[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?
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Ask HN: How to break anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle?
For years anxiety/fear-avoidance cycle defined my life. I tend to
procrastinate to a such extent that causes problems in my day to
day functioning, and generally my life. For example, i have to
submit 2 fairly simple assignments, in 2 and 3 days respectively.
If i don't pass the next 4 assignments i will fail the lab, but i
keep avoiding sitting down with all of my power. I feel pure fear
and a sense of "i will certainly fail if i try". The above example
is with these assignments, but this type of behavior extends to
everything in my life.
Author : L0in
Score : 278 points
Date : 2022-05-17 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
| klik99 wrote:
| I was going through something similar and took me a while to
| recognize it was anxiety. It's good that you have recognized it
| so early.
|
| When nothing seemed to work, I tried Zembrin as an OTC experiment
| if it was "just chemistry". It really worked for me, takes a few
| weeks to work, and it wasn't anything obvious - in fact I didn't
| think it was working until I forgot to take it for a few days and
| felt anxiety creeping back in. It got me into the right headspace
| to tackle the overwhelming amount of stuff life was throwing at
| me without having to take any more serious drugs which I try to
| avoid. YMMV and I would completely exhaust all non-chemical
| options before trying it, and if it doesn't work I'd seek
| professional help (specifically cognitive behavioural therapy -
| which you can try without professional guidance too but need a
| deep understanding of to do)
|
| In the meantime, these observations have helped me in the past:
|
| A) Nobody really cares if you fail, those who love you will still
| love you if you fail. Everyone is more self-absorbed than it
| feels. People care when you succeed.
|
| B) Some amount of stress is benefical - don't think you have to
| eliminate it. Think of it like blood pressure - no pressure and
| no blood moves through your body and stagnates - too much
| pressure and your veins will burst - just the right amount of
| stress keeps you strong and moving. Comfort kills - but so does
| TOO MUCH stress. There's a sweet spot that's just beyond your
| comfort zone.
|
| C) Keep a TODO list - be it GTD or whatever. Having everything on
| paper for me is very calming, otherwise if you have more things
| to do than your working memory can handle (IE 7-10 things), in
| other words if you have a pulse in 2021, then it will feel
| overwhelming because it's literally beyond your minds ability to
| keep track of.
|
| [edit: removed one observation that wasn't related to OPs
| situation]
| MrDresden wrote:
| I can second the Zembrin recommendation.
|
| It got mentioned to me by a friend last year, so I decided to
| give it a go.
|
| It took around a week to 10 days and then I wasn't feeling the
| pressure as much anymore.
| jaimefjorge wrote:
| Below is a list of things that I've gathered over time that work
| for me. If you'd like to have a chat, happy to hear you out,
| sometimes that also helps.
|
| _State of mind_
|
| - First remember that anxiety is normal and debilitating. There's
| nothing inherently wrong, sometimes it's just a culmination of
| different things.
|
| - Anxiety comes in peaks usually matching particular stressors
| like workload or difficulty in coping with work. It might seem in
| that peak that everything is wrong, but it usually isn't and
| you'll be clearer of mind soon.
|
| > Many are the things that have caused terror during the night
| and been turned into matters of laughter with the coming of
| daylight. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
|
| - Anxiety creates a vicious cycle of guilt. Break that by giving
| yourself time and space to be better. An afternoon or morning
| away is better than a week feeling like shit.
|
| > "If there is no solution to the problem then don't waste time
| worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then
| don't waste time worrying about it." - Dalai Lama XIV
|
| _Writing down_
|
| - Because of the Zeigarnik effect, the mind finds closure in
| things that are written down. It's a good exercise to write all
| the tasks that clobber our mind.
|
| _Plan it_
|
| - We have anxiety, which tends to lead to procrastination, when
| workload is high or tasks are difficult. So it's important to
| divide and conquer. Break down large tasks into small ones that
| we can do easily
|
| - As much as possible, address small things that you can do. You
| build momentum on winning small tasks. Identify small things that
| you can do to win. Winning creates a virtuous circle of serotonin
| which builds momentum.
|
| - As soon as there is a plan, our mind anchors to that plan as a
| way to relax.
|
| _Exercise_
|
| - Seratonin has anxiolitic properties that help to counter
| anxiety.
|
| - Resistance training (anaerobic), with low-to moderate
| intensity, seems to offer a reliable and robust decrease in
| anxiety: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090891/
|
| - Aerobic treadmill exercise training appear to contribute to
| Serotonin levels
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11064-009-0066-x
|
| - Go outside in the morning to get natural light. It sets your
| circadian rhythm for the day. You can combine this practice with
| a short jog, bike ride, or walk. _Lateral eye movement_ caused by
| self-propelled motion is shown to reduce stress. Your eyes scan
| the environment in front of you from side to side. This triggers
| a process that tells your brain there are no imminent threats
| ahead of you, causing a calming effect that will help you break
| free from stress-induced tunnel vision. (Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.,
| a professor at Stanford)
|
| _Sleep_
|
| - Sleeping affects mood. Sleeping 8 hours, if possible, is
| critical
|
| _Food_
|
| - Heavy processed and junk food also affect the body leaving us
| clunky and unmotivated. Important to regulate
|
| - Healthy homemade food is the best course of action. If
| possible, cooked by yourself, as the action of cooking food is
| rewarding by itself.
|
| _Reading_
|
| - In an anxiety peak, it's difficult to focus and to be
| productive. Reading is an activity that is beneficial to reduce
| stress even if forced.
|
| _Expectations_
|
| - People sometimes accumulate expectations from others.
| Insecurity can lead to accumulate these to a point where it's not
| possible to deliver work. One must be effective in managing these
| expectations.
|
| - Create boundaries. In an anxiety peak: Remove news, email,
| twitter and slack from daily consumption; Remove screens from
| start and end of the day. -> - Smartphones reduce available
| cognitive capacity and lead to Survivorship bias; Force to say
| 'no' to things
|
| _Granny 's Rule_
|
| - Grannys rule - eat your carrots first This means that you
| should have things that you look forward to doing. What brings
| you joy? What do you feel like doing? Aim to include that in your
| plan and have that as your reward!
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| What you want to do is try to get past the emotional part of it.
| I find laughing helps. You want a kind of telling stories around
| the campfire attitude about it.
|
| For example, I once spend 2 weeks trying to decide on a startup
| name, for a startup that barely even exists anymore. It's funny
| now, and I think about that when I'm trying to pick names for
| things now. But in those 2 weeks it was not funny! I felt
| terribly guilty during that time.
|
| Try to take it / treat it lightly. Joke about it. I know that's
| hard to do when you're in the middle of it though.
|
| Keep in mind the point is to actually do the thing. Maybe my way
| doesn't work as well for and you find something else. I think
| it's worthwhile to experiment with different ideas here.
| manofmanysmiles wrote:
| Travel, get exercise, eat well, sleep well, and ask yourself what
| you desire your life to be, and then work to make it happen. Then
| fail, and repeat, possibly without to the travel part.
| mrmincent wrote:
| I'm exactly the same, turned my 3 year degree into a 5 year slog
| because I'd get too anxious to do assignments or even exams. Took
| me a long time (decades) to learn about anxiety and it's impacts,
| so you're doing well to be aware of it earlier.
|
| Therapy & mindfulness has been a huge help for me. It's helped me
| be more aware of how I'm feeling, and to take steps when I'm
| feeling anxious. For example, I've got a regular reminder in my
| Phone to check in with how I'm feeling, to actively think about
| what I'm avoiding, and to consider what it is I'm afraid of
| that's causing me to avoid. If I'm feeling anxious or avoidant,
| then I do something to help, like try to "explore" why I'm
| feeling that way, and to do some mindful breathing / grounding
| exercises.
|
| You've done really well to ask here for advice, being vulnerable
| and open is a huge first step. I'd recommend seeing a
| professional therapist or counsellor if you can, especially while
| you're studying - your education institution should have some
| people who can help.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| >3 year degree into a 5 year slog
|
| Same here. It took me 7 years. I would usually vomit before
| every exam.
|
| The horrible thing was that my grades were 98th percentile and
| my study method was very effective for me. I've never had this
| problem until the end semester of the first year of University.
| I don't really know what happened given that that first
| semester ended perfectly: two exam with a 100% and one with a
| 93%; such are mental tribulations like anxiety
| daedlanth wrote:
| If you keep that up eventually your head will dry up and fall
| off. Stop that.
| bowsamic wrote:
| How should one "stop that"?
| FranklinMaillot wrote:
| I've been through the same cycle for many years (I can even say
| decades). My recommendation is to seek help from a psychiatrist.
| You probably have generalized anxiety disorder and it often goes
| hand in hand with depression. A psychiatrist will be able to
| diagnose those and give you medication if you need it. She could
| also recommend therapy, but you need to be diagnosed first.
|
| Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find a good mental health
| professional. You'll have to try many before finding a good one.
| Plus you will procrastinate of course. But you need to persist
| and make this task your priority. I know the pain you're going
| through, and nothing should be more important than ending the
| suffering right now. Once you get better you'll wish you had
| sought help sooner.
|
| From my research and my experience, there are two effective
| treatments for anxiety and depression backed by scientific
| evidence: antidepressants and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
|
| The other comments are well intentionned but most of them are
| basically asking you to change your mindset and just do it.
| Obviously, if it was that easy you would have done it already.
| Anxiety and depression don't allow you to think clearly, that's
| why it is extremely difficult to get out of it on your own.
| diob wrote:
| Yes, absolutely this. Getting on sertraline changed my life.
| Allower wrote:
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| I would strongly recommend seeing a therapist. This is the exact
| kind of "thought pattern" that therapists are incredibly good at
| helping you sort through.
| ant6n wrote:
| Is it? I'd like to get a second opinion on that.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Yes, but not all therapists are right for everyone.
|
| Keep an eye out for specialization and incompatible red
| flags.
| DontMindit wrote:
| fredgrott wrote:
| Note, I have a bias as I had anxiety through ADHD.
|
| That being said both Anxiety and ADHD have the same exact
| dopamine problem which means that analogues of dopamine and
| serotonin treat anxiety if it's cause is genetic in nature.
|
| I do not know if the poster has a genetic version of anxiety,
| however if they do here is what I take for my ADHD that works for
| anxiety:
|
| L-theanine ashwagandha(its what is in Maca!) L-dopa
|
| and my further twist is to take a tablespoon if raw Cacao powder
| in mornings as it has two ingredients caffiene and anandamide.
|
| Anandamine is what interacts with CBD receptors, i.e. if you want
| to get around the TCH in CBD oil this is the way to do it as
| anandamine obviously is not tested for i the THC tests and there
| are no addictions associated with anandamine.
|
| Caution, it does not solve the emotional past obstacle you have
| set up for yourself. to solve that part you have to drastically
| change your life from consuming to doing in the form of making
| and creating and communicating. And yes, it is in fact a lot of
| work. But, I can tell if you make the honest effort towards this
| life-change you will be rewarded with the amazing stuff you can
| do once that life-change take hold. IMHO
| jotm wrote:
| I'll add my own experience:
|
| I call it the ADD-anxiety-depression circle. Can't do what
| needs to be done -> anxiety about it and just everything ->
| depression because it's all too much -> can't do what needs to
| be done -> repeat ad infinitum.
|
| I found that I must fix all three of them at the same time,
| because any of them can trigger the others very fast.
|
| No anxiety? Skip straight to depression. No depression? Still
| can't do shit and am always anxious. No ADD (am doing
| everything)? Things are objectively great yet I feel anxious
| and depressed. It's a horrible cycle that only gets worse.
| tareqak wrote:
| I have this cycle now, but I didn't have it when I was in high
| school. It sort of crept up on me.
| otikik wrote:
| On the medium term, get professional help, if you can afford it.
|
| On the short term, it might help understanding what's going on:
| your brain's more animal part is trying to protect you from a
| perceived danger. That's actually a good thing, most of the time.
|
| Ways to overcome it: they depend a lot on your personality. Ask
| people who know you about this. In my case, what works is
| splitting the task into minimal steps.
|
| For example:
|
| 1. Sit down in front of the computer
|
| 2. Turn off wifi (avoid distractions)
|
| 3. Open text editor
|
| 4. Write Essay Title
|
| 5. Write Abstract
|
| 6. Write Index
|
| ...
|
| This works for me because my animal might see Write Essay as a
| tiger about to eat me, but Write Title is fine. Instinct can be
| stupid like that sometimes lol.
|
| When you have more time, the book Atomic Habits coul also help
| you, but that's more long term.
| PKop wrote:
| Exercise, lifting weights, running, getting more sunlight /
| vitamin D, going on walks in nature.
|
| Physiological changes brought about by the above can help
| anxiety, break you out of this cycle. Give it a try
| ethbr0 wrote:
| At my highest stress moments, I've always found exercise and
| nature incredibly effective at resetting mental traps.
|
| Sometimes before a task (e.g. go for a run and don't think
| about it at all, then immediately sit down and start after
| getting home) and sometimes after a task interval (e.g. get to
| this point, stop, go take a long run and don't think about it
| at all, or just lightly turn more fun aspects of the problem
| over in your head).
|
| Running has the nice combination of sunlight + nature +
| physical exertion + dopamine.
| PKop wrote:
| It seems to me to be a common modern misconception for many
| people that the body is separate from the mind, or somehow
| unimportant to stimulate, exercise, and keep healthy for it
| and the mind to be in optimal function, have mental clarity
| and to be at peace (vs depression and anxiety).
|
| Truly from my experience and discussions with others this is
| the biggest single change many can make if not already
| consistently exercising, being active, getting out in nature
| (especially getting more sunlight to counteract Vitamin D
| deficiency which affects mood).
|
| Nietzsche had much to say on this topic, the mistaken dualism
| of mind and body.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Professional help. Nobody is going to be able to help you without
| knowing the specifics of your problem, and nobody here knows the
| specifics of your problem.
|
| There are a million ways that people have gotten through these
| kinds of issues, because there are a million people, and each
| person needed something different. Either you can risk failing to
| find your "thing" that will get you through, or you can enlist
| the help of someone who's trained in helping people like you.
|
| It'd be like trying to operate on yourself; you'd _never_ think
| to do it, so why do you think you 'd be able to self-treat your
| behavioral injury?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| >> ...I tend to procrastinate...
|
| What does that look like?
|
| I'd bet it is some sort of addiction: video games, tv/movies,
| drugs/alcohol, seeking sex/porn... even just going outside for a
| lazy walk. The avoidance is almost certainly some kind of self
| gratification. If you're feeling the fear/anxiety welling up, the
| habitual pattern is going to be to seek something soothing.
|
| You have to break the connections of those patterns by first
| seeing the discomfort arising. To do that, you need to realize
| that you're doing the escaping (seems like you're here). Once you
| can 'come to' when the discomfort starts arising, then you can
| practice, slowly and probably badly at first, breaking the habit
| and taking your power back. Feel the feeling completely as a next
| step, and just 'be' afraid/anxious. Ride that feeling out and let
| yourself see that it's just something that happens and that you
| can be ok with it. Don't beat yourself up if you fail at this.
| Once you start being ok with negative feelings, they lose their
| grip over you, and you'll be able to really start to realize your
| potential.
|
| You have it in you to do great things. Be creating self
| discipline in your life, you can accomplish more than you've ever
| thought possible.
| weatherlite wrote:
| There are many self help books about procrastination, its quite a
| well researched topic with some pretty good insight. It's not
| gonna be a silver bullet though, it takes hard work and changing
| habits.
|
| One really really good tip I read in one of those books is that
| the first hour of the day is critical for the rest of the day.
| This is so true in my experience. So tomorrow morning when you
| sit down to your tasks - do everything you can to really be at it
| during the first hour. Don't open social media or f** around.
| Experience shows if the first hour is good - usually the whole
| day becomes more productive. If the first hour is shit - usually
| you will be underperforming throughout the whole day.
| Gnarl wrote:
| Go to: the tapping solution dot com Give it a try. I think you'll
| be surprised at the results.
|
| Before you judge this method, known as "Emotional Freedom
| Technique", consider that the U.S. Veterans Admin. approves it
| for treating PTSD. The Army don't waste time on woo. More:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/veterans-administration-appro...
| diordiderot wrote:
| That link says that the army rejected it and it took
| Congressional involvement to have it approved.
| leecommamichael wrote:
| Stop trying to perfect your work, try to complete all of your
| work. Sometimes that means turning something in that you know is
| wrong.
| asr21 wrote:
| For me, starting anything is the most tough part, but once I
| start something I will work on it, I am good. What I do is to
| turn on the music and make myself start. For some tasks, I
| usually get engrossed so much that I don't hear the music or
| lyrics at all. Other times, I force myself to do something with
| the beat of the music. ( I listen to all kinds of music, for some
| reason lo-fi playlists won't work for starting my work, I listen
| to some pop or rap or rock)
| smaddox wrote:
| I highly recommend reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (after
| completing your assignments). The book covers this topic among
| others.
| cracrecry wrote:
| What I did was multiple things:
|
| 1.Learn from the best. There are people around you that probably
| has not this problem and can do the work. Study what they do and
| feel. Just ask them what they do and observe. They will have a
| different personality that you have, but it will be very useful
| anyway.
|
| 2. Keep a journal and write it down what you feel and why you
| feel something. This requires practice, you get better over time
| and will know thyself much better.
|
| 3. Read(or hear) books like: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Now-
| Habit-Audiobook/B002V8L1E...
|
| And follow the mantra that is there to eliminate thoughts about
| the past and about the future every time you start working. Again
| you improve over time and you won't need it after a while as it
| will become automatic.
|
| 4. Write Check lists with your work todos (roadmap) and follow
| them so you can split your thinking on "deciding what to do" and
| then "doing it" and not thinking at all after the decisions were
| made.
|
| 5.Use relaxing music that you enjoy so it pushes you up
| continuously while whatever you hate pushes you down. I use
| "Satie" music for hours.
|
| 6. Take breaks and vacations. Sleep and eat well. See your
| friends and family. I take 10 minutes off every 50 min of hard
| work.
|
| 7. Monitor and record your effort level. You can expect someone
| to walk for 8 hours a day, but no human being can run for 8 hours
| a day, most of them can't even run for 1 hour. People understand
| that but do not understand that with mental processes it is the
| same.
|
| Running is inefficient when you could walk. For making your
| effort level go down you can use tools(think on a bicycle that
| lets you run without effort, a car or a plane) or delegate to
| people/companies that specialize in your big effort task way
| cheaper that what it cost you.
|
| 8. Make things smaller in your checklist so you always progress
| and have positive feedback. Celebrate everything you check.
|
| 9. Understand that some times pain is unavoidable, but usually it
| comes at the start of the task. Usually the reward comes at the
| end. If you get used to complete things, you get used to the
| reward and you train your body that completing new things is
| enjoyable.
|
| On the other hand, if you are used to not complete things you are
| only used to the pain, and you have trained your body to learn
| that doing the work is painful. You probably even try to punish
| yourself more into doing something, so your emotional "gut"
| associates, links or anchors doing tasks with pain.
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| It seems as though the problem is primarily fear and/or aversion.
| The mind is kind of like a cavern of echoes, and you can choose
| to add power to, or dampen, the echoes. Are you able to think of
| something that will bring up a wholesome feeling, like kindness
| toward an animal, or a baby, or gratitude toward a mentor? If so,
| you can use it to dampen the fear pattern.
|
| When the fear pattern arises again, realize as quickly as
| possible that it has come back. Stop it, i.e., do not walk down a
| road in imagination related to the fears, imagining painful
| outcomes or whatever. In other words, gently stop the thought and
| drop it. Relax tension in the body, especially in the head.
| Smile. And bring up the wholesome feeling, however is appropriate
| for you. This dampens the fear echo. Each time you do these
| steps, you are taking energy away from this habit of your brain.
| Every time you do it correctly, you're taking a step toward not
| being bothered by this concern.
|
| This technique will work, but please just try it and try to do it
| diligently, giving it provisional belief. In the meantime, try to
| do your assignments, watching for your fear to decrease.
|
| * This message pre-censored by HN, allegedly to preserve
| curiosity.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I've watched dozens of videos on procrastination and by far the
| best one is this one by Tim Pychyl: [1]
|
| It's aimed at helping graduate students overcome procrastination,
| but it's actually useful for just about anyone. It's chock full
| of very practical tips, and Pychyl's main point is that
| procrastination is not a time management problem, but a problem
| with managing negative emotions.
|
| So it sounds like it would be right up your alley.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA
| einpoklum wrote:
| > I've watched dozens of videos on procrastination
|
| But perhaps not that many videos on irony? :-P
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| You're only dreading this while you're dreading it. Go ahead and
| get it out of the way so you don't have to dread it anymore. Make
| a calendar entry if you have to in order to make sure you have a
| proper time to get it done
| noman-land wrote:
| There's lots of great advice here and seeing a therapist seems
| like a good idea, however in the meantime, I read an interesting
| book a while back called Feel The Fear... And Do It Anyway that
| you might find helpful.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/653396.Feel_the_Fear_and...
| goplayoutside wrote:
| * Find a different source for your self-worth other than whether
| you succeed at certain tasks.
|
| * Value 'trying' over 'succeeding'.
|
| * Consider yourself a 'completionist' instead of a
| 'perfectionist'.
|
| * Do it for someone else. Instead of seeing the assignment as
| 'something I need to do so that I can pass the class so that I
| can graduate so that I can get a job', etc, look at it as
| something you can do that will make someone you care about proud,
| or as something that will enable you to do things that will
| benefit people who are important to you.
|
| * Reflect on the observation that 'we don't grow when we're in
| our comfort zones'.
|
| * See yourself as setting an example for others who are
| struggling with the same anxiety issues. Strive to make it a
| positive example.
|
| * Memento mori.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Yeah some people really need medication to get past things and
| that's perfectly okay.
| DavideNL wrote:
| In any case, i'd strongly advise to avoid "therapists";
|
| Instead, go to a properly educated professional with whatever the
| title is called in your country, like a "Doctor of Psychology"
| (someone with a professional doctoral degree in clinical
| psychology / a title with legal protection to be able to use it.)
|
| It often makes a lot of difference in terms of the result.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > a title with legal protection to be able to use it
|
| What country are you in where such a thing is not always
| required?
|
| I agree though. For every 100 therapists, I would say that
| maybe 5 know what they are doing, and maybe even up to 15 or 20
| are willingly abusive or cause more damage
| DavideNL wrote:
| Netherlands :
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapie#Wetgeving (in Dutch) :
|
| _" With the exception of some therapeutic professions, the
| term therapist is unprotected in the Netherlands and
| Belgium."_
| bowsamic wrote:
| Interesting. Here in Germany you need to be a part of some
| special guild or something to call yourself a therapist
| detaro wrote:
| No, the pure label "Therapeut" is not restricted in any
| way. Some specific labels for types of therapists are,
| e.g. a Psychotherapeut has to go through an approbation
| process like other medical titles.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Right but when someone looks for a therapist for mental
| health in germany they look for a "psychotherapist",
| since that is the one that offers psychotherapy
| rufugee wrote:
| I just participated in the Landmark Forum
| (https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/) which is designed to do
| (among other things) just this, over a three day intensive class.
| It's about redefining the way you look at the past, present, and
| future and establishing more positive views. As someone who has
| been studying mindfulness (and, where it's related, Buddhism) for
| the past few years, it was a very welcome experience, and it's
| already impacted my life and relationships in a number of
| positive ways.
|
| Google it for yourself...as with anything "woo", there's both
| positive and negative comments out there. But for me, it was the
| right thing at the right time, and it's inspired me to take
| action in very meaningful ways.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I am often the same way. I used to avoid doing homework, now I
| procrastinate on things like filing tax returns or calling back
| friends. It's a very damaging behavior and has cost me dearly
| throughout my whole life.
|
| I don't know an easy solution but talking about this to people
| who listen without giving advice helps a lot. I haven't tried
| therapy for this but I think it could help too. The most
| dangerous part is to have this as your embarrassing little secret
| you can't talk about.
| RobRivera wrote:
| im a big fan of exposure therapy and good old fashion
| sleep/hydration/diet/exercise
| drw85 wrote:
| I was stuck in this avoidance cycle for a while and it slowly
| extended to pretty much everything i was doing. From going to the
| supermarket, to making a phone call. Most things seemed pretty
| much impossible for me to do and caused anxiety and panic
| attacks.
|
| I did two years of therapy, which helped me better understand and
| analyse my behaviour, bit not much with the actual anxiety.
|
| My wife then recommended a book to me (Dare: The New Way to End
| Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks), you can read it for free if you
| get the Amazon kindle trial.
|
| It basically describes 4 steps to follow whenever you have
| anxiety/panic, to accept it and in turn calm your nervous system.
|
| It helped me a lot and made me able to cope and live with the
| problem. So, i can go out again and do things, which still causes
| me anxiety from time to time, but i can deal with it and move
| along and actually enjoy whatever i'm doing as soon as the
| symptoms/negative feelings pass.
| Faelian2 wrote:
| Watching interviews from Jordan Peterson on youtube did help me a
| lot recently.
|
| One good advice is that you are paralyzed because you fear what
| is before you. You don't know how to manage it, and your instinct
| to facing danger is "don't move". What you have to do is to think
| about the danger of not moving, and the cost associated. You use
| one fear to mitigate the other.
|
| There is also something that I can't really explain about
| changing your vision and "Take responsibility for your life.
| Accept the burden that come with it".
| srinivgp wrote:
| I had this problem. It crippled me. One or more of the following
| solved it:
|
| - just time plus regression to the mean
|
| - talking with a therapist, for a while
|
| - being hit with a completely different enormous life stress,
| allowing me to say "fuck it" to all other anxieties
|
| While it was ongoing, my coping mechanisms were:
|
| - ditch social interaction in favor of putting myself near the
| problem for hours at a time with nothing else to do until I made
| reluctant incremental progress
|
| I do not recommend that coping mechanism for anything except that
| which you need to literally survive.
|
| When it was very bad, the following was not helpful:
|
| - breaking into small chunks; fear-avoidance can be about
| starting, but in my case it was literally about producing any
| results visible to anyone else
| thealig wrote:
| FranklinMailot's comment is good advice I think. Getting
| professional help would be best here. I also face similar
| symptoms like how you describe - persistent procrastination with
| tasks (initiation, or even continuing from where you left). I
| faced them since i became an adult through college, and after I
| started a job. it became pretty clear that there is something
| seriously off when I underperformed for a good amount of time.
| Then 2 year ago, I got repetitive panic attacks. Had to take
| leave for a month. started seeing a psychiatrist.
|
| Then took a test recently, turns out i have Avoidant Personality
| Disorder. Made a lot of sense, since I struggled with
| interpersonal relationships - difficulty in getting help from
| people, more prone to tolerating misbehaviour from other people
| out of avoidance of conflict, interpreting peoples signs and
| events naturally in an exaggerated negative fashion thus making
| me self sabotage etc. I sort of survived through probably because
| I scraped through when it was dire.
| dominotw wrote:
| yea this is not a easy problem to solve. And surely cannot be
| solved my tricks like pomodoro technique. You probably already
| know all the tricks like starting small, setting a timer, put
| your phone in slient mode ect ect. You are surely not looking for
| more of these.
|
| Problem here isn't mechanical, there are literally thousands of
| methods and tricks all over web to overcome procrastination. Its
| psychological issue.
|
| What I would say is to really think about why you really want to
| not do the assigments. Is it because you ultimately think benefit
| of school is overstated. Maybe your passions lie somewhere else
| at the moment but you are forced to attend school because thats
| what we were told to do.
|
| Only you can solve this issue.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| walks in nature helps
|
| I've struggled with this as well and only doing things that
| interest me helped. Over time those things were profitable
| enough; took a long time to find.
|
| good luck and hang in there
| schaefer wrote:
| book recommendation:
|
| Unwinding Anxiety by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Jud
| Brewer MD PhD -- Dr. Brewer's other successes include designed
| leading programs (highest success rate) for both quitting smoking
| and weight management. These programs succeed by making explicit
| the emotional landscapes driving counterproductive habits. The
| book unwinding anxiety does the same for anxiety.
| znpy wrote:
| Accept failure as an inevitable part of life: everything worth
| doing is worth doing poorly, in the sense that it's better do
| something poorly than not doing it at all.
| deberon wrote:
| Don't be afraid of failure! You're tougher than that, trust me.
| Turns out failure is pretty easy to get over. What's harder to
| get over is a life full of regret.
| gerash wrote:
| you need to focus on a single thing, finish it and move on to the
| next. It's easier said than done because sometimes one thing
| might take too long and you might feel the need to drop it and
| attend to another task that's more urgent.
|
| But at the end of the day, once you finish a task, however small,
| you'll feel better and have more mental energy to deal with the
| rest.
|
| Also lying in the bed and worrying about what to do is less
| useful than getting into a more awake posture (sitting at a desk)
| and dealing with an issue. That said give yourself frequent
| breaks (reading HN) but cap it so you don't spend all your day
| reading news.
|
| Don't forget daily exposure to sunlight. It regulates your clock
| and mood.
| bobthechef wrote:
| hellohowareu wrote:
| Put on motivational music & motivational speeches
|
| Using music/engaging speeches to help change your emotions will
| help you to feel better and more positive about the work.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| Listen to John Danaher (world famous BJJ coach interviewed by Lex
| Fridman).
|
| He talks about that the greatest fighters pick their battles very
| well, and they often get submitted in the gym because they
| intentionally put themselves in handicapped positions so that
| they can learn how to get out (and sometimes that doesn't work
| out, of course). So life situations where stakes are not high
| should be used to run high-risk experiments so that we can learn
| from them. He takes about risk taking a lot, and how confidence
| building is important for high performers. First, you learn how
| to recover from bad situations. You train this a lot. Then you
| need to learn and experience that even if you make a mistake
| you're good enough to recover from it. If you know that you can
| recover from your mistakes you're suddenly free to take large
| risks. As an extension: if you're new to a field and you're
| looking to acquire skills then learn how to recover from bad
| situations first, so that you can then keep exploring without the
| fear of getting into bad situations.
| L0in wrote:
| > So life situations where stakes are not high should be used
| to run high-risk experiments so that we can learn from them.
|
| Your comment made me realize that every failure i considering
| it as high stakes...
|
| As for John Danaher, he's seems an interested character. For a
| while now i want to listen his conversations with Lex Fridman,
| and also the 3hour long conversation he did with two other
| martial artists.
| adammarples wrote:
| Unexpected Danaher
| ehnto wrote:
| Great examples of your last point in most speed sports. The
| quickest competitors always look like they're extreme risk
| takers, but it's more likely they've had ample time
| experiencing mistakes and as such, they know their ability to
| recover well enough to deduce a good safety margin.
|
| I love watching ragged edge hill climb segments or peak
| performance downhill mountain biking runs, they're this weird
| blend of composure and moments of recovery, and you can see
| them pushing through each small mistake fearlessly, as they're
| so familiar with them.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I would suggest a therapy. There may be many various reasons why
| you have the patterns you have and an honest talk with someone
| from outside of your circle will go a long way.
|
| This is what helped me, I have suggested this to a friend of mine
| who was struggling with a lot of avoidance-related issues, and it
| helped them too.
|
| Talk to a professional to understand which unfulfilled needs you
| have.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I can't tell you: "Don't be anxious."
|
| I can't tell you: "Don't be afraid."
|
| I can't tell you: "Just take the first small step."
|
| I cannot use reason, logic, or statistics to try to convince you
| that the thing you're afraid of is no reason to be afraid of it.
|
| Deep self-reflection, meditation and/or professional help is all
| I can suggest, but is even that good advice, given it can be
| reasoned away as "won't work"?
| 0x008 wrote:
| Accept that you can fail and being failable is part of being
| human and part of who you are.
|
| Realize that if you fail, your life is not going to end.
|
| Internalize that even after you fail, you are not worth less than
| what you think you are if you succeeded.
| kahon65 wrote:
| I just read the question. If you are anxious from your birth or
| childhood due to parents, or rejection by other children, etc.,
| believe me, no solution exist.
|
| You will be anxious all your life.
|
| Just accept this sad fact and this sad life. You will never be
| relaxed nore happy.
|
| Why? Because your brain has already developed extremely strong
| neuronal paths and structures and patterns and overdeveloped
| organs involved in anxiety that no treatment, nore physical, nore
| biochemical, nore psychological will be able to change in a
| positive, pro-relaxation way.
|
| Life is tough and sad for us my friend, and there is no hope for
| us.
|
| That's why countries should creates juridical ways to judge the
| parents of the children who were our tortionars, for example.
| Because they condamned us to a life of anxiety, depression and
| illnesses.
|
| Sorry.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I don't think there's evidence for this for anxiety, but I
| think this is true for dysthymia (persistent depression),
| however this isn't necessarily what OP has, although to me it
| does kind of sound more like dysthymia than anxiety.
| Generalised or specific anxiety disorders can be treated much
| more effectively than depression, persistent or otherwise.
|
| If it is persistent depression, you are right. I have
| dysthymia, and have had it since childhood, and there isn't
| really hope. Those who have remission, almost always relapse
| after a year. It is something you learn to cope with, rather
| than treat. We just have to come to terms with the reality of
| the situation, that in this life we won't experience the joy
| that other humans do.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| I absolutely don't buy into either of these views. As a
| person in long term recovery from alcohol and drug addiction,
| and someone that has been to thousands of support meetings,
| and known many many people that have recovered from horrible
| circumstances, my advice is, ignore these two posts. It just
| is not true.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > As a person in long term recovery from alcohol and drug
| addiction
|
| What has this got to do with anything? Dysthymia isn't an
| addiction or "horrible circumstances". It isn't even
| particularly severe, it's just moderately meh all the time.
| Most people don't seek treatment because they assume it's
| just part of their personality: "I'm just a negative
| person" or "I just don't like making friends" etc.
|
| You don't have a clue what you are talking about. Studies
| that say that dysthymia remission is 50% define remission
| as "receiving 'Tools to handle life'". It's about coping,
| not about treatment.
|
| One who has dysthymia may never have long term responses
| like a person without it, there is no reason to expect it,
| and we have very little idea how to treat it long term. The
| best we can do is improve the person's response to
| dysthymic feelings.
|
| Just because you recovered from alcoholism doesn't
| immediately translate to dysthymia. They call it "permanent
| depression" for a reason.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| Wow, you are so invested in this point of view. Go for
| it, nothing like being determined to be depressed your
| whole life to make sure you are depressed your whole
| life.
|
| My recovery has plenty to do with it, because I have seen
| so many people escape from thinking like you do. Amazing
| success stories, over and over again, that I have
| personally witnessed, over decades. This thread is filled
| with people offering great advice that really works.
|
| If you want to be this way in your own life, go for it.
| But don't go trying to convince other people to see this
| point of view, and then being surprised when people say
| "wow you are so wrong".
| bowsamic wrote:
| Please try and be less rude
|
| I already said it isn't like normal depression, you
| ignored this...
|
| Unfortunately in the dysthymia community we have to deal
| with a lot of people that are ignorant to the disorder,
| you sound like you haven't even heard the word dysthymia
| before today. Most people, even many doctors, are not
| properly aware of it. You should research it
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Have you ever tried something more extreme to cope, like
| Ayahuasca?
|
| I went from being a majorly depressed person and suicidal
| to being a lightly depressed, non suicidal person and I
| think Ayahuasca contributed to that.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I tried LSD and it made me severely suicidal. I had to
| take up a religion to not kill myself. On the dysthymia
| front, I've had it constantly since age 9 and am now 27.
| It's not something I expect to change. Most people who
| have dysthymia learn coping mechanisms rather than trying
| to actually cure it. Major Depression on the other hand
| (which in my case would be a double depression) is more
| severe and more treatable
|
| Dysthymia is already "lightly depressed". LSD made me
| majorly feel unfit for this reality. And yes the set and
| setting were great both times, I'm just very unlucky
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Ya, I would definitely have guessed LSD would be a
| terrible idea.
|
| Ayahuasca is an entirely different kind of thing.
| bowsamic wrote:
| To me it seems like you're so attached to your success
| stories that you cannot accept that sometimes there isn't
| a light at the end of the tunnel. It seems like you deal
| with reality by thinking that everyone can deal with
| their problems. Time to wake up to the truth: some people
| will die with their illnesses, and some illnesses are
| more treatment resistant than others. I'm sorry that this
| isn't a flowery enough story for you, I really am. One
| day your bubble will burst
| BubbleRings wrote:
| > One day your bubble will burst
|
| Now you are wishing it on others? Sorry, not going to
| happen.
| throwamon wrote:
| nor*
| einpoklum wrote:
| I occasionally suffer from this pattern, although not as gravely
| as you describe it.
|
| Something that I found helped me with the "bigger" manifestations
| of it, i.e. not a small homework assignment but larger projects
| in life, is: _Stop psychologically evading failure._
|
| That is, the instinct is to try not to think about what happens
| if you fail, since that's terrible; and maybe trying to convince
| yourself that you won't fail (and indeed maybe you're unlikely to
| fail). I say, do the opposite of that. Try to work through that
| worst-case scenario. This often brings up fears such as "What is
| my life about if I am unable to do XYZ?" Or "My self-perception
| is of a 'doer of X'; who am I, as a person, if I don't
| successfully do X?" If you are willing to face those questions
| and provide answers which you can conceivably live with, the fear
| of tackling X may subside somewhat.
|
| Hope that helps.
| samatman wrote:
| This is consistent with ADHD, but then, a lot of things are. It's
| a possibility to explore with a professional. Good luck.
| dkarl wrote:
| You'll get a lot of advice to try different techniques, and I
| would look at everything, pick a few that click for you, try
| them, see if they work, and try more things until something
| works. I'll give you three suggestions.
|
| My first suggestion is to think, "I might fail at this, but I'll
| be better off if I fail at it today than tomorrow, and I'll be
| better off if I fail this morning than this afternoon." A failure
| right now is just a start. You will have time to fix it.
|
| My second suggestion is to remind yourself that the fear is
| excessive and unhelpful. Don't think, "I deserve to feel this
| way, because I'm screwing up, and I should feel this way until I
| get my act together." There's only one reason to value fear: if
| it pushes you to take the right actions to address your fear. If
| it doesn't work that way, then the dose is too high to be
| effective, and you can let go of it without guilt.
|
| Related to this, my third suggestion is to work on the overall
| level of stress and anxiety in your life. Think about the worst
| case and remind yourself that you'll cope. If you fail the lab,
| you'll survive. Lots of successful people failed a lab in school.
| Whatever else is hard in your life, remind yourself that it's not
| a disaster: for example, if you don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend
| and this causes you distress, remind yourself that lots of people
| your age are hopeless at romance and are happily married ten
| years later. If you're worried about disappointing your parents,
| remind yourself that many happy people disappointed their parents
| when they were young. Use these thoughts to reduce the overall
| level of stress in your life.
|
| Most tips for dealing with fear and procrastination boil down to
| finding helpful ways of thinking about a situation and repeating
| them until they become habit. A systematic way to approach this
| is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, CBT. It's ideal if you
| can do this with a professional therapist, but unlike most forms
| of therapy, if you can't afford a professional to coach you, you
| can still practice it on your own.
| cowb0yl0gic wrote:
| Here is a list of things (bits of insight, strategies) you may
| find helpful. IME, anxiety and the resulting procrastination has
| more to do with fear of failure and insufficiency than feeling
| that you can't actually do something. It's a preemptive attempt
| to get you to not try at something, and the best way to overcome
| it is to find ways to "do the try" without making it seem like
| you are confronting the fear ("I'm not going to swim, I'm just
| going to wade in the shallow end of the pool for a bit").
|
| https://github.com/jay-gates/dailywisdom
|
| Some examples {with comments}:
|
| - Set goals to 'good enough'/iterative development {lower the
| bar, to avoid a barrier to getting started}
|
| - When you feel overwhelmed, pick ONE THING to focus on, ignore
| everything else; then when that's done, pick ONE THING.... {don't
| get overwhelmed by the WHOLE THING, pick one smaller part to
| focus on}
|
| - Don't 'chain' tasks if it causes the whole chain to be put off;
| do what you can NOW and worry about the rest later {don't TRY to
| do the whole thing at once; intentionally break it up into
| separate, more manageable pieces}
|
| - Use zazen (shikantaza) to overcome 'scattered thoughts' (too
| many thoughts or anxious thoughts) {resistance to doing things is
| caused by subconscious mental activity (your "little minds"
| talking at you in the background); quiet your conscious mind,
| rather than expending all of your energy "arguing" with them,
| which is what they "want"}
| _notathrowaway wrote:
| The way you describe your problem makes me think that you might
| need the assistance of a therapist to overcome it.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd add the caveat that therapists are like friends and
| teachers: who they are as people matters for how effective they
| are professionally.
|
| Treat finding a therapist like dating or considering a
| friendship with someone. A therapist can be a very good
| therapist (objectively) but not click with you.
|
| It's okay to say "I'm trying out multiple therapists right now
| to see who fits best. Can we just do introductions with each
| other?"
|
| Find someone who you respect, shares some beliefs with you, and
| generally has a compatible outlook on life.
| breckenedge wrote:
| It may not help in the moment, but best money I ever spent was
| going to a therapist weekly, or more often, for about 2 years.
| Many universities offer free mental health services. Therapy
| didn't fix everything, but it did help with perfectionism and
| especially with black-and-white thinking.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > Many universities offer free mental health services.
|
| Perhaps they say they do, but they are always totally full
| and also really low quality
| jotm wrote:
| What are your thoughts on a virtual therapist (with voice
| control/feedback) designed for a specific mental issue?
| _notathrowaway wrote:
| Virtual as in AI? Never heard of such a thing to be honest.
| Do you have any articles on it?
| petrochenkov wrote:
| If only the task of finding and choosing the therapist, and
| then actually visiting him didn't also trigger the cycle.
| eof wrote:
| Did anyone else say drugs?
|
| The only thing that's ever worked for me is working on things I'm
| truly interested in, crushing anxiety due to a deadline coming
| up, and drugs.
|
| Getting adult adhd diagnosis in my late 30s has been life
| changing.
|
| Make sure your goals are your own and your tasks meet the goals.
| jotm wrote:
| Took me years, but I finally started buying stimulants
| illegally and yeah, they're life changing.
|
| They're not the ultimate solution, only useful when I need to
| focus on something and just do it(tm), but it's the perfect
| tool to train my brain.
|
| I can see now why kids are put on Adderall/etc then they stop
| taking them in adulthood. It always seemed very strange to me,
| but yeah, they help create habits that will stick for the rest
| of your life (starting work, focusing, just doing stuff that
| needs to be done).
|
| The sooner you build them, the better. 30's is a quite late,
| but I hope not _too_ late.
| eof wrote:
| In usa it is very easy to get prescribed. Obviously you would
| need to lie about your non-prescribed use but if you're
| willing to get them illegally that shouldn't be an issue.
|
| There are prescribers online. Even with no insurance it's
| about $5/day after paying the doctor, counselor, and
| prescription (using GoodRx coupon)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Be very careful, especially with taking too low of a dose. If
| you take too little too often, you can build ultra
| sensitivity to dopamine.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| When you procrastinate what do you spend your time doing?
| L0in wrote:
| Usually ruminating about the past, worrying about the
| immediate/long term future, browsing mindlessly or listening to
| music and do everything mentioned.
|
| Today i went for a 30minute walk after i woke up (A while i go
| i used to run everyday and i want to start again. That's why i
| walked today), then i finished a chapter from Le guin's "The
| dispossessed". Watched a movie and always thinking about the
| assignments :P
| chasd00 wrote:
| when i get like this i just focus on making any progress at all.
| Just drawing a diagram on a sheet of paper is better than
| nothing. My HS football coach would circle us up before kickoff
| and we'd all look at the scoreboard. He'd say "priority 1, get
| rid of that zero". Any progress, no matter how small, is much
| better than zero.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| It may help to go out and do something else that you enjoy, to
| stop thinking about all this. That would give you some
| perspective on things and you can get back to your work with a
| fresh mind.
|
| Also sometimes when you procrastinate it's an indication that
| what you're doing is not really what you want to do, so you might
| want to consider doing something else that you can be passionate
| about (not saying that's easy and you talk about assignments, so
| you probably don't want to drop your degree out of the blue).
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| Get some exercise and then _immediately_ (while still sweating)
| sit back down at your desk and try to start. For some reason,
| that was a very effective way to start my homework assignments
| (the hardest part) in grad school.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| The above post is truly great advice.
|
| Also, pages and pages of advice here about anxiety and nobody
| mentions caffeine? Be aware that many people get a big increase
| in anxiety from just one small cup of coffee. Try a caffeine-
| free life for a couple months, if you have never tried it.
|
| Finally, similar to the above advice, try doing some work in
| the morning before your "procrastination and anxiety" side has
| even woken up. In other words, roll right out of bed, still
| half asleep, and slouch over to your desk and do some work on
| your project.
|
| Good luck!
| bowsamic wrote:
| I had anxiety for many years, and cured it by meditation.
|
| But what you speak of, for my personal experience, is not
| anxiety.
|
| Anxiety is when I am out and have too much coffee, and I feel
| like I'm going to pass out because the body feelings are causing
| me to freak out. Or I got too high and am panicking. It's an
| overreaction to sensations and experiences that I am unfamiliar
| with.
|
| What you talk about, that crushing feeling when trying to do
| work, pure fear and avoidance, is much more in line with what I
| experience from my depression.
| ntauthority wrote:
| I would agree, to the extent that terminology may matter - it
| ideally wouldn't.
|
| This scenario OP sketches sounds an awful lot like it can be
| extrapolated to 'no matter whether I try and fail, or don't try
| and fail, I'll fail anyway. as such, why even try?' which may
| indeed match the hopelessness associated with depression more,
| which may _itself_ trigger more acute anxiety when trying
| anyway.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I think it matters because the treatments and prognosis for
| anxiety and depression are usually quite different. For
| example, the mindset if you have long-term anxiety disorder
| should be "how can I treat this?" but the mindset if you have
| long-term depression (dysthymia/persistent depression) should
| be "how can I cope/live with this?"
|
| I definitely agree with your second paragraph. I would
| actually extrapolate it slightly further and say that it's
| worth OP asking themselves if they actually simply feel
| unmotivated, and anxiety is a good way to pin that fact on
| something tangible or understandable. If my hypothesis that
| it is a depressive disorder is correct, I think that is quite
| likely. But that's a question for OP, obviously not one that
| I can infer.
| jnovek wrote:
| If you have access to therapy, there is a modality called EMDR.
| From personal experience, I strongly recommend it.
|
| EMDR is traditionally used to treat PTSD. You play back memories
| in your brain with distracting bilateral stimulation and
| exercises that help reduce anxiety and panic. Over several sets
| the sympathetic response is dramatically reduced or eliminated.
|
| Even if the underlying issue isn't a "trauma" with a capital T,
| chronic anxiety has trauma-like qualities that still seem to
| respond to EMDR (at least in my experience).
| orm wrote:
| I can relate to this quite a bit, I personally think it is my
| biggest weakness. I have managed to do a few things despite this
| but just as an example, a few weeks ago I could not bring myself
| to work on a 5 minute presentation about work that was already
| done months ago because the feelings related to the work were
| very strong. Instead I 'winged' it, and it went ok (stakes were
| low, as I mentioned before, I had already done some work for this
| for an unrelated presentation), but really it didn't convey the
| work that was done as well as possible. It also didn't need to be
| as hard as I made it ( I spent the day before fretting about it,
| looking at it for a few minutes, but not doing much about it ).
| The irony is that the worst case scenario of showing up without
| much prepared was not nearly as bad as my anxiety made it seem
| the day before, and that anxiety made it hard to prep... So the
| anxiety was completely off and just made my life harder than it
| needed to be.
|
| I'm pretty sure this anxiety/avoidance pattern that I manage to
| some extent has in the past cost me years because I know it has
| delayed my engaging with the things I need to do to move forward.
| I love working, thinking, reading, prioritizing, but I do think I
| have trouble regulating my emotions in certain situations more
| than other people I know.
|
| My limited advice since I haven't figured it out: 1. Some amount
| of therapy. I have done some CBT. Lately I have been reading a
| bit about ACT, seems related to this specific problem more so
| than CBT. It is ok to have bad feelings sometimes, they pass,
| don't worry about worrying. (Easier said than done.) This is an
| ongoing process and can help you think through patterns like
| this. 2. I find that sometimes too much thinking early on can
| make things worse, and things are done faster if you don't think
| too much before jumping up on something. 3. Focusmate.com: you
| tell someone what you'll work on for the next 30 mins, and you do
| it. Somehow having someone else there that you're accountable to,
| as well as who doesn't know you, makes some of the emotions
| recede for me a bit, enough for me to get started somehow. 4.
| Articulate to yourself, as if you were explaining to someone
| else, what makes the thing hard. Sometimes I feel calmer after
| this. 5. Reframe the situation: maybe you can find some other
| situations where you are successful against this pattern and try
| to remember them. Can you make the same happen here even in a
| small way? Can you fight back a bit? Short term stress is not
| that harmful to you and you may want to see it positively, see
| some positive properties of it in your work. Eg. sometimes when
| things are quite critical I somehow manage to break from the
| avoidance and do something. 5. Perfectionism is an enemy, and
| guilt follows. I find guilt over previous avoidance is a
| secondary effect that makes things even worse. Eg. when I finally
| get to something I have avoided, I feel guilt over how much time
| I avoided it and how it really isn't so bad. Checking your own
| patterns may help you realize this is a familiar pattern and just
| that. 6. Work with other people or run your thoughts through
| other people. This is not always possible, I'm a PhD student so
| it is especially hard to do this (your work is ultimately your
| own and no one will drive it forward but you, but you can try
| running your thoughts through someone else), but I find in a team
| (even just 2 people) I find myself very mindful of not imposing
| any of my perfectionistic tendencies on the people I work with.
| This in turn helps me regulate them more. 7. Get good sleep. It
| helps me be able to step away from myself and think of myself
| more in the third person than when I don't sleep enough. 8. Get
| some exercise. I find it is helpful in breaking through some of
| the rumination/avoidance cycles. 9. Share some of these
| emotions/situations with other people (what I'm doing right now
| ;)). It is easy to also start avoiding people in these
| anxiety/avoidance loops, I certainly feel that impulse, but you
| may find other people can relate and even have some advice. If
| your feelings can change this way you may be able to get some
| work done.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Depending on the extent to which this is impacting your life (for
| example, does it extend to your interpersonal relationships?),
| you may want to be assessed by a psychiatrist for Avoidant
| Personality Disorder (AvPD). This is one of the cluster C PDs.
| There's a book called _Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder_
| by Kantor that might help you evaluate whether this is something
| that might apply to you.
|
| The good news is that unlike some other clinical PDs, AvPD is
| fairly amenable to cognitive-behavioral and other forms of
| treatment.
|
| As others have noted, you might just have garden variety anxiety
| (which is also treatable), or something related like ADHD. If
| this is really impacting your life, it's worthwhile getting
| assessed properly.
| rendall wrote:
| Let it go. Don't do the assignments. Seriously.
|
| What got me over this cycle was to seriously see how bad it can
| get.
|
| I mean, really, now the fear has been reset to normal. I'm afraid
| of the consequences far more than the activity.
| insickness wrote:
| The best solution to getting past the anxiety/fear-avoidance
| cycle is to take small, manageable actions while accepting the
| feelings that go along with those actions.
|
| Start with the smallest steps possible. Maybe that means opening
| the assignment and saving it to your computer. Then put it down
| and walk away. Come back in a little while and take another small
| step, such as reading over the assignment or making an outline of
| what you need to do to get it done. Often once you've done
| _something_ you will often start to feel a lot different than if
| you 've done nothing.
|
| Keep track of how you're feeling. It's okay to feel more anxiety
| at first because you're doing something instead of nothing. Those
| feelings tend to subside over time as you take action, but the
| point is not to reduce your anxiety, the point is that you are
| making a commitment to do something in your life, to live your
| life, rather than to remain paralyzed in fear. Your goal is not
| to get rid of the anxiety but to live the kind of life you want
| to live.
|
| This is the model for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. A great
| book on this is "Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life."
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| This is superb advice.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Start with the smallest steps possible. Maybe that
| means opening the assignment and saving it to your
| computer.
|
| This is insanely effective for me.
|
| Avoidance/procrastination is still an ongoing struggle for me,
| and I suspect it always will be.
|
| But breaking things down into steps is my best weapon. Nothing
| comes close.
|
| (Second place is probably "getting good sleep" which has
| positive benefits for well, just about any challenge your mind
| faces)
|
| I actually extend this concept to life in general. I make lists
| of daily tasks. This even includes "getting out of bed",
| "taking vitamins", etc. Sometimes it's useful to give yourself
| "credit" for doing all of the little things. Gets you rolling.
| Sounds silly but it is often effective for me.
| huge87 wrote:
| _(Second place is probably "getting good sleep" which has
| positive benefits for well, just about any challenge your
| mind faces)_
|
| I implemented a system of 9+ hours of sleep the night before
| an exam; this means I'll be in bed an hour and a half (maybe
| 3 hours) before my usual bed time. This provides a noticeable
| buff to my speed, accuracy, and recall on test day.
| trenchgun wrote:
| This is very good advice.
|
| It can be also combined with a couple of neat tricks: talking
| with somebody about it & making a list about it.
| MomciloM wrote:
| I found the same thing work the best for me, but not always.
| kosasbest wrote:
| The old adage: Prepare and put your gym bag at your front door
| if you have problems trying to go to the gym
| cassepipe wrote:
| I wish someone had given me this piece of advice early in life
| instead of finding that out at 25.
|
| I call it the foot-in-the-door method, it makes wonders.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Try 37...
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's the 3 seconds to act too. Don't hesitate.. for
| positive attempts you want a fair amount of impulsivity.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. Starting is the hardest part. It's easy to be
| overwhelmed by the whole thing you have to do. It's much
| easier to say, "Okay I'm going to open the document and title
| it. That's it". Often once you do that its much easier to do
| the next step.
|
| The other piece of advice I'd give is break tasks down. Write
| a paper is hard. Open a document is easy. Title the document
| is easy. Write a thesis is harder than those two but easier
| than writing an entire paper. Writing the first paragraph
| based on your thesis statement is easier than writing a
| paper.
|
| If you have things broken down into steps its much easier to
| have a clear step by step plan on how to move forward.
| ISL wrote:
| By many measures, 25 is early in life. Congratulations: you
| did!
| jaqalopes wrote:
| Seriously, even at 30 I feel like I've barely mastered
| these skills!
| grvdrm wrote:
| +1 for feeling that way at 40. It never ends!
| euroderf wrote:
| Well hell, I'm over 60 and I still can't make up my mind
| what I want to be when I grow up.
| _nhh wrote:
| I am struggling with this cycle for a long time now.
| Relieving to hear that everybody just trying to figure
| things out.
| huge87 wrote:
| I just bought Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Audible. I
| take book recommendations on HN relatively seriously so I'm
| looking forward to this read.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Ditto, though my copy is coming in paperback form :)
| _nhh wrote:
| This is really the only way it keeps getting better for me. Big
| big +1 on this one
| patrickserrano wrote:
| +1 for taking small steps. As someone who's dealt with anxiety
| for years, it's one of the most reliable ways for me to
| actually make progress when I'm overwhelmed.
|
| I'll typically try making a list of the small steps I need to
| take, though I recognize that for some people seeing that list
| might make the anxiety worse. But for me it's a tangible step
| that allows me to cross off items and visualize the progress as
| I go which ends up reducing my anxiety about the task at hand.
| I do it for everything from work related projects to general
| "cleaning up the house" type work.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| A vehement +1 to this post. Reducing the conceptual size of the
| problem to something that you can just shrug and do will give
| you a step forward and knock a chunk out of your anxiety. If
| you keep at it, the anxiety will reduce over time.
|
| One thing that's helped me is self talk. You should assure
| yourself that you're the man and that these challenges are easy
| for you to overcome. Don't be afraid to go over the top with
| this and when you do it, give yourself a pat on the back before
| you take the next step.
| sateesh wrote:
| A very good advice. When I am stuck worrying and not doing a
| task I should have been doing, I try with a small pomodoro
| interval of just 15 mins doing very minimal steps related to
| the task that won't need lot of mental energy. This helps me to
| reduce my anxiety and gradually I pick up my focus and am able
| to move forward.
| BIKESHOPagency wrote:
| I use tanglo app (tanglo.app) and something about just clicking
| "start" on a small task is enough to break the cycle for me.
| Tanglo is also helpful in visualizing what I can REALISTICALLY
| get done in my day and what happens if I don't start.
|
| When I don't start a scheduled task, it just keeps pushing it
| down further and further. If I procrastinate too long, tasks at
| the end get moved to tomorrow automatically. Which sucks. Small
| steps, click start.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| You must be either the developer or an early user - I tried
| to register but it says "Registration will be open soon!
| Please check back with us."
| albrewer wrote:
| This is what I try and do with my kids. They're elementary
| school age - if you tell them "go clean your room", they will
| melt down because the problem is too big for them to understand
| how to fix it.
|
| Conceptually, they know they just need to put one thing away at
| a time, but often their emotions kick in first and short
| circuits rational thought. I help them through this by sitting
| in the room with them and just calling out 3 things that can
| easily be put away and tell them to just do those 3 things.
| Then we will do it again, and again, and again, and .....,
| until the room is close to being clean and they can finally
| take care of themselves.
|
| I also point out the phenomenon to them - I call it their
| "monkey brain" impulse, which I use to describe any impulsive
| or avoidant behavior. I also use "lizard brain" when they go
| into a blind rage against their sibling at some perceived
| slight or injustice, and %kid_name% brain for when rational
| thought and morality are piloting their actions. The framework
| seems to work for them, and helps them think about their
| thoughts (which is a concept I had to introduce to them, they'd
| literally never thought about doing that - I guess kids don't
| develop that until later?).
| ketzo wrote:
| I mean, there are lots of _adults_ who don't develop that
| separation. Most of us fail at it at least sometimes.
|
| Seems like an excellent skill to practice so early. Love
| that.
| agumonkey wrote:
| someone posted an article about ACT not long ago, I couldn't
| find the acronym, thanks :)
| jakecodes wrote:
| This is not a simple "do this", except to say you need to see a
| doctor. You are not alone! Many suffer with anxiety for their
| whole life. What helps is therapy to learn to train your brain
| that many are anxious too and that you are normal. The ones who
| don't have chronic anxiety are people you can learn from. When
| you figure it out you'll have superpowers that most would kill
| for.
|
| You may choose medication to help you with that initial training,
| you may have a completely different diagnosis.
|
| No one here should diagnose you, because a doctor wouldn't
| diagnose over the internet.
|
| A helpful book: "Brain Lock" by Jeffrey Schwartz. It's about OCD
| but in my experience all these things are connected.
| bowsamic wrote:
| A doctor is the worst person to go to if you have a mental
| health problem. They will immediately go to prescribe you
| dangerous, addictive drugs, like Zoloft or some other SSRI
| brailsafe wrote:
| I had a similar problem, but for different reasons. There was a
| lab that I did end up failing and I knew I would, but the tasks
| were just so insurmountably and needlessly time consuming and
| boring that I couldn't rationalize even making incremental
| progress on them. These labs involved essentially manually
| drawing many graphs related to climate phenomena, and it's just
| not something I could bring myself to do. I'd literally sit down,
| look at the assignment, and then pretty quickly drift off to
| sleep. This was for an unbelievably easy intro class that I was
| taking in 3rd year, and I failed it, much to my profs
| disappointment, because the lab component took something like 50%
| or more of the grade. I didn't even show up for the lab exam.
| This is also despite the class being interesting, the prof being
| great, me having a lot of enthusiasm for the subject matter,
| etc.. it just didn't work.
|
| I've since been diagnosed with ADHD and take it to get through a
| lot of days where I'd otherwise be non-functioning, but for the
| life of me I don't think I'd be able to do those assignments with
| any amount of meth in my system.
|
| That might not be a helpful story. I wish I could relate in a
| closer way, but I don't really connect very well with anxiety
| related fear, unless it involves speaking a foreign language in
| front of the class or something. If you're struggling with
| anxiety in general, I might recommend getting into skateboarding,
| unironically. There's nothing like eventually pushing yourself to
| try something many many times and failing in front of other
| people, often only to have them cheer you on in a uniquely
| supportive way.
| raintrees wrote:
| Surprisingly, a quick physical workout can help my mental state,
| and assist me with energy to push through blocking situations.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| There is a sort of murky Autism spectrum label called PDA or
| Persistent Demand Avoidance. I came across it trying to work out
| something with my son. It's not officially recognized, but it
| does present a novel variation which has its own unique
| obstacles. Worth looking up perhaps.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| What exactly are you trying to avoid? Failure? Fear of failure?
| Or simply doing the assignments?
| leesec wrote:
| Nothing to it but to do it man. You just have to start and endure
| some discomfort.
| ewalk153 wrote:
| One thing that has helped me for these situations short term is
| to find a buddy who is will to sit with you and keep on you task.
|
| Long term, I found success in changing my association to the
| stressor. For over twenty years,I used to feel dread and panic
| anytime I had to write more than two paragraphs. Last year, I
| decided I would write one page a week about anything. It was for
| ME this time. After two months, I completely changed my
| relationship to writing through this process. I also got a lot
| better at writing.
| trh0awayman wrote:
| In my opinion, this never goes away and you can only learn coping
| strategies. I never had this issue with classwork though, but
| checking my email/dealing with DevOps problems/filing taxes.
|
| For me, I can see when I'm getting into that cycle (e.g. haven't
| checked my email in a few days) and one way to break it is to use
| medication. I don't like benzos, but I'm sure they work. Instead,
| I take a full dose of Benadryl and that can sometimes help me get
| rid of the anxiety long enough to get through the initial part.
|
| Drinking alcohol works too, but obviously only works when you're
| at home. Shouting or high intensity dancing to loud music can
| help.
|
| Basically, just knock yourself out of it just enough to actually
| start doing the work. Once you start, you'll realize it wasn't so
| bad.
|
| Just picture Michael Burry having to read this emails in The Big
| Short during the most stressful scenes.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help address the underlying
| causes of anxiety. It is very similar to another suggestion in
| the thread about breaking the problem down in to small manageable
| steps, with a cognitive framework to
|
| * be present, in the moment
|
| * be mindful, of your anxiety, of your surroundings, of your self
|
| * take action based on the above.
|
| Maybe also take a ADHD diagnosis from somewhere like
| adhdonline.com. It takes an hour or so, longer if you're very
| introspective about the answers, and then you'll know if there
| are medical options to help you with this as well.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| First thing:
|
| If you are about to fail a class or out of school due to anxiety,
| go and tell someone.
|
| This happens all the time so there will be standard things they
| can do about it, routines, process and guidelines etc.
|
| When stressed things can seem epic and scary, which makes it hard
| to reach out.
|
| Long term:
|
| This sounds like ADHD to me. It might be partially anxiety,
| depression and other things mixed in. It's hard to tell as they
| can cause and worsen each other.
|
| Try all the standard advice for stress and procrastination and
| see what works for you. Do you have a sporty hobby, try doing
| more of that. Is your diet or sleep schedule crap, sort that out.
| Read about the physical impacts of stress so you can recognize
| the feeling and find some method that works to chill you out,
| whether that's meditation or going for a walk or reading a book.
| Find stupid tricks that work for your brain (study buddies,
| pomodoro timers, breaking things down into smaller tasks,
| starting the task while intentionally not caring if it's perfect
| or even good just to get going, there's lots of different tricks
| that work for different people at different times).
| Shinchy wrote:
| I would suggest to start by taking a pen and paper and just brain
| dumping onto the page. It doesn't have to be structured in any
| way, just your general thoughts on the project and what needs
| doing. After this it shifts the brain a little towards the
| project at hand.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been mentioned by
| others, but this is the best book (imo) by the originator of ACT
| [0]. I reread it once a year just to remember all the gems in
| here.
|
| [0] https://stevenchayes.com/a-liberated-mind/
| pc86 wrote:
| I nearly failed out of college because of this. I would have a
| paper due in _n_ days, and would absolutely refuse to do it, in
| hindsight because I didn 't want to spend weeks working on it
| just to get a D (who does?). I would literally get to ~24 hours
| before due date and have a 20 page paper to write with zero done.
| No reading, no research, I'd be lucky to even have a topic. I'd
| then regurgitate some garbage that barely met the requirements
| (if it even did), get the D anyway, and justify it by the fact
| that I "passed" and saved all that time. In retrospect, over a
| decade later, I was just terrified of trying and failing, so took
| solace in _not_ trying and failing.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I'm just like you but a little worse. I did fail out of college
| because of exactly that. I felt such shame at having done D
| work that I often wouldn't even turn it in, and then get the F.
|
| I struggled for years after dropping out with this, and still
| do to some extent. But came up with a crazy strategy to kind of
| get myself addicted to completing tasks on my To Do list. I
| think today I'm probably significantly more productive than the
| average person, but I never would have got to this level
| without going through years of pain and life destroying habits.
| pc86 wrote:
| Would you be willing to share your strategy?
|
| There were a couple times where I just didn't turn something
| in, even if it was half done. I'm in my late 30's now and
| still struggle with motivation. I'll go back and forth
| between 8-10 hours of heads down coding in a day to maybe 30
| minutes. I don't think it's burnout because I honestly can't
| even tell what kind of day it's going to be until it's half
| over.
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| I'd also be interested to hear your strategy!
| Melatonic wrote:
| There are lot of good strategies outlined here but I have found
| that sometimes it can be helpful to look at your life and choices
| from an outside view - like a person reading a story or watching
| a movie - and consider what direction you really want to be going
| in.
|
| Do you want your anxiety and fears to be the author of your story
| or do YOU want to be the author of your story?
|
| It sounds a little crazy but this small degree of separation can
| help take you out of the moment and give you back some agency
| dboreham wrote:
| There are some powerful resources on YouTube for this.
| Essentially what you need to do is to re-program your brain
| firmware. Consider the brain as a maxima-seeking engine. Evolved
| to: find food then stay where there's food; identify predators
| then move away from them and stay as far away as possible. And so
| on. Your brain is mostly operating on a bunch of these kinds of
| slope, with some signal representing a good or bad thing, and a
| mechanism designed to change your behavior to either maximize or
| minimize the signal. Procrastination occurs when you are
| presented with a task that elicits both positive and negative
| signals: you want to perform the task to receive praise, feeling
| of achievement, not get fired. But you also fear the task because
| you may not perform it perfectly, leading to criticism. Your
| brain is not able to effectively navigate these dual slopes and
| so becomes locked in a local maxima: doing nothing. It neither
| wants to proceed up the reward slope by performing the task, nor
| proceed down the avoid slope by abandoning the task altogether.
|
| Add to this that these reward/pain mechanisms in the brain are
| driven by dopamine. Dopamine is interesting in that the brain
| synthesizes it, and only a limited amount can be stored. This
| leads to some time-axis effects that may not be obvious. For
| example if you perform a reward activity (browsing social media)
| while procrastinating, now you've burned up your supply of
| dopamine and have no juice left to perform the main task.
|
| All the solutions are based on the same underlying idea, which is
| to invoke the brain's "executive functions" to override the lower
| level lizard brain mechanisms. Meditation for example is (imho)
| about invoking the brain's garbage collector, such that you train
| it to act more like G1GC than mark/sweep -- now you have shorter
| GC pauses throughout the day. CBT/DBT and the like are about
| training the executive system to maintain more effective control
| over the limbic system. Clearly Buddhists figured most of this
| out centuries ago.
|
| I recommend searching for videos by Dr. Tracey Marks and "How to
| ADHD" then the algorithm will show you other relevant
| channels/videos.
|
| Edit: forgot to also mention that since this is all run on meat,
| it is possible there are useful biohacks. Magnesium deficiency
| for example comes up, as do MCTs and MCFAs, and of course: sugar.
| sheinsheish wrote:
| although meditation is no cure for procrastination i would advise
| you to give it a try. It has potential to make you a better you
|
| Alan Watts' speeches on youtube might help with anxiety.
|
| good luck
| loceng wrote:
| Have you ever tried water fasting?
|
| The reason I ask/suggest is that when water fasting (which isn't
| starvation mode, starvation mode happens when you're regularly
| enough eating calories keeping your digestive system going - but
| not enough to actually provide your body with what it needs) is
| that when fasting your body 1) burns more calories so you'll have
| more energy available (to your body and brain) than if eating
| food, and 2) your body produces more adrenaline - so you have
| more mental energy too.
|
| I wonder if this relatively simple/quick "hack" could give you an
| experience that may help you have the mental energy, and get rid
| of brain fog that some foods you eat may also be causing you, to
| see if this shakes things up enough where your focus and
| therefore concentration sharpens?
|
| Start out with 24 hours while drinking a ton of water, and based
| on seeing how you feel - see if you can make it to 3 days (72
| hours); starting at 7pm means at 7am you're already at 12 hours,
| and 7pm next day already 1 of 3 days done; you have to drink a
| surprising amount of water, I usually stop at 4pm so I'm not
| having to get up in the night. I recommend weighing yourself each
| morning and logging it just to have some numbers to passively
| start developing a more thorough understanding of how your body
| works in relation to food.
|
| Perhaps it sounds too simple, too good to be true, but I have had
| this experience and others too.
|
| Here's a 30 minute video by Dr. Jason Fung explaining by water
| fasting is good, healthy, and safe for us (arguably unless you're
| underweight and don't have fat reserves to burn):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk - Dr. Jason Fung -
| 'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem'
|
| Certain foods can also cause a person anxiety and/or AHDH and/or
| other, and so by water fasting you may also be giving yourself a
| break from those - and then when you're re-introducing foods when
| you break your fast (first food) then you can see how it makes
| you feel immediately after or hours after; a chicken-egg problem,
| what came first: the procrastination or perhaps the anxiety-ADHD
| from how food is disrupting your brain?
|
| The having a "clean" system for after 3 days of water fasting and
| then adding food that causes stress will be a dramatic contrast,
| so you'll more than likely be able to notice if a food you eat
| causes discomfort - which then shouldn't be dismissed as
| unimportant or "it'll go away."
|
| Happy to offer more guidance if you'd like, e.g. foods to break
| your fast with, diagnostics you can to to give you concrete
| evidence of foods to stop eating and perhaps other GI tract care
| you need, etc.
|
| The nice thing with what I'm suggesting with water fasting is
| this is "all your doing" is focusing on is drinking water. You're
| not being asked to try some new technique, etc - which your
| executive function is clearly not working how you want, so even
| trying to implement any new techniques requiring much thought or
| focus will potentially stress you out more - especially if you're
| using your exhausted mind needing to think even more.
|
| And then just by only drinking water for up to 3 days the
| psychological and behaviour changes will happen on their own - if
| your focus sharpens, a brain fog lifts, you have more mental
| clarity - then you may find that you inherently can get more done
| without stressing; even 24 hours you may gain some clarity, 36
| hours even better, 48 hours even better, 72 hours is when more
| benefit kicks in though.
|
| Best case scenario is that water fasting breaks a pattern or
| cycle you've been stuck in.
|
| Worst case scenario you try only once and you stop - while saving
| a bit of money from not eating; you can do 24 hours first, eat,
| then a few days later try for 36 or 48 hours, and then progress
| as you feel comfortable - as it's all about feeling and checking
| in with yourself, not forcing yourself - as part of a non-
| violence practice.
|
| It can also be an ideal time to learn or try things in the past
| that you tried but perhaps didn't work - like breathing
| exercises, meditation, yoga - any practice that is part of
| emotional regulation to manage and quell/process stress you may
| be feeling.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| For me, I think it would help to just write a plan down and then
| just execute it.
|
| Also, just set aside a time for it like with working in an
| office, work is from 8 am to 5 pm so can't indulge in too many
| distractions during that time and so body gets used to doing
| intellectual work during that time. Consistency helps the body
| gets used to it like with a consistent sleep schedule.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Your advice to get rid of his problem is just to not have his
| problem.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| > If i don't pass the next 4 assignments i will fail the lab,
| but i keep avoiding sitting down with all of my power.
|
| Part of the solution is to just sit-down. Like with time in
| the office of 8 am to 5 pm, just get into the habit of
| sitting down and just reduce distractions that way. Like even
| if nothing is done in the 8 am to 5 pm timeframe, just not
| playing video games or watching a movie is already a big step
| in the right direction.
|
| Like an office helps the body to get to do intellectual
| stuff, like laying in bed helps the body to fall asleep.
| That's the same idea, sitting down in 8 am to 5 pm period and
| just not being allowed to watch videos or play video games,
| helps the body get used to doing intellectual work.
|
| For practical advice, the student probably can just spend-
| time in the library even if just sitting in the library.
| zaza576 wrote:
| Hi, I agree with insickness.
|
| Facing an insurmountable problem, you won't be able (at least
| mentally) to work without thinking about how difficult it is, at
| first sight, and it would systematically increase your fear too.
|
| If you cut your big task into smaller and doable ones, sort &
| prioritize them, and work on it, one by one only, you would be
| able to start working on this whole system by little iteration,
| and fastly see progress. You've just converted an impossible task
| into a super-doable one ;-)
|
| It is totally natural / normal to feel fear when facing very hard
| problem (because a reasonable human should not try to face
| problem he can't solve). Fear of failure is natural too. Just try
| to simplify your life facing problems, by cutting off in smaller
| parts. Your brain would appreciate a lot, and you won't follow a
| fear loop anymore.
|
| This is big part of engineer job to face technical challenge like
| this one, and find efficient solution. Just make this problem
| your friend, while monitoring completion time (your real worst
| enemy)
| kreeben wrote:
| You sound a bit like me. A trick that helps me overcome these
| situations is to imagine that the worst thing that could happen,
| in your case, to fail, has already happened. Then I pause and try
| to see how this affects me. I imagine people pointing towards me,
| laughing at me, whispering to each other "he failed", then I
| start to realize, this is not so bad. A failure is just a failure
| and other people's feelings towards me in this moment really
| doesn't matter to me.
|
| This helps me to silence the critics in me and to just get on
| with it.
| nend wrote:
| A lot of good advice here which you can try to implement, but at
| the the end of the day if this is affecting your day to day life
| then this is a mental health issue.
|
| I would recommend therapy. They'll give you some similar advice
| as this thread, and also help you implement it, help keep you
| accountable, and help find if there's a further underlying cause.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| The easiest advice i have for you is still very hard.
|
| You must move beyond your shame and guilt that keeps you afraid
| and alone, and you must have a regular two-way relationship with
| a community of your peers and betters that you all use to help
| each other out of these sorts of blocking situations.
|
| You may well fail if you try...alone. But where you're weak,
| someone else is strong, and vice versa. Exploit this.
|
| This is extremely hard to do; it's the only thing that works.
| impendia wrote:
| May I ask where you have sought out such communities?
|
| Not OP, but I've had limited success finding others interested
| in talking about mental health.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| OP seems to be in an educational context, in which you
| swallow your fear, go to office hours, spill your guts, and
| usually are pleasantly astonished to discover that the group
| you need is already there and you can start improving
| immediately.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "You must move beyond your shame and guilt that keeps you
| afraid and alone, and you must have a regular two-way
| relationship with a community of your peers and betters
| that you all use to help each other out of these sorts of
| blocking situations."
|
| I'll second this. Realizing that you aren't alone is a big
| relief.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| noone is equipped to carry that burden alone; realizing
| that early is a superpower.
| delanded wrote:
| - Burner communities (centered around burning man and
| wordlwide around local burns) - Men's circles
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| If I'm being honest with myself the biggest thing that got me
| away from this pattern was leaving school. I graduated but
| dropping out wouldn't have changed anything with regard to job
| prospects.
|
| Not sure why but working full time is WAY easier than school ever
| was.
| MivLives wrote:
| What helps me is a bit odd. Stealing a quote from Douglas Adams
|
| "The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather
| a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the
| ground and miss."
|
| Basically I just start without thinking about it, preferably
| without realizing it. If I keep giving myself a schedule (I'll
| start this in an hour, I'll start when the clock hits fifteen
| past) I'll find ways to justify it. However if I just sorta am
| watching a youtube video, and midway through I just start on what
| I need to do, the youtube video ends up background noise and I
| have started. For me personally keeping momentum is easier then
| starting so once I've begun I'll keep going.
| ehnto wrote:
| I taught myself to turn off my computer really quickly, if I am
| procrastinating before leaving the house. Rather than making it
| a big decision, or a super important moment, it's just a blink
| of an eye and then there's no more computing holding my
| attention. I can do it before really appreciating that I've
| even made a decision, it's almost like pulling a sneaky one on
| myself.
|
| In the same way you don't think explicitly about putting your
| right shoe on after you've put your on left, I try to make it
| so I don't think about turning off the computer during the
| moments I try to leave the house.
| goatkey wrote:
| The book "The Science of Stuck" by Britt Frank is the best I've
| read about this. She has an interview on the podcast You Are Not
| So Smart that could be a good low-effort way to think about it.
| It's been incredibly helpful for me.
|
| She reviews all of the latest and groundbreaking research about
| anxiety, from older therapy tactics like CBT, to how it is a
| physical response (eg Body Keeps the Score by van der Kolk). It's
| also easy to read (ie not overly academic).
|
| As an aside, one thing that helps me, as others have alluded to,
| is to "just start" and/or break things down into very small tasks
| to get small wins. Eg, if you have to write a paper, just open a
| doc to start.
|
| Also, adopting an approach of being ok with "just good enough" or
| "anything is better than nothing". I find I get stuck because I
| want something to be very high quality from the start, but
| adopting the strategy of a brain dump or "sh*t first draft", with
| the intention of throwing it away, has helped immensely, as I've
| accepted the fact that my first draft will be bad, and it is
| iteration that makes things good.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| You have to interrupt the pattern. There's many ways to do that,
| but only one will speak to you.
|
| For me it was to work on bettering myself as a person everyday. I
| basically inverted my life and challenged myself to "act" more
| than "think".
|
| You can also just accept your quirk as a human and find ways to
| work around it. Energy/attention management is a real thing, so
| do keep a note on when you best can knock it out.
|
| Generally speaking just read books on these problems and you'll
| find things to try every new day in your life and eventually
| something will change it for the better!
| bikokharo wrote:
| Ask shia labeouf.
| crdrost wrote:
| What works for me:
|
| 1. Breathe. Panic attacks for me require deep breaths, drinking a
| bottle of water, drinking a cup of tea/coffee, or other familiar
| comforting experiences. Buzzword to Google here is
| <<parasympsthetic nervous system>>.
|
| 2. Reflect. Reflection confronts is with truth. The fact that you
| are asking us proves that you know that the truth is, these fears
| do not define you, they are not anchored in sober reality. I
| sometimes do long-form reflections like journaling but usually
| this is a short-form reflection. I come from the Christian
| tradition so the easiest one for me is <<I am a child of God.>> I
| will repeat that to myself, gradually creating space between the
| repetitions to reflect on it. "I am a child of God, my worth is
| not defined by [my parents/this class/my next performance
| review/my wife/whatever]. I am a child of God..." But some will
| instead do <<five whys>> reflection or <<om Tare tuttare ture
| svaha>> or I used to, as an atheist, recite my Five Commitments
| to give myself space to reflect on reality and my distance from
| the current situation.
|
| 3. Get information. <<Information can only help, not hurt.>> So I
| might dread looking at my bank account balance for example. It's
| important that I remind myself that this is kind of silly. The
| balance is not going to be magically higher just because I'm not
| looking at it. The balance is whatever it is right now, my monkey
| brain needs explicit reminders, "If it's bad, then knowing how
| bad it is won't make it worse." I might find out that there is
| less to do than I fear, or my fears might be confirmed but I will
| know more so as to plan accordingly.
|
| 4. Mental offloading. What do I do with that information, do I
| sit on it? Allow it to marinate my head? If it is actionable,
| like what to do on a project, <<I better write it down!>> Every
| moment some new obstacle arises, write it down somewhere.
| Google's "Keep Notes" works for me. Writing allows us to extend
| our brain, give it an extra heap of virtual memory. A phone alarm
| gives us a coprocessor: I will set alarms to remind myself to get
| the baby to sleep, to re-park the car for street sweeping days,
| to take out the trash on trash days, even to take medicines,
| religious upkeep, or practice guitar. Another powerful tool is
| the checklist, you might want an alarm that tells you to go
| through a checklist of housecare activities, or you might have a
| morning checklist, or you might have a shopping list. "Get it out
| of my head!". It is clutter! Offload any mental task you can.
|
| 5. Get your foot in the door. When we were growing up we would
| shut our brothers out of the room, close and lock the door, but
| if they saw us doing it, they could put their foot or a shoe or
| something else in there, we could not get it out without relaxing
| the pressure. <<I just need a little opening.>> Find the smallest
| task you can possibly start on in this project. You do not need
| to parcel the whole project into small tasks, (but if your brain
| works that way then more power to you). But my way is just to
| peel off a tiny chunk and work on that. The great part is that I
| know I'm tricking my brain and somehow my brain still lets me
| trick it. I know that once I'm doing that small thing, I will
| discover that this can't happen until something else happens, and
| I will go work on that other thing, and give me 15 minutes and I
| will suddenly be in a flow state handling the entire project, I
| can't help myself. But when I'm outside the project it seems like
| too much. But when I'm inside, time flies. <<Getting Things
| Done>> calls this a "next action".
|
| To those five pieces of advice, I will add two more that have to
| do with different situations than you have asked about, but they
| often cooccur for me with the situations that you are describing.
|
| 6. Clear the buffers first. The previous step is not terribly
| helpful in figuring out how to start on a hairball. If you have
| ever dealt with an extremely messy room... Oh have I lived in
| some messy places! Here is my first lesson: <<Always start by
| identifying & clearing the stashes.>> What is a
| stash/buffer/queue? It is any place where you put things with the
| intent of bulk processing them later. Laundry hamper (to wash
| later), dryer (to fold later), sink (dishes to wash later),
| dishwasher (to put away), trash bins (to take out later). Because
| sometimes tasks really are bigger than the time you have right
| now to devote to them, and you need to take the step which has
| the most leverage. Well, if you don't empty out this trash can
| then you have a buffer overflow situation for trash, it starts to
| appear on countertops or floors or desks because you don't have
| space in the trash and you don't have time to figure it out. You
| don't have space to put dirty dishes because the counter is full
| of dirty dishes. [You can also stash tasks!! But you have to make
| your stash clearable which requires a different sense of what a
| task is. "Schedule time for X" rather than X itself. Remember,
| it's only a sash if you use it for bulk-processing.]
|
| 7. Then, try to minimalize. Marie Kondo's bestseller attacks mess
| from an almost anti-Christian perspective, "what would it look
| like if you really loved your stuff with all your heart"?
| Powerful materialism. The surprising thing is that it comes to
| the same place that a Christian would, because they are both
| careful to center Love. If you really love each thing that you
| own, then you will know it by name, it will have a beloved place
| in your drawers where it lives and belongs and can thrive, and
| whenever you pick it up it will be something that you can take
| joy in, much as you would take joy in interactions with your
| children or spouse. Well, not everything is like that, sometimes
| you don't take pleasure or joy in having a plunger, but you need
| a plunger just in case your toilet gets stopped up. <<Give up all
| you neither need nor want.>> Be honest with yourself about, will
| I use this in the next 6 months? 1 year? Do I need this for
| emergencies? My parents miseducated me: that's a "perfectly good
| " such-and-so, I can't throw that out! Do I want it, in the sense
| of does it give me pleasure and joy just by being in my life,
| whenever my eyes dance upon it--and if it's not, then, does it
| fill a legitimate need for which prudence demands I keep it
| anyway. This is also true our emotional damage, but that would
| take a lot more to get into.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Sounds like adult ADHD.
|
| For anxiety, I have heard sometimes magnesium deficiency can be a
| factor.
| 8note wrote:
| I find experiencing the bad thing fixes my faulty risk
| assessments.
|
| Do the assignment and fail it, then you'll see what the real
| outcome is
| lhoff wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation like you and started reading the Book
| "Self-Discipline in 10 days: How To Go From Thinking to Doing" by
| Theodore Bryant. I haven't completed the book yet so i can't tell
| you that it worked in the long run but the section about selftalk
| and fears already changed my way of thinking significantly and i
| learned a lot about my self. So definitely a recommendation.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| You are not trying to avoid failure, you are giving yourself a
| cushion to avoid confronting the fact that you may not be as good
| as you think that you are.
|
| The cushion is that you didn't apply yourself to the maximum
| because you procrastinated and ergo it isn't _you_ who failed,
| but _a_ you who did not apply themselves.
|
| Why do we do it? Out of self preservation. Confronting the fact
| that the reality does not match our idealized self is a very
| difficult process as it leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We feel
| that our lack of skills will be exposed and everyone will see
| that we are failures.
|
| In reality, there is only one self, you that is choosing not to
| do what you have to because you are trying to protect a fragile
| ego.
|
| I don't mean to sound harsh, all humans do it in one way or the
| other.
|
| But eventually reality catches up to us and forces us to confront
| our situation. In the expectation you will do as you always did.
| However, if you condition the future on taking failure as an
| indicator for growth rather than an indicator of danger, you will
| be able to overcome the situation.
|
| Take what you fear the most and tame it by actively trying, and
| instead of thinking you will fail, think and accept that it is an
| indicator of all the new things you will learn.
|
| NB: Speaking from experience.
|
| PS. Radical acceptance is a powerful tool in getting out of these
| situations.
| matwood wrote:
| > You are not trying to avoid failure, you are giving yourself
| a cushion to avoid confronting the fact that you may not be as
| good as you think that you are. ... >In reality, there is only
| one self, you that is choosing not to do what you have to
| because you are trying to protect a fragile ego.
|
| This is something that when I was growing up, we learned to
| deal with through sports. Sports teach kids to confront winning
| and losing early on and how to better handle their egos.
|
| I wonder if these issues are becoming more common as sports
| participation has dropped?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| With the prevalence of player-vs-player (PvP) games with
| global leaderboards I'd argue that it could be the opposite,
| i.e. kids have a better grasp of where they stack on the
| larger scheme of things.
|
| I too played sports competitively as a child and that
| eventually fueled interest in PvP games. It was about proving
| one's self.
|
| In contrast, when one is limited to just academia/school,
| they have a poor understanding of where they stack up as they
| are essentially in a microcosm of reality. I take it that OP
| is in advanced studies and did well in their prior years.
| With high probability they did too well in school for their
| own good and didn't have to learn how to be consistent and do
| the work.
|
| Again speaking from experience on the latter.
| matwood wrote:
| PvP games are a good point, though I do think there is
| something different than IRL sports. Even PvP game
| competitions in person I think have a different level of
| lesson than online.
|
| Interesting thought about global leaderboards. I wonder if
| they are so big, that it's easy to dismiss though. I feel
| like there is an optimal size in between, sort of like
| what's happened in sports in the past. As a kid got better,
| they would get moved to higher levels.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I can tell you from experience that it is very, very
| embarrassing to be low ranked when your friends are not
| ranked.
|
| A friend of mine was top 100 in a region with 10 million
| players, and I could barely get to top 10% without help.
| Granted my friend is absolutely brilliant and has played
| competitively in all the games he played (e.g. WoW,
| League of legends, hearthstone, and so on). I wish he
| could find something in real life that gave him the same
| rush as "being one of the best".
| danr4 wrote:
| This resonates with me. Tips on how to apply this?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Radical honesty, radical acceptance, and introspection.
|
| The idea of radical honesty is to avoid all forms of
| "dishonesty" which also includes omission. If you are feeling
| or experiencing something, you have to accept it and
| articulate it even that entails becoming vulnerable and
| losing some of the metaphorical shield that protects you.
|
| In the example above: radical honesty is admitting that we
| are trying to protect our ego from being punctured by
| avoiding what is making us uncomfortable.
|
| Radical acceptance calls for the acceptance of the current
| circumstances, i.e. expressing it is what it is, and trying
| to make the best of the situation. I can't change the fact
| that I am not as intelligent as Terrence Tao or Erik Demaine
| even though our childhoods up to a point were identical. The
| past can't change because the future wants it, so might as
| well try to create a future that doesn't want to change the
| past.
|
| In the example above, radical acceptance for me was accepting
| that I can't just sit in the class and absorb the material as
| I did in undergrad, but instead I had to actively work for it
| to get the same grades.
| ceobytefed wrote:
| I had massive issues like these in the past until I spoke with a
| person who provides therapy for these specific problems. The
| first day, he gave me a book on the topic and said that it had
| valuable info up to about chapter 4. In a nutshell, and from that
| book, who's title eludes me, I created the FU technique. I know,
| it sounds ridiculous but it totally works for me. Aside from diet
| leading to your issues, the best solution for dealing with panic
| / anxiety is to get angry with yourself. I have stopped numerous
| panic attacks talking trash to myself. Once you get used to its
| effect, move on to imbibing in physical activities that also
| induce panic / anxiety. This will help you build a permanent
| foundation of self trust and accomplishment. Like killing it on
| your assignments. Another thing is to learn to crave the anxiety
| associated with these tasks. Try to teach yourself to get excited
| with each new challenge. The more you engage in things that make
| you uneasy and succeed, the more you can handle.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This sounds really unhealthy?
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Cognitive behavior therapy, and maybe medication. See some
| specialists
| myth2018 wrote:
| 1) look for some psychotherapy. Really. You'll read a lot of
| advice everywhere, people in very good-faith sharing what worked
| to them, but you'll spend a lot of time experimenting to check
| what works best to you. A good therapist will speed up this
| process a lot.
|
| 2) now, my piece of advice, which worked well to me: read The War
| of Art from Steven Pressfield. Forget the criticism about his
| religious tone -- people doing them didn't read past the second
| part. There's something really interesting in the act of
| "personalizing" procrastination. It seems it makes it more
| tangible, approachable, avoidable, I don't know. It was cheap
| last time I saw, give it a try.
| petra wrote:
| https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/12/anxiety-is-a-habit
| carapace wrote:
| I'm going to mention this because it helped me a lot. It's kooky,
| pseudoscientific, and bizarre, but it does seem to work, for me
| and for a lot of people. And if it doesn't work for you, well, at
| least it's completely harmless. It's a very very simple
| procedure, involving tapping with your finger on certain
| locations on your body while focusing on your particular issue in
| a certain way. You don't have to pay for anything or attend a
| course, all the information is in a PDF manual that's freely
| available. You don't have to believe in the "theory" behind it.
| Normally I would link to the Wikipedia page about it, but WP is
| too Skeptical these days so the article is all about how it's
| "not real". Ignore that and try it anyway. If it helps, it helps,
| and if it doesn't you've only wasted a half an hour or so. It's
| _really_ simple. The basic "algorithm" fits on a page.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160303213253/http://www.spirit...
| mateo1 wrote:
| For me the issue was external factors. Don't ignore your social
| and romantic needs, don't try to do more than it is required of
| you to impress. Don't define yourself purely through your
| academic abilities, as annoying as that might be.
|
| Do the bare minimum, but do it, and do it now. Try to collaborate
| with others, it will help you understand you are on the same
| level as them and you don't need to turn every lab report to a
| thesis-like endeavor.
|
| Therapists can be hit or miss, but I think it might help you to
| talk to someone if that's a possibility. Some times in life you
| don't have level-headed impartial friends to give you good
| advice, and imo a good therapist would do just that. Help you see
| more clearly from a different perspective.
| L0in wrote:
| > For me the issue was external factors. Don't ignore your
| social and romantic needs, don't try to do more than it is
| required of you to impress. Don't define yourself purely
| through your academic abilities, as annoying as that might be.
|
| I think a big size of my mental problems are the lack of social
| and romantic satisfaction. I have social anxiety but i love
| people. I love going to parties, having interesting
| conversations, flirting etc. To the extent that some people
| wondered why i choose to study computer science :P (my second
| choice is sociology and political science, which i want to
| study someday).
| dageshi wrote:
| Having been in your situation, this is what I would recommend...
|
| Short Term: Get everything out of your head and into a document
| or text file. All the things you have to do, all the things you
| want to do, all your ideas, all the things you're worried about.
| Stick it into something you can come back too later once you've
| solved your immediate problems. Then and this is most important,
| create a reminder or alarm or calendar notification that will
| remind you to look at that file after the deadline on your
| assignments is up and you're not so stressed.
|
| You need to clear your mind to focus on your assignments BUT
| subconsciously your brain won't truly let you concentrate on them
| until it's sure that you won't forget/ignore them all, that's the
| point of the reminder.
|
| Medium Term: You've got to take that file you wrote with
| everything you need to do and get it into tools with a schedule
| that'll help you manage it.
|
| * Put birthdays and mothers/fathers day, important dates into a
| calendar like Google Calendar with reminders that give you enough
| time to address them.
|
| * Put simple weekly drudgery tasks like chores into a todo system
| like Microsoft ToDo
|
| * Put everything that needs thinking about into a note taking
| system like roamresearch.com, a task like "Do assignment X" is
| useless, you need to be able to write down ideas about how to
| tackle it not just that you have to do it.
|
| Finally, set aside time every day to organise and prioritise
| what's in your system. The first thing I do every day is check
| what I need to do in terms of chores and more importantly
| prioritise what I need to work on, on a given day.
|
| Side Note: Your system will evolve over time, you may throw away
| and build new ones, that's fine and necessary.
|
| Long Term: "Know Thyself" - Figure out how many hours a day of
| focused work you can do, don't be surprised if this number is
| lower than you expect, 4 hours per day of focused hard mental
| work is the maximum for a lot of people. The better you know
| yourself, the easier it becomes to prioritise and do work. You'll
| set yourself more realistic tasks and goals, it'll be less
| stressful.
|
| Figure out what time of day you work best, what schedule suits
| you best. The more you understand yourself, what you like, what
| you dislike the easier your entire life will become.
|
| Beyond that, understand your motivations, your strengths and
| weaknesses, look at failure if it comes as helpful instruction in
| learning those things.
| uhtred wrote:
| Why are you asking hackernews? Not everything in life can be
| hacked by techies on the internet even though a lot of them think
| otherwise. Speak to your doctor and try to see a therapist.
| bmitc wrote:
| I suggest getting a therapist at the minimum. If clinical anxiety
| is the root cause or catalyst, then a psychiatrist could help get
| over that hill.
|
| I also suggest taking the Enneagram test. Understanding your
| personality at both its best and worst can give you insight on
| how you got there and how to stay or leave there, respectively.
|
| In the short term, try to understand that fear of failure is
| basically fearing the inevitable, since you will fail at many
| points in life, but fear will actually increase the probability
| and impact of failure. At the same time, failure is somewhat
| meaningless unless it affects your health or life (like failing
| to free solo a cliff). Time keeps ticking and the "moment of
| failure" passes without a blip.
|
| I have been taught at times that any done project is a good
| project, no matter how small. So in many ways, you have got to
| just jump in and do something, no matter how small. Then those
| small things will start building on each other. For your
| assignments, address what you need to get started and then you
| just gotta do it. Don't let anxiety take over once you do start.
| You won't finish the assignment in the first minute. It will take
| time. In the future, start earlier. When you start earlier the
| repercussions of failure are much smaller, and it doesn't loom
| over you. You have time, you can ask questions, you can take a
| break and think about it, you can do hobbies, see friends, etc.
| As you procrastinate, all these strategies are thrown out the
| window. Talk to someone. If you're stressed out, ask for help.
| Speak to the instructor or whoever is managing the assignments or
| tasks. Don't try to solve every problem (any problem in life) all
| on your own. To get you going, I'd almost suggest this as your
| first tactic. Go talk to whoever this assignment is due to and be
| honest with them. You got started late due to whatever (it
| doesn't matter) and you're stressed out, but you want to do well
| and get back ahead of things. Ask for help on getting started.
| Any reasonable person will respond well to someone telling them
| they're stressed but want to do what they can to work on what
| they need to. If they're not helpful, ask a fellow classmate.
|
| And don't underestimate the experience and helpfulness that a
| psychiatrist and psychologist (therapist) can provide to you. It
| can be a very effective method to address these things. They are
| not just for scary psychological disorders, but left unchecked,
| depression and anxiety can become scary.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| How ironic to be reading about anxiety / fear-avoidance coping
| methods while I am on my favorite website for enabling my anxiety
| / fear-avoidance behavior.
| ajonit wrote:
| What's your average screen time over a week/month?
|
| In my discussion among friends and family, excessive mobile usage
| has turned out to be the #1 cause for anxiety issues. (especially
| among self employed people)
| bsenftner wrote:
| Look into Cognitive Distortions - those are the self conversation
| lies we tell ourselves, as we "play ourselves". Cognitive
| distortions take the form of exaggerations of the unknown future,
| reading others' minds (which is impossible) and then taking a
| negative thought attributed to others as truth. Cognitive
| distortions are in general are a nasty little asshole inside your
| head constantly being negative.
|
| I suggest you look into Dr. David Burns, the father of Cognitive
| Behavioral Therapy and the first person to seriously document and
| address this negative self conversation vicious cycle, and how to
| defeat it.
| kirsebaer wrote:
| How was your childhood? Sometimes people push themselves to
| achieve to avoid internal shame. Check out "childhood emotional
| neglect" and "complex PTSD". Dealing with these core issues can
| make daily life easier.
| d0mine wrote:
| Some simple tricks to overcome the wall of awful
| https://youtu.be/hlObsAeFNVk
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Ask for a referral to a psychiatrist about Anxiety/ ADHD.
|
| A major, but subtle ADHD symptom, is executive dysfunction. It's
| like when your willpower fails to start your body in the same way
| that a car may fail to start its engine. People with this can't
| start a task even if they desperately want and need to start it.
|
| Anxiety can also cause similar issues. Although, usually I see
| anxious friends meet deadlines.
| kemiller wrote:
| So on top of the other great suggestions here, I can share a
| trick that has helped me to get me past periods where I was
| feeling either depressed or stuck or anxious or otherwise not my
| best. If I have a decision to make ("Should I go for this new
| job?" "Should I move to a new city?") I ask myself, "What would
| the happy, confident version of me do?" and then I do that. When
| I'm depressed or fearful I tend to make bad choices that
| perpetuate that state; when I'm happy I tend to make better
| choices that make me happier. This is a way of short circuiting
| that feedback loop and making even a small step to feel better.
| tribuchet wrote:
| You are stuck in a mental structure. There are many good advises
| which help you to gradually improve that structure.
|
| You can also try to leave it and come back with a new set of
| mind.
|
| Do something new (and safe), without preparation. E.g. take your
| phone, go out into the street, let the internet select a new,
| random song and play it aloud, and dance to it. The more people
| who see it and the more they are puzzled the better. Also: Allow
| yourself to enjoy it a little bit.
|
| You will see that you can do anything. You don't need all
| knowledge in advance and it doesn't matter how others judge it.
| Write your assignment with that mindset.
| blenderdt wrote:
| Maybe not the most popular person, but I think Jordan Peterson
| has some really nice lectures and talks about this subject in
| YouTube. Also about fear.
|
| Insickness in this thread also pointed this out: start with the
| smallest step.
|
| And when it comes to fear: become braver. What helped me a lot
| was to accept fear.
| ergonaught wrote:
| There are more direct approaches, but, recognize those thoughts
| as bubbling up from lower levels of brain function, that they are
| not who you are nor are they your destiny nor are you required to
| act upon them, leave them be, and do what you need to be doing,
| with your attention on the doing. If you engage with the thoughts
| (by trying to change them or suppress them or argue with them),
| you simply strengthen the associated neurology. If you respond to
| the thoughts with avoidance, you strengthen that associated
| neurology.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I have severe ADHD, with anxiety that almost feels like a fear of
| success.
|
| What helps me is to view everything like a vortex. If I have a
| paper to write I start on the outer edge of the vortex.
|
| I open a word document, then I go do something else. I come back
| to it and maybe type the title. Then later I come back and type
| the outline. I don't try to do it all at one time, I just tried
| bite sized incremental improvements. Literally turn on the
| computer, open word, those type of small things
|
| Then eventually with enough visits, enough small increments of
| productivity, I'll fall into the center of the vortex and just do
| the paper.
|
| Like one of those things you see in the shopping malls in America
| were you put a quarter in, and it spins around until it gets to
| the center of the vortex and falls in the hole.
| jrib wrote:
| This was a slow process, but:
|
| 1. Regular written self-reflection, i.e., keeping a journal and
|
| 2. Re-framing "failures" as learning experiences; forgive
| yourself
|
| helped me a lot.
|
| The _written_ part was important to me because it forced me to
| revisit my previous thoughts and reevaluate them in light of what
| had happened since last time I wrote.
|
| (2) also helped me do things with the mind-set that "failure"
| wasn't actually failure. The goal was to _try_ and _learn_ from
| it.
|
| I didn't get around to doing this until after school, but I wish
| I had. In your situation, I'd try to get myself to do the
| assignment with a quick pass early on leaving notes for things I
| wasn't sure about. Take a break, then revisit and revise.
| Afterwards, write in your journal what worked well and what
| didn't. Write about what you want to try next time differently if
| some things come to mind.
|
| Hope you find a solution that works for you. E-mail is in my
| profile if you want to talk more about what's worked for me.
| sinenomine wrote:
| I consider anxiety a low-level biological problem. It should have
| a biological fix.
|
| Trying to fix fundamental problem with self-reflection and
| psychbabble misses the point and tragically wastes years upon
| years.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Go on then, what is the fix?
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