn): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk - Dr. Jason Fung - 'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem'

Certain foods can also cause a person anxiety and/or AHDH and/or other, and so by water fasting you may also be giving yourself a break from those - and then when you're re-introducing foods when you break your fast (first food) then you can see how it makes you feel immediately after or hours after; a chicken-egg problem, what came first: the procrastination or perhaps the anxiety-ADHD from how food is disrupting your brain?

The having a "clean" system for after 3 days of water fasting and then adding food that causes stress will be a dramatic contrast, so you'll more than likely be able to notice if a food you eat causes discomfort - which then shouldn't be dismissed as unimportant or "it'll go away."

Happy to offer more guidance if you'd like, e.g. foods to break your fast with, diagnostics you can to to give you concrete evidence of foods to stop eating and perhaps other GI tract care you need, etc.

The nice thing with what I'm suggesting with water fasting is this is "all your doing" is focusing on is drinking water. You're not being asked to try some new technique, etc - which your executive function is clearly not working how you want, so even trying to implement any new techniques requiring much thought or focus will potentially stress you out more - especially if you're using your exhausted mind needing to think even more.

And then just by only drinking water for up to 3 days the psychological and behaviour changes will happen on their own - if your focus sharpens, a brain fog lifts, you have more mental clarity - then you may find that you inherently can get more done without stressing; even 24 hours you may gain some clarity, 36 hours even better, 48 hours even better, 72 hours is when more benefit kicks in though.

Best case scenario is that water fasting breaks a pattern or cycle you've been stuck in.

Worst case scenario you try only once and you stop - while saving a bit of money from not eating; you can do 24 hours first, eat, then a few days later try for 36 or 48 hours, and then progress as you feel comfortable - as it's all about feeling and checking in with yourself, not forcing yourself - as part of a non-violence practice.

It can also be an ideal time to learn or try things in the past that you tried but perhaps didn't work - like breathing exercises, meditation, yoga - any practice that is part of emotional regulation to manage and quell/process stress you may be feeling.

Re: Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a title with legal protection to be able to use it What country are you in where such a thing is not always required? I agree though. For every 100 therapists, I would say that maybe 5 know what they are doing, and maybe even up to 15 or 20 are willingly abusive or cause more damage

Netherlands : https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapie#Wetgeving (in Dutch) : "With the exception of some therapeutic professions, the term therapist is unprotected in the Netherlands and Belgium."

Interesting. Here in Germany you need to be a part of some special guild or something to call yourself a therapist
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