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The Importance of Anxiety

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Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#31

Post by prostoalex »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

"You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental movies." Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence."

Eckhart Tolle. "The Power of Now"

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#32

Post by andrey-p »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

So I'll second what a lot of people are saying here with CBT and mindfulness. No experience with medication so I won't comment on that.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this: exercise.

Seriously, instead of compulsively checking HN, go for a run or even a walk somewhere in nature. It'll get rid of that excess adrenaline that prevents you from relaxing. If you've got a legitimate hard decision to make, freeing up your mind a bit (rather than focussing on tech news or sci-fi) is the best way to come up with a decent solution to things.

The running shoes I got a year and a half ago were pretty expensive, but they have been one of my most useful purchases to date. I go running 2-3 times a week - when I'm feeling down, when I need to make a hard decision, when I'm about to go on a date - and it might not always be a 100% panacea but it makes things a whole damn lot easier.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#33

Post by grokkable »

Evolutionary psychology tells us anxiety is necessary for the survival of the species. This is obviously the case in social interactions as they can change our status/value in the social hierarchy which increases or decreases our chances of survival.

Like jobu said - humanity has a baseline of anxiety.

What about when our anxiety is severely deviant?

Meditation and Eckhart Tolle changed my life. Unfortunately, I still need to use medication sometimes when I get attacks.

There's so much I'd like to type out about not being the contents of our mind, Libet and free will, meditation, etc. It's only taken me 20 years to understand and I always feel like I want to tell everyone since I figured all of this out two years ago. But you can do it yourself. Buddhism, Tolle, meditation. Meditation got me to CBT. CBT brought me to Buddhism which brought me to Tolle.

vis a vis prostoalex's post - Tolle's right.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#34

Post by markovbling »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

300mg of Theanine every morning 30min before breakfast very good for anxiety and strong productivity side effects when taken with caffeine ;)

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#35

Post by partition »

Aka the importance of mentally being a headless chicken. You're not being "introspective" or otherwise "deep" when anxious. You're just applying a blanket negative bias to all of your observations, and then looking around mostly to confirm the bias. Anxiety is crippling, full stop.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#36

Post by dood »

markovbling wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

300mg of Theanine every morning 30min before breakfast very good for anxiety and strong productivity side effects when taken with caffeine ;)

A while ago I switched to drinking plain old green tea instead of tea/coffee. Great stuff, feel clearer-headed, more relaxed, more energetic, and more productive. All of the good effects of tea/coffee, but without the unnecessary caffeine highs, lows and tweakiness.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

markovbling wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

300mg of Theanine every morning 30min before breakfast very good for anxiety and strong productivity side effects when taken with caffeine ;)

Nice one ;).

I guess I might try switching from black to green.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

marincounty wrote: post #21
TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

In my case, one day I had a huge panic attack. Woke up the next day a complete nervous wreck. Looked through yellow pages for therapist. Decided to give it a few day to see if the intense daily anxiety would get a little bit better. It didn't. A couple of weeks later I found a therapist. Great--He will help me. Well, I was seeing him two times a week for months. I paid his fees through what was left of my student loa…

Thank you for the honest story. I've also been there. The huge panic attack is how my anxiety issues started. I lived for years with the cosntant fear of death, that I'm going to be damned and that the whole world will collapse.

At some point it went away. Maybe by itself, maybe thanks to SSRIs, but the fear, while still lurkinng deep in me, is hardly noticeable anymore. What's left is just random anxiety and an aversion for long-term planning. I just can't do it. I spent years thinking my life is about to end, and as a result I made myself unable to think many years forward. A coping strategy that is hindering me now.

And I agree. This state was Hell. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy as well.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#39

Post by TeMPOraL »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #2

All cool and great, but can you now give me something to shut that feeling off? I would be, like, million times happier (and financially stable) if I didn't feel constant anxiety towards things ranging from existential questions to work to relationships, anxiety that reduces me to someone who needs to read HN at work and watch sci-fi shows in huge batches just to stay sane. I'll side with Kant here, anxiety is a feel…

Since I'm past my edit window - I sincerely thank you all for your great and helpful responses.

In a way, I guess I've heard most of them already. Part of me wished there was an easier way than diet + exercise + meditation + therapy + wait, wait and wait. Some magic pill, or maybe a powerful quote that could instantly short-circuit my anxiety loop. Having your brain second-guessing every other thought doesn't help in developing and keeping habits.

I've tried SSRI - they did help reduce the baseline, so panic attacks are mostly things of the past, and I have little bit more willpower (at the cost of the usual side effects I won't name).

I've tried diet and exercise before and didn't notice significant improvement in anxiety levels or cognitive abilities - but then again I was optimizing for weight loss, not for well-being, so maybe I should just try a different diet.

I'm having hard time getting myself to trust any other therapy than CBT and the only CBT practitioner in my town that I know about is a private, expensive doctor. I guess I have to get back to "Feeling Good" and try to self-CBT until I save up some money.

Re: The Importance of Anxiety

#40

Post by TeMPOraL »

dgreensp wrote: post #15

Let's extol the virtues of fear and hate, while we're at it. Yes, it's normal to get anxious sometime, just as it's normal to get angry sometimes. Someone who never, ever gets angry could be suspected of bottling up their feelings (but we can't be sure). Our emotions aren't under direct voluntary control, so if we find ourselves getting angry, or anxious, or fearful, we must aim not to freak out, or criticize ourselv…

I like the way you described this. You see, I'm pretty much in control of my anger. I almost never get into prolonged fights, because I'm good at taking control over my anger and short-circuiting the arguments. Usually the other person just relieves the accumulated pressure for another minute, then calms down, stops defending themselves and we go on with a productive conversation.

But on the other hand, I'm completely overwhelmed by anxiety. When it starts, it often doesn't subside for another hour and drops my capacity to 10%. I wish I could ignore it the way I ignore my anger.

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