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Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

anxious-tec.blogspot.com

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Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#11

Post by swombat »

donna wrote: post #10
donna wrote: post #6

A feral kitten came to a friend of mine after asking the universe to help her get rid of the voles in her garden. She name the kitten Quito, befriended him, showed him how to get in and out of the house through the doggy doors. Introduced him to the other animals in the house. This took about 2 months. Quito vole hunts during the day, and comes inside to sleep on a tower pole of carpet at night. He watches with a pro…

It is unfortunate re the negative point. My story shared was to expose a distraction from focusing on being depressed.. find a another point-of-view. I intended to share the possibility of how one can focus on the negative or the positive aspects of one's day in every moment. Reflect and find balance during your day. Start by noticing and articulating the positive moments in your day, what did fill you up? Start with…

I think because of the rambling style and punctuation, and lack of paragraphs, it looks like some sort of spam comment.

Try using paragraphs more, and your posts will be more likely to be upvoted.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#12

Post by donna »

swombat wrote: post #11
donna wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate re the negative point. My story shared was to expose a distraction from focusing on being depressed.. find a another point-of-view. I intended to share the possibility of how one can focus on the negative or the positive aspects of one's day in every moment. Reflect and find balance during your day. Start by noticing and articulating the positive moments in your day, what did fill you up? Start with…

I think because of the rambling style and punctuation, and lack of paragraphs, it looks like some sort of spam comment. Try using paragraphs more, and your posts will be more likely to be upvoted.

I appreciate the paragraph, and punctuation suggestions. ;-D

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#13

Post by abstractbill »

I can definitely empathize with this. I don't know exactly when I stopped feeling the way the author describes, but it happened somehow.

I think living in California has been good for me - there's definitely an emphasis on living well here. I find it easier to take pleasure in the simple things now - hiking especially. Also I often get this "wow, I'm living in the future" feeling these days, which always makes me very happy.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#14

Post by ibsulon »

gabrielroth wrote: post #5
jawngee wrote: post #2

Great article. I suffer from PTSD, GAD and mild depression. Having been involved in a fairly violent street gang in high school, I had seen a lot of violence and just plain f*cked up stuff. People getting shot in front of me, a lot of situations that forced me to confront my own mortality, etc. It really didn't hit me until about 10 years ago. I was getting off the F train at 23rd street and had an overwhelming feeli…

I'm not sure why you gave up on prescribed psychotropics under medical supervision but you're still self-medicating with mariajuana. Is the latter more effective? Having a (capable, attentive) doctor monitoring your treatment can be a big advantage, and it's worth putting some effort into finding such a person.

I can speak for myself. Wellbutrin made me paranoid, and Lexapro and Effexor had less serious but still life-altering side effects. Neither were worth the minor improvement in mood. (Further, they just make me incredibly apathetic.)

I'm glad that anti-depressants work for others, but I'm not willing to spend years going from side effect to side effect just to find the right drug which will probably stop working after a while.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#16

Post by gcheong »

The one thing I've found that has helped me the most is exercise. I wouldn't have believed it myself and most of the evidence I have is just my own subjective experience, but there is one incident that stands out where one day my boss mentioned that my attitude had completely changed for the better at some point. I didn't think it had, but apparently there was enough of a change for him to mention the observation. Of course, I can't say for sure it was the result of exercise, but I couldn't place it on anything else I had been doing at that point. It was enough to convince me that exercise is something I just need to do regularly.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#17

Post by maxawaytoolong »

jawngee wrote: post #2

Great article. I suffer from PTSD, GAD and mild depression. Having been involved in a fairly violent street gang in high school, I had seen a lot of violence and just plain f*cked up stuff. People getting shot in front of me, a lot of situations that forced me to confront my own mortality, etc. It really didn't hit me until about 10 years ago. I was getting off the F train at 23rd street and had an overwhelming feeli…

I developed most of the symptoms of GAD last summer after having a panic attack where I ended up in the hospital. It was weird because I'm in my early 30s and have never had any anxiety symptoms before. I guess I was probably mildly depressed, but no prior history of panic attacks or other GAD symptoms. I believe the panic attack was brought on because I got food poisoning during a time period with a lot of uncertain work-related stress.

I find the hyper vigilance the most obnoxious thing about this. The other things I can't stand are various weird chest tensions and growling stomach issues, which are related to the hyper-vigilance thing. I'd probably not even notice them usually, but now they freak me out.

I've not tried any drugs but have used the "Linden Method" which was suggested by a friend. It was relatively useful but there's not much too it. Mostly: get an engrossing hobby like photography and learn some deep breathing exercises.

Other things that have helped:

- exercise, specifically outdoor exercise like running or surfing

- more social time with friends

- avoiding caffeine... this is a bummer since I really like coffee.

- one glass of wine seems to help, but drinking to excess makes it worse the next day

- regular sleep schedule seems to help

- spending less time using computer-mediated communication helps

- avoiding certain foods seems to help. I think indigestion triggers the hyper-vigilance response.

Out of all of these things, exercise seems to be helping the most. Thanks YC for the previous suggestions. I kind of knew that exercise would be the most beneficial, but it took some external prompting to actually get started running again.

I am interested in CBT. How do you go about getting into it? Just ask my primary care physician?

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#18

Post by time_management »

ibsulon wrote: post #14
gabrielroth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you gave up on prescribed psychotropics under medical supervision but you're still self-medicating with mariajuana. Is the latter more effective? Having a (capable, attentive) doctor monitoring your treatment can be a big advantage, and it's worth putting some effort into finding such a person.

I can speak for myself. Wellbutrin made me paranoid, and Lexapro and Effexor had less serious but still life-altering side effects. Neither were worth the minor improvement in mood. (Further, they just make me incredibly apathetic.) I'm glad that anti-depressants work for others, but I'm not willing to spend years going from side effect to side effect just to find the right drug which will probably stop working after…

Lexapro had no side effects for me, except for mild, short-duration panic episodes when I was going to sleep, mostly during the first week. (If you have anxiety, the first week of an SSRI is known to suck.) The first three nights I had to take Klonopin (clonazepam) and by the end of the second week there were no side effects.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#19

Post by dusklight »

gcheong wrote: post #16

The one thing I've found that has helped me the most is exercise. I wouldn't have believed it myself and most of the evidence I have is just my own subjective experience, but there is one incident that stands out where one day my boss mentioned that my attitude had completely changed for the better at some point. I didn't think it had, but apparently there was enough of a change for him to mention the observation. Of…

I can second that. You feel more energetic, you need less sleep, you think faster, your memory recall is better.

Perhaps more importantly, by exercising regularly you will learn discipline and focus, and my life has benefited so much from having more of that.

Re: Anxiety, Depression, Technology, and Me

#20

Post by TheSOB88 »

donna wrote: post #6

A feral kitten came to a friend of mine after asking the universe to help her get rid of the voles in her garden. She name the kitten Quito, befriended him, showed him how to get in and out of the house through the doggy doors. Introduced him to the other animals in the house. This took about 2 months. Quito vole hunts during the day, and comes inside to sleep on a tower pole of carpet at night. He watches with a pro…

I do not understand. As much as I like cute carnivorous animals, what does this have to do with the story posted?
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