Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 120 posts

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

#81

Post by ca98am79 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #80
ca98am79 wrote: post #77

I highly recommend a 10-day vipassana meditation course. It's free: http://dhamma.org I had panic disorder and nothing helped. Sometimes I would lie awake all night panicking, without sleep, until morning. Medications or therapy didn't help. Vipassana meditation has basically "cured" it/made it completely manageable. Also, consciousness.io helps me

>>I highly recommend a 10-day vipassana meditation course. It's free: http://dhamma.org It's always hilarious when people recommend this to those who have not even done meditation. It's like they say they are thirsty and you say, "here, you can drink from this fire-hose!" The guy is at a stage where he can benefit from even just 30 minutes of meditation per week . I think it's highly irresponsible to suggest he drops…

I did it when I had not ever really meditated before and it changed my life. It's not any more difficult if you have never meditated before.

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

#82

Post by kaybe »

thedudemabry wrote: post #29
davidkim wrote: post #2

I've struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. I used to approached it with a fight or flight relationship. As I shifted my ways of identifying with it, I was able to turn that fight/hostility into a gentle dance. From there I was able to start taking the small steps that would help me have better control of it. Start now, or do I let it manifest further for my future self? Here are some things that have…

I'm in total agreement here. The fight or flight response to anxiety feels really hard to overcome, but it is possible using these and other approaches. Something else that I feel like I should mention is that if you're feeling overwhelmed, scheduling an appointment with a googled therapist near you to talk about anxiety is an awesome concrete action to take. In the heat of the moment, it can feel like admitting defe…

Do you actually mean 'googled'? Or is that a typo and means 'good'? Just curious since it could be both.

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

#84

Post by sophcw »

enraged_camel wrote: post #80
ca98am79 wrote: post #77

I highly recommend a 10-day vipassana meditation course. It's free: http://dhamma.org I had panic disorder and nothing helped. Sometimes I would lie awake all night panicking, without sleep, until morning. Medications or therapy didn't help. Vipassana meditation has basically "cured" it/made it completely manageable. Also, consciousness.io helps me

>>I highly recommend a 10-day vipassana meditation course. It's free: http://dhamma.org It's always hilarious when people recommend this to those who have not even done meditation. It's like they say they are thirsty and you say, "here, you can drink from this fire-hose!" The guy is at a stage where he can benefit from even just 30 minutes of meditation per week . I think it's highly irresponsible to suggest he drops…

Doing a meditation retreat is actually a great way to get into meditation. I did a 5 day retreat having almost no experience beforehand, and it was a huge, huge help to me. Getting into meditation is hard, as it takes a long time to see real results, whereas with a retreat, you will definitely see results after a few days, which really helped motivate me to keep going. I'd also highly recommend the book Mindfulness In Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana. Very straightforward guide to meditation for people who haven't done it before.

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

#85

Post by mpdehaan2 »

Any situation where work is more or less killing you is a good situation to not have to deal with it.

I can't speak to your case specifically, though it is basically impossible to hold up the world. Doing the best you can do is good, and if people are saying you are doing a good job (or not saying you aren't), that's a good thing.

It's important to take enough time to recharge and do other things than let work scenarios dominate, especially as some parties will extract all of your energy and never be satisfied there.

Dropping your guard can be a fine strategy, namely that it's easier to deal with politics or tech issues when you don't have things to defend. Because the right decisions are usually obvious and don't need defense.

There is an increasing trend in today's tech to be silent when someone agrees with something, I don't 100% understand it, but I wouldn't interpret that to mean something isn't right... it can often mean no one thought anything was wrong.

In any case, all software is barely held together. Any problems you have, the whole world is having in exactly the same way. It's a miracle any of that works, so don't sweat it too much and just try hard and it'll be ok.

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

#86

Post by aaxlerodball »

As a first line, I'd like to echo graeme. Sleep, diet, and exercise are tremendously important and you should make sure those are in good shape first.

I've found mild anxiolytics (benzodiazepines like alprazolam and clonazepam) amazingly useful as a secondary, occasional relief from anxiety that is harming performance. I wouldn't want to take these every day, but they can be very useful for mitigating acute anxiety.

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

#87

Post by watmough »

Train yourself to simply act more slowly. Give yourself time to reply, to think, to relax.

MAKE TIME.

Everyone is anxious in stressful situations. Simply slowing everything down, within reason of course, and finding time for yourself is one way that I handle it.

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

#88

Post by verulito »

pcglue wrote: post #38

I have anxiety and I have quit 2 jobs when asked to assume tech lead role because the first 2 times I have taken on tech lead roles, I ended up in the hospital and started alienating my family due to depression, respectively. I can handle the toughest sr. engineer assignment, but I can't handle the most basic tech lead stuff where responsibility for other people's work is involved. I have since learned to hold back m…

I also have no aspirations to rise the corporate ladder. Pay goes up, maybe, but so do work hours and stress. Job stability goes down. Playfulness goes down. Free time goes down. Peon programming is where it's at. If I want more more, then I can freelance or start side projects and they'd likely both pay better and be a lot more fulfilling.
Post reply on HN