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

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

#1

Post by _yigw »

For years anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle defined my life. I tend to procrastinate to a such extent that causes problems in my day to day functioning, and generally my life.

For example, i have to submit 2 fairly simple assignments, in 2 and 3 days respectively. If i don't pass the next 4 assignments i will fail the lab, but i keep avoiding sitting down with all of my power. I feel pure fear and a sense of "i will certainly fail if i try".

The above example is with these assignments, but this type of behavior extends to everything in my life.

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

#2

Post by WaxedChewbacca »

It seems as though the problem is primarily fear and/or aversion. The mind is kind of like a cavern of echoes, and you can choose to add power to, or dampen, the echoes. Are you able to think of something that will bring up a wholesome feeling, like kindness toward an animal, or a baby, or gratitude toward a mentor? If so, you can use it to dampen the fear pattern.

When the fear pattern arises again, realize as quickly as possible that it has come back. Stop it, i.e., do not walk down a road in imagination related to the fears, imagining painful outcomes or whatever. In other words, gently stop the thought and drop it. Relax tension in the body, especially in the head. Smile. And bring up the wholesome feeling, however is appropriate for you. This dampens the fear echo. Each time you do these steps, you are taking energy away from this habit of your brain. Every time you do it correctly, you're taking a step toward not being bothered by this concern.

This technique will work, but please just try it and try to do it diligently, giving it provisional belief. In the meantime, try to do your assignments, watching for your fear to decrease.

* This message pre-censored by HN, allegedly to preserve curiosity.

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

#5

Post by laurent123456 »

It may help to go out and do something else that you enjoy, to stop thinking about all this. That would give you some perspective on things and you can get back to your work with a fresh mind.

Also sometimes when you procrastinate it's an indication that what you're doing is not really what you want to do, so you might want to consider doing something else that you can be passionate about (not saying that's easy and you talk about assignments, so you probably don't want to drop your degree out of the blue).

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

#6

Post by insickness »

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 outline of what you need to do to get it done. Often once you've done something you will often start to feel a lot different than if you've done nothing.

Keep track of how you're feeling. It's okay to feel more anxiety at first because you're doing something instead of nothing. Those feelings tend to subside over time as you take action, but the point is not to reduce your anxiety, the point is that you are making a commitment to do something in your life, to live your life, rather than to remain paralyzed in fear. Your goal is not to get rid of the anxiety but to live the kind of life you want to live.

This is the model for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. A great book on this is "Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life."

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

#7

Post by ewalk153 »

One thing that has helped me for these situations short term is to find a buddy who is will to sit with you and keep on you task.

Long term, I found success in changing my association to the stressor. For over twenty years,I used to feel dread and panic anytime I had to write more than two paragraphs. Last year, I decided I would write one page a week about anything. It was for ME this time. After two months, I completely changed my relationship to writing through this process. I also got a lot better at writing.

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

#8

Post by kreeben »

You sound a bit like me. A trick that helps me overcome these situations is to imagine that the worst thing that could happen, in your case, to fail, has already happened. Then I pause and try to see how this affects me. I imagine people pointing towards me, laughing at me, whispering to each other "he failed", then I start to realize, this is not so bad. A failure is just a failure and other people's feelings towards me in this moment really doesn't matter to me.

This helps me to silence the critics in me and to just get on with it.

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

#9

Post by PartiallyTyped »

You are not trying to avoid failure, you are giving yourself a cushion to avoid confronting the fact that you may not be as good as you think that you are.

The cushion is that you didn't apply yourself to the maximum because you procrastinated and ergo it isn't you who failed, but a you who did not apply themselves.

Why do we do it? Out of self preservation. Confronting the fact that the reality does not match our idealized self is a very difficult process as it leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We feel that our lack of skills will be exposed and everyone will see that we are failures.

In reality, there is only one self, you that is choosing not to do what you have to because you are trying to protect a fragile ego.

I don't mean to sound harsh, all humans do it in one way or the other.

But eventually reality catches up to us and forces us to confront our situation. In the expectation you will do as you always did. However, if you condition the future on taking failure as an indicator for growth rather than an indicator of danger, you will be able to overcome the situation.

Take what you fear the most and tame it by actively trying, and instead of thinking you will fail, think and accept that it is an indicator of all the new things you will learn.

NB: Speaking from experience.

PS. Radical acceptance is a powerful tool in getting out of these situations.

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

#10

Post by bsenftner »

Look into Cognitive Distortions - those are the self conversation lies we tell ourselves, as we "play ourselves". Cognitive distortions take the form of exaggerations of the unknown future, reading others' minds (which is impossible) and then taking a negative thought attributed to others as truth. Cognitive distortions are in general are a nasty little asshole inside your head constantly being negative.

I suggest you look into Dr. David Burns, the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the first person to seriously document and address this negative self conversation vicious cycle, and how to defeat it.

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