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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

#191

Post by johnsmith4739 »

sabellito wrote: post #37
johnsmith4739 wrote: post #26

Who in their right mind would take their psychological advice from a fiction writer?!? First, no, anxiety is not in your body. Fear, just like any other emotion is in your brain. You might get physiological responses in the form of chemicals in your body. That is an effect, not a cause. Second, neocortex is not "thinking brain," its role is to manage social interactions. Cognition is a small part of that. Third, mind…

> It is an ego-depletion technique proven to be detrimental to people suffering from anxiety and depression. Got any recommended reading on this bit?

On the reduction of self control: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10538...

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#192

Post by zerubeus »

The_rationalist wrote: post #30

Here is an overview of the state of the art in GAD: TL;DR Tofisopam appears to be the ideal long term anxiety medication except it's understudied despite being old, which is a real shame. Pregabalin is likely the second best candidate however some people reports horrible anecdotes with it (brain breaker) As always the best blog about the topic is from Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/13/things-that…

"While ADHD and depression have relatively safe and effective medications"

I don't think administrating a neurotoxic agent like Vyvanse to be safe, in that regard even coke is effective for ADHD, but all those who takes stimulants chronically, will end up regretting it one day.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#194

Post by CannisterFlux »

nwienert wrote: post #143
osullip wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

All this stuff really ignores some real advice that really works. Anxiety comes from a lack of competence, confidence, or self-awareness. Lack any or all (and we all lack them to some extent) and you’re more nervous. Get experience talking, presenting, comfort with how you look and sound, practice humor, gauge if you can maintain an audience. These are all practicable things. You can work on them. I think meditation…

It doesn't have to be rational. I get anxious doing the most trivial things that people do thousands of times every day: talking on the phone, going the supermarket, even sending emails. It is awful and seems to get worse (and less reasonable) the older I get.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#195

Post by bspammer »

nunodonato wrote: post #189
bspammer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anxiety comes from a lack of competence, confidence, or self-awareness. This is oversimplified, anxiety isn’t just about social situations. My anxiety is none of these but comes from an overwhelming awareness of my own mortality. I don’t feel like I’m going to die today or tomorrow, but the knowledge that I will die one day and wipe out all memory of me as I am now is permanently terrifying to me. I really believe…

find out who the real "me" is, and that fear will no longer hold

Is your point that there is no such thing as "me"? Because I've tried meditating on that thought and it hasn't really helped. I think, therefore I am after all.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#196

Post by hanche »

moldavi wrote: post #169
Zelphyr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply breathing through a straw may not do it. My therapist had me run up and down a flight of stairs for about 30 seconds and then breathe through a straw cut down to about 3 inches while holding my nostrils closed. Your body thinks you're not getting enough oxygen. You're getting plenty, it's just that it all coming through that tiny hole tricks your body and that triggers panic sensations. Doing that several time…

I'm not sure that's correct. I've heard that high CO2 levels trigger the parasympathetic nervous system which calms us down. One could get the same effect from breathing into a paper bag, I think.

Hmm. In the Apollo 13 movie, high CO2 levels triggered a panic/anxiety attack in one of the astronauts. (Which may not have happened, or not as severely, in reality – but that’s adifferent issue. For one, astronauts are trained not to panic.) A quick google seems to confirm this. As for breathing in a paper bag, I believe that is one common way to deal with hyperventilation, which may also induce anxiety and thus lead to more of the same.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#197

Post by drw85 »

osacial wrote: post #102
tern wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

They're not talking about anxiety that makes sense here. You being scared of your sister dying makes sense. They're talking about irrational anxiety, like having a panic attack, because your stomach feels slightly funny, or because you slept weird, etc. Those irrational anxieties are often times hard to pinpoint to an actual cause. Like your sitting at home on a sunday and suddenly have a panic attack, without any immediate cause or threat.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#198

Post by johnsmith4739 »

osacial wrote: post #118
Zelphyr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mindfulness is the opposite of any therapy I can think of. It is an ego-depletion technique proven to be detrimental to people suffering from anxiety and depression. This is simply not true. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are two evidence-based, heavily researched forms of therapy that are intimately connected with mindfulness. Second, I encourage you to cite t…

>One is to simply allow it to happen or even try to make the panic worse. Paradoxically, that has been shown to ease the panic attack. Nope. Not working for me. Though, I might have stronger fight-or-flight reaction than other people. For example, I can't watch beheadings(but I could do them by myself and I am very sure about that). If I force myself to continue watching, then my mind just shuts my brain off and I lo…

You have all my sympathy because living with this kind of sensitivity is not easy.

Ego-depletion is great when you are too much in your head and you feel stress over minor things. However to suggest mindfulness to somebody dealing with clinical forms of anxiety is cruel and unproductive because it promotes ignoring the cause of the episode: how your ego is interpreting the situation it is in.

If others feel ok in the same situation and I get triggered, isn't it clear where the work has to be done?

Also, psychotherapy is a difficult field because it deals with issues you cannot objectively measure (how one feels). I'm specialised in neuropsychotherapy, btw. Many techniques are promoted, some more effective than another. But there is no clear line between right and wrong.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#199

Post by drw85 »

CyanLite4 wrote: post #73
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 say try facing those issues. Your thinking mind is trying to process and make sense of those anxious issues. Example, if you were in an IED explosion in Iraq...it’s okay to think about it. It’s okay to process it. It’s okay to understand that it happened. But it’s also okay to understand that was a one-time thing and your body reacted the way it did to protect yourself from that one-time event. You may have lost so…

This oversimplifies things a little. Many things can trigger your brain to react in a similar fashion than during a traumatic experience. You can also be aware that the experience is not the same or unrelated, but you'll still get a panic attack. Most likely because the actual anxiety or panic is not caused by your thinking brain.

That's exactly what the source said.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#200

Post by johnsmith4739 »

elliekelly wrote: post #55
johnsmith4739 wrote: post #26

Who in their right mind would take their psychological advice from a fiction writer?!? First, no, anxiety is not in your body. Fear, just like any other emotion is in your brain. You might get physiological responses in the form of chemicals in your body. That is an effect, not a cause. Second, neocortex is not "thinking brain," its role is to manage social interactions. Cognition is a small part of that. Third, mind…

> First, no, anxiety is not in your body. Fear, just like any other emotion is in your brain. You might get physiological responses in the form of chemicals in your body. That is an effect, not a cause. Do you have a source for this? I remember seeing an article on (I think) HN about research indicating gut bacteria influences emotions which would seem to me to indicate cause rather than effect. Perhaps it’s impossib…

Yes: https://www.wired.com/2010/12/fear-brain-amygdala/

Gut bacteria influence the production of neurotransmitters therefore it can influence how you 'experience' an emotion. A misbalance in your gut microbiome and the brain's reactions ca be influenced - e.g. cannot transmit effective enough different signals.

To clear out any misunderstanding, your gut microbiome cannot 'make' you feel anything on its own. It can either make it easier or more difficult to experience certain emotions.

This is an emerging field - look at these 2 publications and see how questionable the conclusions can be:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrgastro.2013.76

and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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