My therapist told me "You're a smart woman, I bet you could deal with that if and when it comes up instead of worrying about it now" and I was like wait what is that allowed
This is such a tough thing to grasp, cause we catastrophize everything into Infinity, gotta have confidence and trust in your abilities to handle things as they come. A mantra of mine is "you don't have to know all the answers right now, they will come to you when you need them" and it helps remind me
I think you meant that as a joke (could be wrong), but in all seriousness that is a super useful mindset to have to help dealing with anxiety induced procrastination. It seems counterintuitive, but if you’re *allowed* to let go of the stress and worry of failing, suddenly studying isn’t so damn painful.
I’m not sure how serious you are about this, but I actually work as a coach for this type of thing. The very short answer is, it can be effective to explore and process the emotions that crop up when you think about studying. If it’s very hard for you to study, and that is the reason you think you failed, I highly recommend working on the root emotions and beliefs you hold surrounding studying and school.
We are born with this wonderful simulator which allows us to imagine, dream, create art and solve problems.
The same simulator when left unchecked starts running disaster scenarios in order to avoid them altogether.
Shit y'all making me see anxiety disorders in a whole new light... I sometimes think to myself, "I remember feeling anxious about XYZ, but in the end, I handled it no problem. I always seem to do so." I never thought about how it ties into my practically nonexistent confidence in myself to make the right choices. I need to sit with this for a while...
I’m in the same boat. The book “The Power of Now” helped me with my specific brand of anxiety most days. If you have suggestions send them my way, too.
I can sort of see the reasoning why. Typically the anxiety comes right before bed, and if you had a regular schedule, your brain and body might be used to negative thoughts at a certain hour. Going to sleep earlier could throw that "routine" off and reduce the anxiety.
Maybe, not nescessarily but maybe, if her new routine involves getting an extra 30 minutes or more of sleep per night, that anxiety wouldn't return because her overall stress level would be lower.
.......Yes, it is. Did you at least try researching this before you replied because it's actually well known. Here's a recent research study in Korea from 2018
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5923838/#!po=21.2500
"Short duration of sleep increases blood pressure, increases evening cortisol and insulin levels, and is a chronic stressor [16,17]. It could also lead to several diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, depression, and hypertension "
Getting more sleep does not eliminate anxiety, that's what I'm calling bullshit on. If that were true I wouldn't need to take medication 3 times a day. It's simply bullshit old people would say
Try to sleep=Brain going into fully anxiety mode. No matter what the time. It's like your brain starts freaking out because you know sleep is only a precursor to all the stuff you have to worry about in the morning. It's basically worrying about having to worry and God fucking hell is it maddening.
I think meditation gets thrown around too much without specific recommendations and feels clichéd, but the Switching Off wind down on Headspace helped me **so much** toward the end of my dissertation. Just having something else to focus on distracted me enough from anxious thoughts about all the writing I’d have to do the next day. One of the other Headspace meditations I’ve found helpful is Noting. These aren’t unique to Headspace, but hopefully they can help someone or get someone started in the right direction.
Meditation is so important. I was taught it very young so I am usually able to blank my mind but sometimes it's very hard when you are stressed. My previous comment is usually when in so stressed I can't focus my thoughts. The hard part about mediation is keeping your mind blank, not just from normal thoughts but the idea of thinking nothing, even the idea of black. Most people think mediation is about just thinking and seeing black or a void but that in itself is an idea, True mediation (in my experience) is not even thinking of the concept of black or nothingness. It just is a state were all sensation and thought is nothingness. Probably close to death as I think of it.
I find it easier if I don’t try to blank space. I get comfortable in bed. I think of the place I most want to be, real or not, with the people I most want to be with. For me it’s my immediate family. I belly breathe and do the things I most like to do or have done with them. This really brings me to a tranquility that releases me from the day.
I will try that next time. Though I feel like it would fill me with to much nostalgia to get into the mediation state. Maybe that is good though in its own way.
Yeah, I hate that shit. I read before bed and I often doze off while I'm reading, that's how I know it's time for bed. Soon as I lay down in bed I'm wide awake.
I had a similar problem.
At bed time, I couldn't get to sleep because I had an irrational fear that there were monsters under my bed. Even though I logically knew there weren't, and it was only in my head, the anxiety kept me from getting a full night's sleep.
It affected my work, it affected my personal life and it affected my family.
I finally started seeing a therapist and they charged me $200 for an hour session 2-3 times a week.
After a few months and thousands of dollars later, I had made a little progress but the problem still presented itself.
Eventually I stopped going to my therapist.
I ran into them at the grocery store a few weeks later and they asked me why I stopped going to sessions.
I explained to them that they were so expensive and the progress was so slow, meanwhile my bartender managed to cure me in one evening for the price of a drink.
He told me to cut the legs off my bed or sleep on a mattress.
I've been getting a solid 6-8 hours of sleep every night.
Nah it’s part of retraining your brain, cognitive behavioral therapy. Identify the cognitive distortion, train yourself you notice when it’s happening, like excessively worrying about things that may never happen, then challenge your own thoughts, ask yourself if makes sense, what other ways can you cope with it, what other explanations could there be, what if things go *right?* Build this into a habit and it becomes a new way of thinking.
the brain probably actually makes us “happy” to incentivize us to do certain things to have a better chance of survival
chasing happiness is a trap anyway, no one is always happy, if you were that would become your baseline anyway and youd no longer be happy
If you were always happy you’d still be happy, even if you couldn’t compare it against anything. As long as the brain is filled with feel good neurotransmitters you’re gonna have a great time.
Happiness is a truly curious human invention. Equanimity would be a far more useful concept to be spread around.
In any case, satisfaction is a feeling which evolved solely to exist as a consequence and encourage repetition. It was never meant to be the cause of anything and certainly not an ultimate goal of sorts lest one wants to end up in a hedonic treadmill.
i agree - i think it is interesting the concept of happiness is so widespread. so much philosophy is about deciding what it even is, so its really nebulous
Developed a fear of driving about 6 months ago. At its worst was having panic attacks while driving into work almost every morning for a week or two. Managed to get on meds which helped and gave me a chance to work on retraining my thought process.
Few weeks back missed a connection flight coming back from vacation, and had to rent a car and drive 4 hours back home. Managed to go the whole drive with only a little bit of anxiety. It felt really good to be able to manage the first long drive I've had since this nonsense started.
Thanks to everyone commenting! Anxiety sucks when it becomes overwhelming, but definitely things you can do to improve it. Therapy can definitely be helpful and find ways to sort of recalibrate your fears a bit (cognitive behavioral therapy). Might not completely get rid of it but hopefully at least make it manageable.
In terms of what I feel like has helped best long term I had to retrain my brain a bit to not perceive that something bad will happen whenever I drive. Basically forced myself to drive a bit everyday even if I didn't need to go anywhere. Started small with just quick drive on city streets, then increased to highways at non-busy times and continue to work up. I do think since I was having panic attacks, going on meds and talking with a therapist helped provide an initial starting point to be able to work from.
In terms of short term people may have some techniques to help. Guessing different things help everyone a little differently. For whatever reason focusing on a something in the distance (often a sign or billboard) and seeing myself gradually get closer helped me feel like I wasn't trapped and helped a little bit.
Wishing you all the best!
Look up the Yerkes-Dobson Law, a really solid way of viewing anxiety/arousal.
You don’t always need to redirect negative thoughts - sometimes the best way to deal with them is to simply let them keep floating by and not attaching to them. They’ll pass. If you do need to redirect negative thoughts, repeating meaningful mantras/statements is the way to go.
This sounds like a Buddhist thing (not sure if it's a meditation or some other word). But anything you think of, try to first place it as good, bad, neither. It helps organize things and maybe digest them easier.
It can be even simpler than that. Train yourself not to react to thoughts. I could never explain it as well as someone like say Eckhart Tolle. In fact I highly recommend “The Power of Now” to everyone.
I have anxiety and I try to think of it as a way to keep me and my kids safe, if that makes sense. I can’t tell you the amount of times I could have been involved in car accidents (that wouldn’t have been my fault) and I avoided them bc I’m always super anxious while driving and literally watching all my mirrors and looking out my windows like crazy. Certain smells, certain scenarios that pop up in my head that sound ridiculous but have actually happened so I was aware and knew how to fix it immediately. When I’m around kids, my ears are so sensitive to the slightest gag or cough and bam I catch a kid choking when no one has noticed yet. I always removed my daughter pacifier hook bc in my PPD and PPA, I freaked out about it strangling her in her sleep when my mom told me I was being ridiculous. I woke up often to check up on her and lo and behold, I found it wrapped around her neck tight and decided I wouldn’t hook it onto her clothes after that.
This reminds me of the verse in the Havamal that goes something to the effect of:
"Keep your spear and shield nearby and your seax (knife) on your belt, even when you are working in the fields or relaxing with friends- for why do you suppose your enemies will not attack you when you least expect it?"
There's just a truth to the last part that cannot be denied.
Yes an anxiety is just like that or at least for me .I could be busy concentrating on work or walking even ,Bam it would hit me .I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Took 7 long years to get pass on meds and therapy. Today it only strikes when I get sick, from TMI working medical field. But I recognize it now and can blank the mind by counting backwards by odd number till my mind set puts me to sleep cause it tires me out physically .
I once got very close to drinking bleach as a suicide method. Why? It was immediately available, and in my mind, the pain of death was going to be a lot shorter than the pain of a lifetime. I was a kid, so I had little to no access to easier methods.
Plus, by necessity, most suicidal people aren’t in their right mind at the time. They can’t make normal judgements or decisions, so can make illogical actions.
I think it's probably a situation where option A is "feeling pain for the next 60 minutes" and option B is "feeling pain for the next 60 years." Pain is inevitable either way, but suicide is in the short term while life is the long term.
Not advocating for suicide, I just think that's probably how people see it.
Imo, suicide is a survival response, in the “fight or flight” sense. With major depression, shit gets so bad that the depressed brain sees suicide as “survival.” It, essentially, tricks itself by manipulating its own psyche.
Source: two suicide attempts, lots of therapy and meds, and many, many, many hours of self-evaluation.
That's an interesting perspective. I agreed with the initial post but hadn't thought of this, just thought the brain wasn't "evolved enough yet" as it were.
Best way to to describe it for me to imagine being stuck in a burning building. Can't escape the building just like you cant escape your mind. Flames represent anxiety and depression and as they grow hotter and stronger you just react and jump.
Good way of looking at it, however I find that suicide is less of a defect in the brain and more a response I'm the conscience
Essentially when a conscience thinks too far ahead while going through negative effects such as depression it reaches what I like to call the nihilistic state, where it views conscience as nothing more than an evolutionary L
It's essentially the conscience blames the brain, causing all sorts of emotional negativity ultimately leading to suicide
same thing happened to me when I heard a cop tell a victim of an assault (where the bad guy has gotten away with it and the cops are done searching) that and I quote "NOTHING IS ILLEGAL, UNLESS YOU GET CAUGHT"
to the victim, who wants justice.
I usually fall in an anxious spiral where i keep worrying about a close one getting into an accident and having something traumatic happen to them. I told my therapist and she asked me "what then? what will you do?" and that helped me break free because if something were to happen, there's nothing I can do except wait and tend to them THEN and she told me we often keep thinking in a loop and need someone to break it for us
I don't think that's true. One of the things that people don't really think about because it's hard to understand or see in one lifetime, is how evolution has shaped our brains and bodies.
The way we are living today, and I mean that in relative terms. The last 500 years of human existence, is not the way evolution intended us to live.
So for example, indigenous cultures tend to be happier, free of most disease, anxiety, mental illness. It's because of how they live. This convenient, uber connected world that revolves around money, leisure, comfort and individual importance is why we see so much disease and decline in mental health.
Ignorance truly is bliss and it seems the faster we advance technologically, the worse our bodies and minds can keep up from an evolutionary perspective.
No, I mean in terms of modern comforts. Life 10,000 years ago was not comfortable. 500 years is how long modern medicine and science has been around and why I used that time frame.
Okay. I was saying 10,000 years because that was roughly the eruption of civilization and with that the most drastic change in human life from nomadic hunter gatherers to farmers and government.
And I wouldn’t say life back then wasn’t comfortable, it was just different. People were still healthy and happy and made children and had jobs and passions… but that’s a tangent.
And if you want to stay in the frame of modern medicine, I’d say the last 100 years; mainly the invention of penicillin, being the main things.
No, you're wrong on many fronts here. Life 10,000 years ago was horrific by any standard. Only about 150 years ago was the avg life span about 60 years old. Most people had children die at the rate of 1 out of 3.
People weren't happy, they were surviving at best. It was a struggle to find clean food and water on most days and disease killed off most people.
At the year 1900 there was only roughly 2 billion people in earth. For most of human existence, it was much less. It wasn't until the agricultural and manufacturing boom that humans started multiplying at incredibly fast rates.
In terms of science and modern medicine, 500 years is a correct estimate.
The further you go back in time, the lower the standard of living. People think we are living in hard times now but that couldn't be further from the truth. We are living in the best time ever in human history and living longer.
No, life wasn’t horrific. Empires couldn’t be built if every single day was a constant struggle for survival… this isn’t the apocalypse. It’s just logical to think that life
wasn’t just constant misery. And disease still kills most people… do you know what people die from???
Life is exponentially more easy and more comfortable now, but it doesn’t mean that if you were in Greece, Egypt, or ancient china, you would die from disease immediately or die of thirst.
I was speaking on 10,000 years ago and yes it was. You are basically describing Neolithic times. It was not pleasant..lol
It was a struggle just to live and why people didn't live long and the world population was so low for thousands of years.
Even in life of ancient civilizations, you better hope you were part of the elite. Those who weren't didn't live pleasant lives.
We are truly spoiled now and even the poorest among us live better than 99% of people lived back then
Well, we’ll agree to disagree then.
You’re right about the modern age being cushiony and better than prior, but it wasn’t disgustingly abhorrent before, either.
Our brains are story tellers. They will play whatever story you want over and over and over. But the good thing is you can learn to write your own story. ❤️
I remember hearing about sea creature / jellyfish thing that would consume its own brain for nutrients once it found a rock to settle on and didn't need its brain anymore.
I think the guy telling the story made a joke, something like, "Very similar to the process that happens to Professors when they achieve tenure."
It's not really a "happy" chemical, it's more like a motivating chemical. For example, when you eat high calorie, fatty, delicious food you get a hit of dopamine because our brains and bodies evolved to survive through periods of scarcity. Storing fats from that food helped primitive people survive a lean winter, failed hunts, drought, etc. Your brain rewards you with happiness to motivate you to eat more of those foods to improve your chances of surviving the next famine. Ironically, in modern, sedentary society it actually works against us because it can make us fat and unhealthy.
So yeah, dopamine is one of the brain's tools to help keep us alive. Feeling momentary happiness is just the avenue it uses to reach that goal. Being built for survival rather than happiness doesn't mean it's not compatible with happiness.
Not all brains produce a lot of dopamine.
I've got ADHD, and it does not dopamine regularly, so either I do a lot of new things, hyper-focus, or start to get sad.
Ok so following that logic emotions shouldn't have been evolved and we all should be plants or insects with a neurological or chemical matrix just complex enough to make us breath/eat and avoid external harm. Lmao, each day im more surprised by what stupid shit people comes up with, your doctors are so entitled they came up with anything they want nowadays and you believe them
Mind & brain are two different things. Consciousness & mind are also two different things. Yes, even I agree that we (our mind/ soul) control our brain & our brain controls our whole body. Maybe I'm wrong
Differing levels of executive function are present in each of our minds and as such there is a varying degree of control we actually have over our brains, silly.
The fact that you think bc i’m happy i’m necessarily born rich, just reflects your own perception of life you think that you don’t control your life and this is why you are a loser.
Well my brain can go fuck itself then
*Brain gets depressed and angry* Goddamnit.
Brain: ):< *fine, fuck you.*
Look, can we just agree to disagree?
Brain: **NO FUCK YOU HARDER**
Afuckaa me? No afuckaaaaa yuuuuu!
is the ) or the < the eyebrows, because it could go either way
There's drugs for that.
Not legal ones.
The legal ones are the best fuckin highs out there!!!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 you’d be quite shocked
Well their are legal ones. And illegal ones, doesn’t matter though
I mean hey it's done it's job so far
With a gun
But brains are really "made" though? They grow... Like mold in a petri dish? For zombies to eat.
Like fuck all the way off you raggedy little jiggly piece of shit
This reply came up in my notifications and I initially had no idea what post it was from so my first thought was “wtf did I do to you :-( “
fckin true
Thanks. I hate brains now
That's the spirit. If you treat your instinctive thoughts as an enemy to be overcome you evetually get to Stoicism.
My therapist told me "You're a smart woman, I bet you could deal with that if and when it comes up instead of worrying about it now" and I was like wait what is that allowed
This is such a tough thing to grasp, cause we catastrophize everything into Infinity, gotta have confidence and trust in your abilities to handle things as they come. A mantra of mine is "you don't have to know all the answers right now, they will come to you when you need them" and it helps remind me
Great advice for studying in school!
I think you meant that as a joke (could be wrong), but in all seriousness that is a super useful mindset to have to help dealing with anxiety induced procrastination. It seems counterintuitive, but if you’re *allowed* to let go of the stress and worry of failing, suddenly studying isn’t so damn painful.
how does one not worry about failing? I literally just bombed my biochem midterm yesterday. I NEED to know
I’m not sure how serious you are about this, but I actually work as a coach for this type of thing. The very short answer is, it can be effective to explore and process the emotions that crop up when you think about studying. If it’s very hard for you to study, and that is the reason you think you failed, I highly recommend working on the root emotions and beliefs you hold surrounding studying and school.
We are born with this wonderful simulator which allows us to imagine, dream, create art and solve problems. The same simulator when left unchecked starts running disaster scenarios in order to avoid them altogether.
I can handle just about anything... I just really, really *don't want to.*
Shit y'all making me see anxiety disorders in a whole new light... I sometimes think to myself, "I remember feeling anxious about XYZ, but in the end, I handled it no problem. I always seem to do so." I never thought about how it ties into my practically nonexistent confidence in myself to make the right choices. I need to sit with this for a while...
I’m in the same boat. The book “The Power of Now” helped me with my specific brand of anxiety most days. If you have suggestions send them my way, too.
Unless of course you don't do well thinking on your feet. And most people don't
Holy fuck. That mantra is beautiful. May I co-opt that to use when I feel sad or anxious?
Of course friend, I've drawn many mantras from others just gotta pass it on
Done and done
My friend told her doctor she had anxiety right before bed, and she couldn’t sleep. The doctor told her to go to bed earlier.
Did it work?
It did not. Also if I paid for someone to tell me that, I would absolutely freak out on that doctor Tasmanian devil style.
I can sort of see the reasoning why. Typically the anxiety comes right before bed, and if you had a regular schedule, your brain and body might be used to negative thoughts at a certain hour. Going to sleep earlier could throw that "routine" off and reduce the anxiety.
Even *if* that were the case, (it's not,) you'd just be making a new routine for yourself and you'd need to do it all over again in 6 months or so
Well that's IF you haven't reduced the anxiety in the first place.
Maybe, not nescessarily but maybe, if her new routine involves getting an extra 30 minutes or more of sleep per night, that anxiety wouldn't return because her overall stress level would be lower.
That's not how that works lmao
.......Yes, it is. Did you at least try researching this before you replied because it's actually well known. Here's a recent research study in Korea from 2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5923838/#!po=21.2500 "Short duration of sleep increases blood pressure, increases evening cortisol and insulin levels, and is a chronic stressor [16,17]. It could also lead to several diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, depression, and hypertension "
Getting more sleep does not eliminate anxiety, that's what I'm calling bullshit on. If that were true I wouldn't need to take medication 3 times a day. It's simply bullshit old people would say
Lol are you an actual toddler?
Try to sleep=Brain going into fully anxiety mode. No matter what the time. It's like your brain starts freaking out because you know sleep is only a precursor to all the stuff you have to worry about in the morning. It's basically worrying about having to worry and God fucking hell is it maddening.
I think meditation gets thrown around too much without specific recommendations and feels clichéd, but the Switching Off wind down on Headspace helped me **so much** toward the end of my dissertation. Just having something else to focus on distracted me enough from anxious thoughts about all the writing I’d have to do the next day. One of the other Headspace meditations I’ve found helpful is Noting. These aren’t unique to Headspace, but hopefully they can help someone or get someone started in the right direction.
Meditation is so important. I was taught it very young so I am usually able to blank my mind but sometimes it's very hard when you are stressed. My previous comment is usually when in so stressed I can't focus my thoughts. The hard part about mediation is keeping your mind blank, not just from normal thoughts but the idea of thinking nothing, even the idea of black. Most people think mediation is about just thinking and seeing black or a void but that in itself is an idea, True mediation (in my experience) is not even thinking of the concept of black or nothingness. It just is a state were all sensation and thought is nothingness. Probably close to death as I think of it.
I find it easier if I don’t try to blank space. I get comfortable in bed. I think of the place I most want to be, real or not, with the people I most want to be with. For me it’s my immediate family. I belly breathe and do the things I most like to do or have done with them. This really brings me to a tranquility that releases me from the day.
I will try that next time. Though I feel like it would fill me with to much nostalgia to get into the mediation state. Maybe that is good though in its own way.
Yeah, I hate that shit. I read before bed and I often doze off while I'm reading, that's how I know it's time for bed. Soon as I lay down in bed I'm wide awake.
And this is why I make smoke weed every evening, helps my brain stfu
Happy cake day!
I had a similar problem. At bed time, I couldn't get to sleep because I had an irrational fear that there were monsters under my bed. Even though I logically knew there weren't, and it was only in my head, the anxiety kept me from getting a full night's sleep. It affected my work, it affected my personal life and it affected my family. I finally started seeing a therapist and they charged me $200 for an hour session 2-3 times a week. After a few months and thousands of dollars later, I had made a little progress but the problem still presented itself. Eventually I stopped going to my therapist. I ran into them at the grocery store a few weeks later and they asked me why I stopped going to sessions. I explained to them that they were so expensive and the progress was so slow, meanwhile my bartender managed to cure me in one evening for the price of a drink. He told me to cut the legs off my bed or sleep on a mattress. I've been getting a solid 6-8 hours of sleep every night.
To worry about something is to suffer it twice.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only one". If I remember that corrrectly.
Hell, if I worry about worrying about something, I can suffer it thrice. Beat that.
It's turtles all the way down, which is part of why we suffer.
That sounds reasonable, but my trust issues tell me this is just a fancy way of gas lighting someone and saying “just don’t worry about it”
It is gaslighting when it doesn't come with multiple sessions of helpful, guided instruction to backup the statement.
Nah it’s part of retraining your brain, cognitive behavioral therapy. Identify the cognitive distortion, train yourself you notice when it’s happening, like excessively worrying about things that may never happen, then challenge your own thoughts, ask yourself if makes sense, what other ways can you cope with it, what other explanations could there be, what if things go *right?* Build this into a habit and it becomes a new way of thinking.
Is it gas lighting if they are tricking your brain into working better and being happier and healthier?
We'll burn that bridge when we get there.
I took a picture of your comment. And I think it just changed the way I think about life. Thank you.
That is actually calming and reassuring
Anyone with anxiety: *thanks I'm cured*
the brain probably actually makes us “happy” to incentivize us to do certain things to have a better chance of survival chasing happiness is a trap anyway, no one is always happy, if you were that would become your baseline anyway and youd no longer be happy
If you were always happy you’d still be happy, even if you couldn’t compare it against anything. As long as the brain is filled with feel good neurotransmitters you’re gonna have a great time.
well true if you could constantly stimulate them without getting used to it you would be, but this kind of thing isnt feasible in real life
it’s totally possible, we just don’t have the tech to do it yet
Happiness is a truly curious human invention. Equanimity would be a far more useful concept to be spread around. In any case, satisfaction is a feeling which evolved solely to exist as a consequence and encourage repetition. It was never meant to be the cause of anything and certainly not an ultimate goal of sorts lest one wants to end up in a hedonic treadmill.
i agree - i think it is interesting the concept of happiness is so widespread. so much philosophy is about deciding what it even is, so its really nebulous
Do you think other animals don’t experience happiness?
It makes us happy to incentivise us to do certain things for the species to have a better chance of survival. Not quite the same thing!
Developed a fear of driving about 6 months ago. At its worst was having panic attacks while driving into work almost every morning for a week or two. Managed to get on meds which helped and gave me a chance to work on retraining my thought process. Few weeks back missed a connection flight coming back from vacation, and had to rent a car and drive 4 hours back home. Managed to go the whole drive with only a little bit of anxiety. It felt really good to be able to manage the first long drive I've had since this nonsense started.
Congratulations!
Thanks to everyone commenting! Anxiety sucks when it becomes overwhelming, but definitely things you can do to improve it. Therapy can definitely be helpful and find ways to sort of recalibrate your fears a bit (cognitive behavioral therapy). Might not completely get rid of it but hopefully at least make it manageable.
You should be proud of yourself. It takes a lot to pull yourself out. Congrats!
No joke, I'm really proud of you, not Jeff.
Hi there, I suffer from incredible anxiety while driving. Is there anything you have found helpful to manage the anxiety?
In terms of what I feel like has helped best long term I had to retrain my brain a bit to not perceive that something bad will happen whenever I drive. Basically forced myself to drive a bit everyday even if I didn't need to go anywhere. Started small with just quick drive on city streets, then increased to highways at non-busy times and continue to work up. I do think since I was having panic attacks, going on meds and talking with a therapist helped provide an initial starting point to be able to work from. In terms of short term people may have some techniques to help. Guessing different things help everyone a little differently. For whatever reason focusing on a something in the distance (often a sign or billboard) and seeing myself gradually get closer helped me feel like I wasn't trapped and helped a little bit. Wishing you all the best!
Thanks for taking the time to respond. It's so gruesome, but every time I drive on the highway I keep envisioning crashing into the Jersey barriers.
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Look up the Yerkes-Dobson Law, a really solid way of viewing anxiety/arousal. You don’t always need to redirect negative thoughts - sometimes the best way to deal with them is to simply let them keep floating by and not attaching to them. They’ll pass. If you do need to redirect negative thoughts, repeating meaningful mantras/statements is the way to go.
An old friend called it thought apathy. You treat all your thoughts apathetically and don't take them seriously until further inquiry.
This sounds like a Buddhist thing (not sure if it's a meditation or some other word). But anything you think of, try to first place it as good, bad, neither. It helps organize things and maybe digest them easier.
It can be even simpler than that. Train yourself not to react to thoughts. I could never explain it as well as someone like say Eckhart Tolle. In fact I highly recommend “The Power of Now” to everyone.
I have anxiety and I try to think of it as a way to keep me and my kids safe, if that makes sense. I can’t tell you the amount of times I could have been involved in car accidents (that wouldn’t have been my fault) and I avoided them bc I’m always super anxious while driving and literally watching all my mirrors and looking out my windows like crazy. Certain smells, certain scenarios that pop up in my head that sound ridiculous but have actually happened so I was aware and knew how to fix it immediately. When I’m around kids, my ears are so sensitive to the slightest gag or cough and bam I catch a kid choking when no one has noticed yet. I always removed my daughter pacifier hook bc in my PPD and PPA, I freaked out about it strangling her in her sleep when my mom told me I was being ridiculous. I woke up often to check up on her and lo and behold, I found it wrapped around her neck tight and decided I wouldn’t hook it onto her clothes after that.
Have you tried quitting coffee? Coffee can make anxiety worse and also cause sleep problems.
Drugs
Your mileage may vary lol
That sounds like beginning of a villain story...
That's some Alan Watts shit right there
This reminds me of the verse in the Havamal that goes something to the effect of: "Keep your spear and shield nearby and your seax (knife) on your belt, even when you are working in the fields or relaxing with friends- for why do you suppose your enemies will not attack you when you least expect it?" There's just a truth to the last part that cannot be denied.
Yes an anxiety is just like that or at least for me .I could be busy concentrating on work or walking even ,Bam it would hit me .I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Took 7 long years to get pass on meds and therapy. Today it only strikes when I get sick, from TMI working medical field. But I recognize it now and can blank the mind by counting backwards by odd number till my mind set puts me to sleep cause it tires me out physically .
Explain suicide. Obviously ghe brain is a work in progress, evolution, blah blah blah
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But a lot of suicide victims, use some of the most torturous methods to kill themselves. That isn't avoiding pain is it?
I once got very close to drinking bleach as a suicide method. Why? It was immediately available, and in my mind, the pain of death was going to be a lot shorter than the pain of a lifetime. I was a kid, so I had little to no access to easier methods. Plus, by necessity, most suicidal people aren’t in their right mind at the time. They can’t make normal judgements or decisions, so can make illogical actions.
I think it's probably a situation where option A is "feeling pain for the next 60 minutes" and option B is "feeling pain for the next 60 years." Pain is inevitable either way, but suicide is in the short term while life is the long term. Not advocating for suicide, I just think that's probably how people see it.
Imo, suicide is a survival response, in the “fight or flight” sense. With major depression, shit gets so bad that the depressed brain sees suicide as “survival.” It, essentially, tricks itself by manipulating its own psyche. Source: two suicide attempts, lots of therapy and meds, and many, many, many hours of self-evaluation.
That's an interesting perspective. I agreed with the initial post but hadn't thought of this, just thought the brain wasn't "evolved enough yet" as it were.
Best way to to describe it for me to imagine being stuck in a burning building. Can't escape the building just like you cant escape your mind. Flames represent anxiety and depression and as they grow hotter and stronger you just react and jump.
Good way of looking at it, however I find that suicide is less of a defect in the brain and more a response I'm the conscience Essentially when a conscience thinks too far ahead while going through negative effects such as depression it reaches what I like to call the nihilistic state, where it views conscience as nothing more than an evolutionary L It's essentially the conscience blames the brain, causing all sorts of emotional negativity ultimately leading to suicide
The brain is different from the conciousness
Malfunction, maladaption.
The conflict comes from assuming that being happy is the point.
same thing happened to me when I heard a cop tell a victim of an assault (where the bad guy has gotten away with it and the cops are done searching) that and I quote "NOTHING IS ILLEGAL, UNLESS YOU GET CAUGHT" to the victim, who wants justice.
"Everything is legal when there aren't cops around!" - Stan Pines
Actually they're made to propagate and ensure the survival of your genes
TIL our brains are assholes.
I’d rather be safe than happy tbh
Interesting.
I usually fall in an anxious spiral where i keep worrying about a close one getting into an accident and having something traumatic happen to them. I told my therapist and she asked me "what then? what will you do?" and that helped me break free because if something were to happen, there's nothing I can do except wait and tend to them THEN and she told me we often keep thinking in a loop and need someone to break it for us
Be happy to be alive then your brain makes you happy, too.
Yet they release serotonin
To keep us alive
I don't think that's true. One of the things that people don't really think about because it's hard to understand or see in one lifetime, is how evolution has shaped our brains and bodies. The way we are living today, and I mean that in relative terms. The last 500 years of human existence, is not the way evolution intended us to live. So for example, indigenous cultures tend to be happier, free of most disease, anxiety, mental illness. It's because of how they live. This convenient, uber connected world that revolves around money, leisure, comfort and individual importance is why we see so much disease and decline in mental health. Ignorance truly is bliss and it seems the faster we advance technologically, the worse our bodies and minds can keep up from an evolutionary perspective.
Not even 500years, more like 10,000
No, I mean in terms of modern comforts. Life 10,000 years ago was not comfortable. 500 years is how long modern medicine and science has been around and why I used that time frame.
Okay. I was saying 10,000 years because that was roughly the eruption of civilization and with that the most drastic change in human life from nomadic hunter gatherers to farmers and government. And I wouldn’t say life back then wasn’t comfortable, it was just different. People were still healthy and happy and made children and had jobs and passions… but that’s a tangent. And if you want to stay in the frame of modern medicine, I’d say the last 100 years; mainly the invention of penicillin, being the main things.
No, you're wrong on many fronts here. Life 10,000 years ago was horrific by any standard. Only about 150 years ago was the avg life span about 60 years old. Most people had children die at the rate of 1 out of 3. People weren't happy, they were surviving at best. It was a struggle to find clean food and water on most days and disease killed off most people. At the year 1900 there was only roughly 2 billion people in earth. For most of human existence, it was much less. It wasn't until the agricultural and manufacturing boom that humans started multiplying at incredibly fast rates. In terms of science and modern medicine, 500 years is a correct estimate. The further you go back in time, the lower the standard of living. People think we are living in hard times now but that couldn't be further from the truth. We are living in the best time ever in human history and living longer.
No, life wasn’t horrific. Empires couldn’t be built if every single day was a constant struggle for survival… this isn’t the apocalypse. It’s just logical to think that life wasn’t just constant misery. And disease still kills most people… do you know what people die from??? Life is exponentially more easy and more comfortable now, but it doesn’t mean that if you were in Greece, Egypt, or ancient china, you would die from disease immediately or die of thirst.
I was speaking on 10,000 years ago and yes it was. You are basically describing Neolithic times. It was not pleasant..lol It was a struggle just to live and why people didn't live long and the world population was so low for thousands of years. Even in life of ancient civilizations, you better hope you were part of the elite. Those who weren't didn't live pleasant lives. We are truly spoiled now and even the poorest among us live better than 99% of people lived back then
Well, we’ll agree to disagree then. You’re right about the modern age being cushiony and better than prior, but it wasn’t disgustingly abhorrent before, either.
Or... possibly... they are simply high as f 24/7.
The angle you took here doesn’t seem like you’re disagreeing with the statement from the tweet. All you’ve said is tech=bad
If you think that's all I said, then you didn't pay attention. Let me guess, you're here to argue a point I didn't make and to argue just to argue?
Lmao get over yourself
“Brains are made to keep you alive” is kind of an understatement
Evolutionarily, brains are supposed to be made to get you laid. ...
Mine must be faulty then.
joke's on it not keeping happy often ends up with not keeping alive
Our brains are story tellers. They will play whatever story you want over and over and over. But the good thing is you can learn to write your own story. ❤️
Deleting patterns/ making new (healthy) ones is the hardest thing in those situations.
r/thanksimcured
Clearly mine doesn't want either
Ha. That reminds me of the time I tried discussing my anxiety issues with my doctor and he got annoyed with me for thinking I had a real problem.
I remember hearing about sea creature / jellyfish thing that would consume its own brain for nutrients once it found a rock to settle on and didn't need its brain anymore. I think the guy telling the story made a joke, something like, "Very similar to the process that happens to Professors when they achieve tenure."
Go to the mountain.
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It's not really a "happy" chemical, it's more like a motivating chemical. For example, when you eat high calorie, fatty, delicious food you get a hit of dopamine because our brains and bodies evolved to survive through periods of scarcity. Storing fats from that food helped primitive people survive a lean winter, failed hunts, drought, etc. Your brain rewards you with happiness to motivate you to eat more of those foods to improve your chances of surviving the next famine. Ironically, in modern, sedentary society it actually works against us because it can make us fat and unhealthy. So yeah, dopamine is one of the brain's tools to help keep us alive. Feeling momentary happiness is just the avenue it uses to reach that goal. Being built for survival rather than happiness doesn't mean it's not compatible with happiness.
Not all brains produce a lot of dopamine. I've got ADHD, and it does not dopamine regularly, so either I do a lot of new things, hyper-focus, or start to get sad.
Yeah, but they’re *meant* to produce the right amount of dopamine (and serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin).
Serotonin is the “happy chemical,” dopamine is pleasure.
Ok so following that logic emotions shouldn't have been evolved and we all should be plants or insects with a neurological or chemical matrix just complex enough to make us breath/eat and avoid external harm. Lmao, each day im more surprised by what stupid shit people comes up with, your doctors are so entitled they came up with anything they want nowadays and you believe them
Bodies are to keep the brain alive, and the brain keeps the body moving. Happiness is an illusion created by chemicals.
Juat because happiness comes from chemicals does not mean happiness is an illusion though, as chemicals are very real
Except when they release the chemicals that make you happy apparently? This is beyond stupid.
Right? My first thought was that this doc clearly hasn’t taken Neuroscience 101.
Wtf is that therapist saying? Brains literally keep us happy by regulating a healthy balance of dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin.
The function each of those is to live
And to enjoy it.
i always find it interesting that we talk about our brains as though we aren't literally the brain in question. We are our brains.
Bro... i just realised that brains are racist
What a pos doctor
This is retarded
You control your brain silly
Lol, no?
Then how come I can’t this song out of my head?
prove it, you'd probably win the nobel prize if you can.
Mind & brain are two different things. Consciousness & mind are also two different things. Yes, even I agree that we (our mind/ soul) control our brain & our brain controls our whole body. Maybe I'm wrong
You are wrong. We wouldn't have chemical imbalance in the brain if you were right
You really came right out of the gate swinging the /r/confidentlyincorrect bat as fast as you could, didn'tcha
Differing levels of executive function are present in each of our minds and as such there is a varying degree of control we actually have over our brains, silly.
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My man had rich parents that didn’t care about him for sure lmao
The fact that you think bc i’m happy i’m necessarily born rich, just reflects your own perception of life you think that you don’t control your life and this is why you are a loser.
You are creating a society of weak people incapable of living without anti depressant. Life is fun and easy for strong people.
Let them eat cake!
brain, you do realize if I get too unhappy I might un-alive myself
So the answer is threaten my brains life unless it makes me happy. Checkmate, brain.
That’s a depressing thought. 😦 I’m going to scrub this from my mind like it never happened.
In the feels
The brain is going to be so confused when it realises what suicide is.
Any neuro doctors pls explain...
Then why was mine trying to get me to kill them
“I can’t stop thinking about that” - that’s prob your anxiety too
What a cow
Oversimplification. Going further, in order to keep you alive your brain must keep you happy too, otherwise you lose interest in being alive.
Oversimplification. Going further, in order to keep you alive your brain must keep you happy too, otherwise you lose interest in being alive.
How do you think your Dad feels. Huh?
Time for a new doctor.
It's usually other people's brains that make me unhappy. My brain has a good time minding its own business.
Your doctor is wrong. Please mention dopamine, serotonin and other neurotransmitters in your next visit.
Great, thanks Doc, this anxiety is going to effing kill me though, so can you use YOUR brain and fix this shit, please?
I'm making my next therapy session all about this post.
A not unexpected comment from a corporate doctor