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Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

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Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#101

Post by firecall »

Igelau wrote: post #7
22c wrote: post #4

I wish there were a little more examples of how this methodology deals with the stress/anxiety response. The article seems to spend more time talking about why it thinks "thinking brain" CBT/talk therapy doesn't work rather than "surival brain" techniques which do work. It also brings up "mindfulness" as one solution, which I consider almost analogous to CBT, or at least a close relative. It also seems counter-produc…

CBT seems very poorly suited to anxiety. 1. Most of the CBT literature is aimed at treating depression. 2. Anxiety is going to strike when you don't have the time or resources to sit down with pen and paper and analyze what's going on, and there is a lot of that in CBT.

I'm having therapy and CBT, and I wouldnt say thats my experience.

I think it is useful for dealing with anxiety. Learning to recognise triggers and having strategies in place to deal with the issues causing anxiety.

Anxiety, when it's a problem, is generally at an irrational level!

Anyway, everyone is different and has a differnt experience!

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#102

Post by osacial »

tern wrote: post #35
osacial wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent mentions of mindfulness have made it obsolete as it is something that akkktually does not work and it should not be advised as something that works(for everyone). Well, the reason here is that I tried mindfulness(because I was probably extremelly stressed out from what was going on around me at that time) and it was not working and here is why(from REAL expert): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-r…

I think mindfulness here is meant as a synonym for a particular type of meditation. This article is broadly correct from my perspective—we should approach meditation with some caution, because it is not a well-defined self-therapy modality. It's quite possible, with the wrong practice instruction, to end up hurting yourself, or just getting nowhere. Meditation—and even just mindfulness meditation—is a domain of pract…

I started to get stressed out when my sister got cancer. I had headaches, back pain, panic attacks, developed agoraphobia and so on - all the spectrum of mental issues. I tried to approach all of them with weeding them out one by one(and did not look on all of that as a whole picture), so I tried medications, that were meant to cure my insomnia, then headaches(some of them made it even worse), got brain scanned etc. and could not understand the reason and why nothing worked. I just could not calm down, because thoughts that were occupying my mind in background could not just go pooh and vanish. More or less ALL of those symptoms(in most severe states) now are gone and I am now almost back to normal ~1 year later after my sister died. Because now I can afford not to think about her state - now I am able to achieve mindfulness about that situation, that now has gone, and I can occupy my mind with other thoughts, but it has become possible only because now it is too late to worry.

So, it is perfectly correct, that author of this article is talking about mindfulness in regards with imaginary threats and that is very useless for me, as that type of threats actually does not make me stressed out, but inability to save close relative from death I can't perceive as imaginary threat, but it is (pardon my french) sh!t advice to suggest mindfulness in extreme cases(that require most help on anxieties), for example - for someone who would be freaking out over someone close who has died in car accident. The first step would be getting away from that place and not sing kumbaya on that spot.

Knowing that humans have evolved as most violent primates(with everyday aggression amongst themselves), I don't think that meditation is that good, compared to inability to release frustration and anger - from my experience I got a break after I had to deal with situations that required violent solution, so I realized, that for me it had better therapeutical effect and more properly wired to my brains, than "coping" with stress and staying alive and healthy by inability to do anything and trying to meditate.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#103

Post by Asooka »

aantix wrote: post #86

Nutritional deficiencies should be part of this conversation. A majority of Americans are magnesium deficient. Magnesium calms the nervous system. “In healthy adults, magnesium sits inside the NMDA receptors, preventing them from being triggered by weak signals that may stimulate your nerve cells unnecessarily. When your magnesium levels are low, fewer NMDA receptors are blocked. This means they are prone to being st…

Not sure who downvoted you, you're absolutely correct. The usual culprits are magnesium, vitamin D and calcium. Those can result in moderate depression and anxiety in otherwise healthy individuals. Getting tested is pretty cheap, pretty much everyone with anxiety, depression or chronic fatigue should get some simple bloodwork done first to rule out the easily correctable causes.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#104

Post by osullip »

burlesona wrote: post #39
moneywoes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve concluded that the best advice is to learn not to worry about things Any tips with doing this? The thoughts I try to avoid end up in my dreams even if I try my best to distract myself during the day

I don’t really have any advice, but what I can say is it’s not really about distracting myself or avoiding thoughts, it’s more like changing how I think about things. For example, when I get some random aches and pains, it worries me a little. But in the past I would fixate on things, try to treat them, see a doctor etc. After a certain amount of grappling with my own mortality, I kind of realized that sometimes my b…

I read Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

Written around 2000, it is surprising how many of his verses are relevant today. These are translations of the original, so have picked up some contemporary interpretation.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/31010

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#105

Post by agumonkey »

hnick wrote: post #59
siquick wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminded me of a passage from Sapiens on Buddah. "...Gautama Buddah found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understand things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in t…

I wonder if that is why we like music. We can experience emotions without worrying that they are permanent or need to be resolved.

If there's something sacred to me it's music (or harmony). It's weird because it's not as foundational as smell or vision but it revives my soul like nothing else. That's the closest substitute to drug I know of.

I have no idea why our emotions are so tangled with it and how comes it can untie knots in our minds like this.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#107

Post by monkeydreams »

defterGoose wrote: post #84
monkeydreams wrote: post #71

It was only when I was heavily medicated for depression and anxiety that I realised the physical symptoms of anxiety. Whenever I was expecting a negative outcome, or when I was surprised, my body would give me a jolt of pain along my vagus nerve. Literally any negative event would cause me pain, and it was this pain that my brain was seeking to avoid. My current medication does not remove this pain altogether, though…

Out of curiosity, do you mind sharing what medication you're on? I feel like i have a strange vagus nerve dysfunction as well.

I'm on Valdoxan (ago melantine).

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#108

Post by mguerville »

burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

Same story here, and when the physical symptoms get bad enough to induce fear (am I having a heart attack, is this constant pain in my stomach a bigger medical issue, etc.) you just also accept it because you can’t change it. “It’s probably not a heart attack, but if it is... oh well, worrying about it won’t help”

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#109

Post by ineedasername »

peteretep wrote: post #94
QuercusMax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did breathing through the straw cause that reaction?

Maybe relevant > Klein is a professor of psychiatry who studies the delightful field of “experimental panicogens”, ie chemicals that cause panic attacks if you inject them in someone. These include lactate, bicarbonate, and carbon dioxide, all of which naturally occur in the body under conditions of decreased respiration. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/05/the-case-of-the-suffoc...

Isn't that the basic outline of a Batman villain? He could be one professional setback away from becoming the Scarecrow.
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