Ask HN: Anxiety is limiting my enjoyment of a wonderful career. Can you relate?

I'm a freelance developer with two steady retainers, I have a wonderful partner, and I play in an up-and-coming rock band; I'm doing very well, from an outside perspective. However, for the past few months, I was unable to refill my antidepressant prescription during my transition to CoveredCA (or, at least wasn't sure how to do so, derp), which led me back into a pretty bad case of my depression, anxiety, and obsessive/compulsive behavior.

When I don't take my medication, I can hardly think straight for more than a few minutes at a time before I'm thrust into a really mentally exhausting power cycle of automatic negative thoughts, which usually results in intense physical discomfort and a generally unpleasant demeanor. I get rude and withdrawn, and often binge on comfort foods and mind-numbing television to deal with the fact that I feel absolutely no pleasure in life.

Fortunately, I figured out my medication situation and I'm feeling a lot better. A little embarrassed about some of the work that I produced during that time, but that's life!

I've found that in addition to medication, CONSISTENT exercise and diet and >7 hours of sleep are necessities for me, and if you aren't doing those before the medication, you should give it a try to see if it's enough for you to function well. It's really hard to do this when you don't have a regular routine, as I've come to discover, but you just sort of have to start forcing yourself to be on a schedule of some sort, or plan for when your schedule is going to be somewhat erratic.

Also, seeing a therapist is super beneficial, and I frankly think most people would benefit from seeing one. It really helps you to realize that your "crazies" aren't that crazy, and it's okay to have irrational thoughts and acknowledge them.

I remember reading a bunch of articles about "how to make eye contact". I was on sites aimed at people with aspergers, as they're a niche most likely to actually need that kind of advice.

Then you practice. And occasionally get feedback from people. Everything will be awkward as first, but do something long enough and it becomes a habit. The feedback is important, so your new habit is actually a good one.

Then I read some books on body language, and I got this DVD by Paul Ekman about microexpressions. I've since read some stuff suggesting that may be bunk, but the DVD was still valuable because it showed me what a bunch of different expressions represented, and gave me feedback if I was correctly classifying them. (There's a big book of facial expression coding that lists expressions standard across cultures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System)

Then I combined the two. Talking to people, looking at them, and noticing their expressions. A bit one was looking for laugh lines by eyes. If someone is genuinely amused, their eyes will smile in a way that they won't if they're just mouthing a smile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile#Duchenne_smile

After that, it was just practice. Talk with people, pay attention, see if the results match what you thought. (For instance, if you thought someone enjoyed themselves, and then they want to hang out again, then you were probably right)

Over time, by paying attention, and using feedback to assess my judgments, I was able to build an intuition for reading people, one that I believe is quite accurate. People often are surprised that I know what they're thinking or when they're upset by something.

Most of the small annoyances of life melted away. A lot of interpersonal grief just evaporates if you can read the people you're dealing with, and respond appropriately. For instance, I have zero complaints about store personnel, in person. They're all wonderful! Over the phone, I can't see them, and stuff can still get frustrating.

It turns out that people usually aren't jerks. We just react in predictable ways to other people. So if you do something irritating, or ignore someone's discomfort, they'll get irritable. And then you'll get irritable.

But if you can spot the small signs, you can make adjustments, and everything goes smoothly. (To be clear, I'm talking about smoothing minor friction, not being a doormat. But minor frictions cause 80% of social grief!)

So:

  1. Theory
  2. Trial and error
  3. Feedback
  4. Revision, repeat #2

I've starting working at a job about a year ago, a job that theoretically would be very close to what I would be doing in my spare time. And yet, I have the same problem, something is inhibiting my ability to focus, concentrate on problem solving, to provide solutions, and I'm fairly sure that thing is anxiety. I constantly feel very tired.

I don't really know what I could do, I've noticed that the problem tends to fade after exercising thoroughly (century mountain-bike ride or similar endeavors), but I'm still struggling with it on a day-to-day basis, and constantly think of quitting.

It certainly doesn't help that I'm also attending CS university, which doesn't leave me with enough time to fix my problems.

So you're definitely not alone in this.

* Remember that other people have these same feelings. You're not alone and it's normal.

* Anyone who would think badly of you just for not knowing one simple thing is an asshole and was just looking for an excuse to be a dick. The problem is with them, not you.

* Nobody can know everything. Even the person you most admire and respect professionally has areas where you know more than them.

* Work hard, strive to improve your knowledge and skill set. This is all anyone can do.