This resonates with me … sadly
I hate to be the guy to say this on an internet forum. But mindfulness really does help. There are thousands of resources out there and finding one that is the perfect fit can be tricky. Most of them are to ‘new wave’ for me, but some are great and can really help with this.
Can you elaborate how it helps? My limited understanding is that it helps curb the mental anxiety even if your body is simultaneously full of stress hormones.
Mindfulness is only actively choosing what you’re paying attention to. Mindfulness meditation is the exercise of picking something to pay attention to, and then continually bringing your attention back to it whenever you find your mind had wandered. Practicing this 10 minutes per day strengthens your ability to recognize and choose where your attention goes.
Anxiety at a cognitive level is caused by your mind thinking about things in the past or the future that are not serving you well. Strengthening your mindfulness skills allows you to recognize when your mind has wandered into that territory and decide to let it go and give your attention to something else.
Unfortunately our modern society is designed in a way that encouraged shorter attention spans and less control over our attention
I’m no expert myself, but what it definitely can do is help you recognize the different symptoms that you can feel in your body that your brain recognizes as anxiety, that way you can kind of break the cycle of the body influencing the mind and vice versa. Then there is non-identification, which means that you kind of look at your anxious feelings, as if you are a spectator, not identifying with them. This way you realize you are not your feelings, but you have your feelings and can snap out of them way quicker and not get caught in a loop. It sounds kind of trivial when talking about it, but experiencing it can be quite profound. 
Thanks, appreciate the concern and advice. But I’m good.
In terms of such apps, I can highly recommend downdog if you’re on iOS. They cover yoga, mindfulness and other areas.
For Android I recommend Calm. Or if you don’t want to spend money on an app like this then Insight Timer is the way to go.
However if you’re actually aiming to waking up, then the app for you is just that, Waking Up. Not for the faint hearted. Do not start if you’re not in it for honest, real awakening. It is very disturbing if you’re not prepared. ❤️
Haha that sounds like an adventure :D
Don’t hate to be that guy. Because you’re being really helpful. Also, you’re right. Mindfulness is really helpful to figure out stuff like this. But same, I don’t know much about it either and I’ve tried it a couple of times and those 10 mins are not easy 😂
The really cool thing is - it doesn’t need to be easy, you don’t have to be ‘good’ at it in order to work. I highly recommend the ‘mindfulness for beginners’ course by Jeff Warren on the app Calm (30 times 10-12 minutes) If you prefer reading, he co-authored the book ‘meditation for fidgety skeptics’ which is also down to earth and humorous.  By the way, I’m in no way affiliated to him in any way, was just relieved to find someone with his style to ease me into it.
Deep breaths
Random door-to-door sales person: knocks on door
Me: “OMG THERE’S A SERIAL KILLER AT MY DOOR!!!”
This sounds like it was written by a dog.
“This is London, Jen. It’s not someone with cake. Unless that cake is made of dog poo and knives!”
Sweet sweet escitalopram my beloved
In capitalism, responding in a wrong way to an email can start a chain of events that lead to you being let go, which leads to almost immediate threats to your bodily existence from lack of shelter and food. So in a way, it’s understandable to feel this level of anxiety about this situation.
Not with decent labour laws. This is only true in the US.
Judging by the way older people treat correspondence and even verbal interactions and timing and appearances in Russia - capitalism actually alleviated this a bit.
See, in a planned economy of Soviet kind you as a worker are a resource. When you are fired from some place because they don’t like you there, you are going to have hard time explaining that it wasn’t a big deal to get another job (not as a janitor, I mean). And that’s if they didn’t write some particularly shitty thing into your labor book (there was such a thing in USSR, basically a story of all your past employments, like CV, only written by employers, which you’d bring to a new place). If they did, even becoming a janitor would be an achievement. It would be possible to become really unemployed even, and have problems with law due to this as being unemployed was illegal in USSR.
Do you prefer what I’ve described (no exaggerations at all, I can’t make you believe me, but this is just how it normally was) to capitalism?
responding in a wrong way to an email
It’d have to be pretty wrong to trigger that chain of events. It’s definitely possible but being that wrong would probably get the sender into trouble in other economic systems as well.
That’s a fair point 👍
“I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
-Mark Twain
Stoicism, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, reading, whatever other thing that makes your inner voices stop (flow/focus state)
I wonder if there’s a community for sharing tips for these things yet
Let me know if you find one :]
cool although I don’t like stoicism cause it sounds to me like dissociation, never actually learn from the bad experience
It’s very much not dissociation
Well you can try whichever philosophy that resonates with you, I said Stoicism because is the one that focused more on how to stop anxiety, but in reality all you need to do is focus on the trully important things, wich is the final purpose of any philosophy
stoics have a concept of preferred indifferents which are things like life, health, a good income/wealth, social status, etc that you’d rather have than their opposites, like death, sickness, poverty, bad reputation, etc. From that not sure one could label stocism as a form of dissociation.
Society be like: stop your thinking increase productivity
By living the experience, without contrasting or refusing what you feel and then surviving it. It gets time but the system can be rewired.
Holy fraggle rock the anxiety I get from the most non live human interactions is astounding.
As someone with PTSD who also really relates to this post, I really hope the people in this thread who are struggling are able to seek therapy and/or medication. Doing the two in conjunction has helped me so much. Please don’t feel like it’s too much trouble or not worth fussing over if it’s something you’re struggling with. You may have to try a few therapists/a few medications, which can be disheartening, but you don’t know what’s going to work until you try it.
Being able to pay for for therapy, or being financially secure to admit to yourself that you have a problem is a privilage.
Source: would like to do therapy but life/raising 3 kids is in the way.
Believe me, I know how lucky I was. I spent 20 years getting to a place where I could acknowledge I needed therapy and also find therapy that was accessible for me. And nothing is more demoralizing than opening yourself up to a therapist that is straight up bad at their job. But it is 100% worth it if you can find a way past those obstacles. My greatest frustration with my mental health is that I wasn’t able to access the care I needed 20 years ago. And I’m way too aware of how fleeting that access can be, I have some friends that didn’t go to therapy for the usual reasons, lost insurance or coverage became too expensive, and now they can’t go to therapy even though they want to. My comment was more for anyone who has access and is on the fence about going.
Having 3 kids in the way should never be a reason to noy be able to get help. It shouldn’t be a privilege. It should be something anyone who needs can just get.
I’m lucky enough to live in a county where that’s the reality, no matter how much money you have, help is available. I feel bad for people who don’t have it likes this and I really hope it could be like this for everyone. Having to pay your ass out for help when you’re physically hurt is alredy fucked up, and having to pay for help when your mentally hurt/vulnerable is honestly much worse. Even here where it’s practically fee, it can still take a lot to eat your courage and seek help.
I’m unfortunately not in a situation where I can directly help anyone in a situation like that but god I hope you and everyone else can get the rights to get the fucking help you/they need whatever that help is.
Mental and physical we’ll bring shouldn’t be a fucking privilege, it should just be available to everyone. People often say this and that isn’t a given ir shouldn’t be, but if anything should this is exactly the dman thing that should be a given.
Sorru for any bad language, I’m a bit drunk and honestly feeling quite mad about this horrible shit people have to live with for no good reason.
That’s the Neat Part, You Don’t. On a serious note though, I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and try to meditate and acknowledge the thoughts whenever I feel like this. It does not do much but it helps me focus on the task.
You need to recalibrate your flight or fight response. Purposefully put yourself in a life threatening situation, it will make you wish you were answering emails instead
I repeatably put myself in dangerous, potentially life-threatening situations. I never wish I was answering emails instead.
