Anxiety Looks Different in Men • Hacker News Board

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#171

Post by mattlutze » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #139

mattlutze wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misandry is the state of being predisposed or prejudiced against men. Toxic masculinity is stereotypical or reductive modes of action or thinking perceived by men as expected or required, which can be harmful to other men or other people. They're not the same and it'd be not great to think that they are the same.

> Toxic masculinity is stereotypical or reductive modes of action or thinking perceived by men as expected or required, which can be harmful to other men or other people. The part that no one wants to talk about is those behaviors are expected, required, and desired of men in some subcultures—-by both the men and the women of those subcultures. It isn’t purely some internal fault where some men misunderstand local no…

>> perceived by men as expected or required

This is I think the part that you're describing.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#172

Post by mattlutze » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

nesadi wrote: post #141

justinjlynn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Though misandry also includes the devaluing of certain ways a masculine identifying person might express that masculinity, just as misogyny also includes ways the devaluing of certain ways a feminine identifying person might express their femininity. Misandry is not simply the wholesale hatred of men and/or masculinity, just as misogyny is not simply the wholesale hatred of women and/or femininity. Toxic mascul…

All this talk about "toxic masculinity" tells me that there's something fundamentally wrong about the whole conversation. Because nobody wants to define what masculinity, healthy masculinity, is supposed to look like in all aspects of life and, most importantly, how it relates to sexuality in general and sexuality with women. I just get the sense that masculinity as a whole is supposed to be toxic.

Healthy masculinity could be inferred as the opposite of "toxic masculinity", which I do offer a general description of above.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#173

Post by ezekg » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

okusername wrote: post #135

ezekg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you attribute this to 5-HTP and magnesium? I take both, and other nootropics, and also experience similar symptoms when I’m stressed.

5-htp is associated with increased anxiety / panic attacks. Found out after I got one. (Racing heart, palpitations out of nowhere, spent a night in hospital doing bunch of heart tests.) There is very little research on it, because it's not patented, but try pubmed etc. iirc it increases anxiety especially in the first days, weeks then it levels out.

That's interesting. I've actually found that it, coupled with other nootropics, reduces my anxiety by quite a lot. I've been taking it for a couple months and haven't had any negative side effects. I used to get "racing heart", palpitations, HBP, and other symptoms when I'm stressed (which now I'm attributing to the general bucket of "anxiety"), and these supplements really help calm my nerves throughout the day and I haven't had many symptoms since.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#174

Post by mattlutze » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

justinjlynn wrote: post #132

mattlutze wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misandry is the state of being predisposed or prejudiced against men. Toxic masculinity is stereotypical or reductive modes of action or thinking perceived by men as expected or required, which can be harmful to other men or other people. They're not the same and it'd be not great to think that they are the same.

True. Though misandry also includes the devaluing of certain ways a masculine identifying person might express that masculinity, just as misogyny also includes ways the devaluing of certain ways a feminine identifying person might express their femininity. Misandry is not simply the wholesale hatred of men and/or masculinity, just as misogyny is not simply the wholesale hatred of women and/or femininity. Toxic mascul…

I'm not an expert, but I see misandry generally defined as "hatred of men", and not including devaluation in the way that the "incel" sorts of communities describe the attack on masculinity.

> To see it as caused solely by internalized misandry is limiting.

I don't think I've described toxic masculinity in terms of misandry. Actually I cautioned against klipt's association of the two, as I don't find them to be dependent on each other. My working definition of toxic masculinity was:

> Toxic masculinity is stereotypical or reductive modes of action or thinking perceived by men as expected or required, which can be harmful to other men or other people.

I see a purposeful intention from you to remove gender from the discussion and talk about sexism instead, but I'd further caution that this is a mechanism for distracting from the discussion of these harmful modes of action and thinking. Changing the way males are raised, so that they learn a broader way of approaching the world, has to include a specific discussion of the things that necessitate the conversation in the first place.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#175

Post by akuji1993 » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #168

dkarl wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the great thing about group therapy. It's designed to work through interpersonal things that come up with regular people who have no training and are just as concerned with their own problems as you are with yours. This was something that never came up in ten years of individual therapy. I'm not sure if my individual therapist was aware that it could be a problem, but she was the one who suggested I do g…

One wonders if regular meetings with friends over coffee wouldn't be cheaper.

In my experience, they can sometime help and sometimes they can't. If they understand your issue, it can be easier and quicker to talk through your issues with a friend. Deep, buried anxiety issues are not understood by people that don't experience them. I, a completely healthy young man, constantly worrying about my heart, was met first with concern, then with dismissal as my issues didn't disappear after a week or so. You can become very annoying to friends. People who understand might be better. In my opinion, a therapist is the best, everything is inferior to that.. But that's just what worked for me.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#176

Post by psweber » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

nness wrote: post #25

psweber wrote: post #6

Many anxious men (and women) aren't suffering from an anxiety disorder. Their anxiety is a perfectly reasonable response to the life they are living. I'm fine with therapy, meditation, and medication as long as they aren't used as tools to make it bearable to stay in a bad situation.

This comment couldn't be more counter-productive. The article makes it clear that a feeling of anxiety at certain times is completely normal; it is when that anxiety is affects your daily life, causing you distress, or leads to depression or harm should it be concidered an anxiety disorder. The article notes that men can react to or present with anxiety differently; and that representation is ignored, leading to a re…

I don't believe I meant what you think I meant. I intended to make a comment about our society creating unnecessary anxiety. I hope we look at the cause of the anxiety instead of just treating the symptoms.

I do want people to see mental health professionals if they are suffering. I fear that option isn't available to many people that need the help, so I'd like to see a societal change in the pressures we put on each other and the ways we live our lives.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#177

Post by koboll » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

okusername wrote: post #135

ezekg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you attribute this to 5-HTP and magnesium? I take both, and other nootropics, and also experience similar symptoms when I’m stressed.

5-htp is associated with increased anxiety / panic attacks. Found out after I got one. (Racing heart, palpitations out of nowhere, spent a night in hospital doing bunch of heart tests.) There is very little research on it, because it's not patented, but try pubmed etc. iirc it increases anxiety especially in the first days, weeks then it levels out.

For me it was palpitations from 5-HTP. Heart skips a beat, then sudden extreme vertigo and anxiety skyrockets. This happened several times a day.

And magnesium caused a dull, ever-present pressure/ache in the left side of my chest that went mostly away (except when I'm very anxious) after I stopped taking it.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#178

Post by gingabriska » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #115

rubicon33 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you overcome the 'I shouldn't have to go through whiteboarding' problem? The riddles, and the whiteboards, are why I turn down all big 4 recruiter emails.

Power through it? You only have to do it once (or four times if you respond to all four), it takes one day and it's not that hard. There are way worse and fruitless ways to spend a day that we do routinely.

For a lot of skilled engineers with cushy jobs, not going for whiteboard is matter of principle.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#179

Post by everdrive » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #40

Anxiety is one of the emotions that I have to consciously think about how to express. I have to imagine what people look like in the movies when they're scared, and then I try to reproduce it. I can show many other emotions naturally, without thinking about it: happiness, anger, disgust. But fear I have to consciously simulate. (I suppose if I was in a bus going off the edge of a cliff or someone stuck a gun in my fa…

I understand this is not the point of your story, but I hope part of the lesson here is just how fallible body language and facial expression can be. I'll bet a lot of these people believed they were good at empathizing, when in fact they were only good at empathizing with similar experiences or body language expressions.

Re: Anxiety Looks Different in Men

#180

Post by Retra » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #40

Anxiety is one of the emotions that I have to consciously think about how to express. I have to imagine what people look like in the movies when they're scared, and then I try to reproduce it. I can show many other emotions naturally, without thinking about it: happiness, anger, disgust. But fear I have to consciously simulate. (I suppose if I was in a bus going off the edge of a cliff or someone stuck a gun in my fa…

I have the opposite problem: I don't know what anxiety is. Supposedly it's an emotion people have (and it's certainly possible I feel it too,) but I have no way to identify my feelings as anxiety because nobody has ever expressed the meaning of that term in a way the conforms to any feeling I have ever had.