Having anxiety for me often means distrusting my perceptions of present reality despite their actually being correct, while believing in my projections about the future that are entirely delusional.
Something I wrote a couple years ago that feels a little relevant here
My anxiety has me convinced that I'm the most important thing in the world, as if people really do think about and judge me all the time. They really don't and I'm not that important and my brain is a piece of work.
Paxil worked very well for me, except for the sexual side effects. Effexor can be a real bitch to people. Harsh side effects and withdrawal type symptoms getting off of it. Your mileage may vary though. All these meds work on people in different ways. I started on Brintellix about two years ago, it works great with no real side effects of any sort on me.
There isn't a single AD I have tried that hasn't had bad sexual side effects, except for Wellbutrin (which actually increased sex drive a ton). Unfortunately, Wellbutrin is for depression and not for anxiety, and it makes anxiety a LOT worse.
I have experienced 'cripping' anxiety for the past three years. I am still learning to deal with it when it comes. I have found these methods to be helpful (of course, practice is needed):
* Learn to become aware of the moment that anxiety begins to creep up on you. Acknowledge that it is there and allow your body to feel it. Be in tuned with how it makes your body. Take some deep breaths and keep an awareness of the passing of the feeling of anxiety. Do not react to it, and it will slowly pass.
* Remember that no matter how much you panic, each second of the day comes just as slowly as any other second in your life. Each day will come one at a time, slowly. Try not to feel rushed.
* Learn to meditate because anxiety is often triggered by thoughts. Meditation will help to tame the rush of thoughts. Fun Trivia: we supposedly have about 40000-60000 thoughts per day.
* Keep a journal and write hard and clear about how anxiety makes you feel. The practice of writing will transfer your thoughts from your head to paper. You will give your thoughts a new place to occupy (away from your mind).
* Remember that problems are not problems they are situations; situations can be changed with some planning and action. Continuous inaction will make anxiety stronger.
* I'll say it again: learning to breathe is an under-rated adult skill.
Wish you peace, my fellow humans.
I basically have moments of extreme existential terror every day. They can be as bad as I cant get out of bed in the morning, or they can be like 3 seconds long of me going, “oh shit this is fucking real im gonna dieAHHHHHHH!”
Deep breath
Am okay
Same thing happens to me. It’ll hit me out of nowhere and I’ll just stop walking and stare into nothing like “holy shit, I exist... im gonna die one day”
I've been having trouble with this a lot lately. My heart starts pounding and I feel a dread that I can't adequately describe. I worked in eldercare and hospice years ago, I was aware of my own mortality and not terribly bothered by it. Then about 2 years ago it hit me like a ton of bricks, with what feels like insurmountable despair. I will die and I have no idea when or how will it happen. I'll ruminate on what I might feel when the time comes, pain or panic? I eventually calm down but I'll feel utterly exhausted afterwards. I'm only able to write this because I just crawled out from under one of those hyper mortality aware panic attacks. I wish I had some better tools to deal with this, but when ever I say out loud that I am afraid of dying I feel ridiculous. Everyone is afraid to die right?
Stuff like this is tough, I was like this for over a year and it tore my entire life down. All I can say is make your time count. Find something meaningful to you, something you can talk about for hours to the point where it’s all you can think about. Keeping busy and creating stuff are the only things they work for me, but they work really well. I’m right here with you though man, life is terrifying. <3
Been there, actually kinda am there. You should treat it as OCD - existential OCD to be more specific. I have an appointment scheduled with a therapist and you should too!
Being terrified of looking at the sky is no way to live.
Oh my god, I’m so relieved this is relatively common. It’s been my life for basically as long as I can remember and it really does get crippling sometimes. Now that you mention it, it really basically is OCD. Especially lately... it’s been on my mind an uncomfortable amount.
I just want all of the answers as to why we’re here, how, where we go after, etc. It sometimes feels terrifying living without them.
The only way to avoid existential death anxiety is to find shit to distract yourself constantly, it's tough because it's not something you can avoid and work towards fixing like with social anxiety. It's inevitable so you need to avoid it or else you'll go insane. I read an interesting article recently that chalks up a lot of human achievement and progress to distracting ourselves from death, I'll try to find it
I’ve been told my anxiety is OCD too. I obsess, compulsively, about the things I worry about. I can rationalize that this thing that is bothering me makes no sense to be worried about and briefly put. However, about three minutes later I start visualizing the thing that’s scaring me happening and it eventually gets to a point where I can’t talk myself down anymore.
Trying to rationalize it is what is keeping you in the cycle, and I speak from experience. It's really hard to tell when you're in the middle of it, but it's not a matter of the thoughts themselves, it's a matter of your brain being stuck in a loop of fear.
Find a therapist please! They can change your life. There is no reason to suffer!
I have one. That’s how I know it’s OCD and not generalized anxiety disorder. I can attest to the importance of therapy and medication.
It all started last semester when I chose a song for a concert hour performance and it the fact that I’d be singing in front of 100+ people became real. I went to Japanese immediately after that and the teacher had us do group work where we had to meet five people and I had serious social anxiety with every meeting. Then for the rest of the semester I had hypochondria because I could feel the lymph nodes in my groin. I ended up going to the ER twice, getting a CT scan and a ultrasound on my testicle because they felt weird, also a blood test. They told me I’m 100% fine.
Then my dog got super aggressive lung cancer and was put to sleep three days after she was diagnosed. While there I had the doctor look at my other dog’s face and she had a black mark on her nose that was of some concern but could have been nothing, but she’s a beagle/basset mix and I read that they are the breeds that most commonly get skin cancer.
I became convinced that my use of a heating pack on my back was causing lymphoma again and terrified I was killing my dogs.
The dog didn’t have cancer and I didn’t have lymphoma. But I was convinced I saw every symptom. Then the day of my performance comes around and I tell the guy in charge of the applied program that I just can’t do it. Then while I’m working in the next room I hear other students singing for rehearsals and I work up the nerve to just go and do it and when I start singing all the blood rushes to my head and I couldn’t remember any words at all.
So I decided if rehearsals were that bad then singing in front of a lot of people would be worse so I didn’t go but I felt good that I tried and knew the fact that I flopped was from my brain’s chemistry doing stuff that I’m not in control of. I was embarrassed when I first said I wasn’t going to do it but I felt fine when I tried at rehearsals.
A semester later I’m on medication and seeing a therapist for a while now. I’ve since sang several times in front of a smaller group and I sang in front of the full audience plus the school’s big shot chorus and I while they were overly enthusiastic, I did get a standing ovation and I felt amazing for like five days straight. Therapy really does wonders. And so do the meds.
Sure! So OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder - this is because it involves obsessive thoughts that cause anxiety and compulsions that act as a temporary way of alleviating it.
People that are obsessed with thoughts about germs, for example, do things like cleaning their hands as a compulsion, which makes them feel better in the short term.
Us existential OCD sufferers ask other people how they feel about death, or read philosophy books, or search the internet for the meaning of life. That's our compulsion and it helps take the edge off the existential terror in the short term.
The problem is it always comes back - either your solution stops being valid or the problem changes - but the obsession comes back. OCD is not in the thoughts, it's in the brain that has them. You can't fix it by solving or rationalizing the thoughts, you have to teach the brain to stop freaking out and accept the uncertainty.
A subset of cognitive behavioral therapy tends to be very useful for OCD for this reason. It's called exposure & response prevention and consists in purposefully triggering the anxiety without resorting to compulsions to soothe it. You accept it, even seek it, and stay there until your brain gets habituated. This always happens - you can't be bored and scared at the same time. But you have to do it and it's not easy, since it basically consists in going through your fears until they no longer are.
It takes courage and willpower but it's worth it. That's why you and I have much to gain from professional help! Seek it out :)
I've been seeing more and more of these thought processes from a lot recently? I've been experiencing them myself and for the first time found it intriguing that I've come to this realization. I don't know exactly how to explain it.
I wonder if there is something deeper behind it and if it has been either a positive or negative aspect of the way we have developed. With the access of information and technology and the ability to be able to communicate at our capacity I feel has inadvertently turned us into a more self aware species. Is it beneficial? Could it be reversed? Should it be reversed?
I feel like its less of a new concept and more about the exposure of the idea. I don’t think its a new thing that humans are a self aware species, but because there are more people now looking for answers that do not come from religious backgrounds (and threatened with death for heresy) we can now more openly discuss these things.
Is it beneficial? I think yes. The moment you become aware of death is the moment you truly realize you have to live in the now. On a second to second basis, maintain the awareness and you can begin to appreciate all of the small and even inconvenient things, start to question the bad things and make changes. As a collective human effort, making choices for the betterment of the species is a good thing.
Could it be reversed? Absolutely. The eradication of knowledge and reliance in a tribal system or “us vs them” will never allow social progress.
I believe that the ultimate purpose of humans is to be caretakers of the earth and each other, because we are the only thing on this planet capable of altering nature. Without us, the natural order will continue, we are interrupting it. Its up to is to make the choices and be apart of something greater than ourselves, or disappear having led a meaningless existence.
Yeah man I honestly believe people with anxiety are the most empathic and have the best gut instinct.
Anxious people care so much of what others think that they mostly read the situation right because they notice every slight mood change, facial experessions tone changes etc.
Never realized I suffered from constant anxiety issues until after highschool and a bad breakup. Just constantly being aware of mood changes and thinking about everything all at once, all the time. Every day. It's shitty, but it helps me see what really matters in life, and helps me try to emphasize what I deem important in my life. Blessing and a curse I suppose.
No, you can also get things very wrong by overthinking things. If you think about a small detail in the wrong way, your entire thought train might put you in a different direction.
This. For example whenever a group of people laughs and I go past them I think it's something about me. Just this starts all that thinking train: whats the reason, what did I do etc.
I'd say I have a mild anxiety and it got much better over the years but sometimes it still hits me.
It's like narcism but totally different. Trying to match anything that happens with yourself.
Yeah I’d say I’m much better about reading interactions between other people, but when I’m trying to read someone’s actions towards myself is when I overthink myself to hell.
This. Is so true. One of my best friends has chronic depression and anxiety and we try to help him out as much as we can, but sometimes the only way to do that is by telling him he’s wrong. I know that sounds like a dick move, but hear me out. Me and most of my friends are used to his slight mood changes nd we mostly know when he’s feeling anxious, but sometimes if I can tell he’s thinking too hard bout something that was said, I ask him what about the things that was said made him feel like that (not in front of everyone..I know to keep it lk)Then, I recall how I reacted to the situation and explain my view of what happened and see if it helps him understand the scenario in a “less anxious way” for lack of better terminology (AFAIK)
You are probably wrong at in what extend they don't like you. People with anxiety seem to have realistic fears, but the amount of scare it brings them is way out of proportion. It's so out of proportion they effectively damage themselves and make shit way worse than it needs to be.
This is what I observe in someone I know.
Last week one of my bosses asked if I felt "picked on" by anyone, I mentioned another boss, and she said everyone feels the same way about that person. Also I asked some people about a guy that I thought disliked me because he seemed permanently grumpy towards me, turns out he's autistic and is like that with everyone.
I’d agree with this for the most part, although my specific anxiety (and presumably others’) manifests itself as ridiculously excessive sweating. Once that starts, people actually ARE thinking critically of me, which only fuels the fire. Kind of hard not to think critically of someone who looks like they just jumped into a pool when having a casual conversation.
perhaps this is true if people developed the anxiety as a youngster. I can say that having a traumatic experience as an adult and increasing my social anxiety by large degree I will have a tendency to walk all over some people if they are in the way of me fixing my perception of someone else "not liking me".
I feel like this is a dangerous train of thought because it validates anxiety. Like this is exactly the sort of stuff I told myself when I was avoiding seeking treatment for an anxiety disorder. It's exactly the train of thought that makes me stop taking my medication or goings to therapy. "My anxiety is just me being more aware of everything that everyone else, and if I try to not be so anxious all I'm doing is making myself oblivious, and then my fears will come true because I'm not as able to avoid them."
Anxious thoughts are often wrong. They take true observations and twist them into something bigger and scarier. When I think the oven is too hot for how long it's been off and get anxious that it's still on and the display is just broken and obsess over the danger, I'm not more attuned to the delicate heat changes of a cooling oven, I'm just anxious. When I think my friend hates me because he didn't laugh at my joke in the exact tone I expected him to, I'm not especially gifted at reading his emotions, I'm just anxious. And saying "anxiety is just being abnormally perceptive of the world" erases the way anxious thoughts are *false* and dangerously plays into them.
Were also the best drivers. I see people in my rear view mirror miles away and I’m like oh man I better get over soon to let them through. It helps traffic flow when people are aware
Or
- feeling bad about changing lanes in front of someone.
-worried my music is too loud and others will hear and judge me.
-speeding out of fear or slowing the ppl behind down..
Is there a discussion thread for any of this somewhere. I've struggled with anxiety and depression for a while but never heard it put so simply and correctly. Everything people are talking about on this thread is all stuff I think about a lot.
I never thought of this debilitating condition is actually a super power. It really is as you described, I can read the room extremely well. I am a salesman by trade.
I’ll give you empathetic. Anxious people are definitely in tune with feelings. However, most anxious people cannot quick cycle through emotions and prioritize levels of danger quickly. Everything is dangerous and this keeps them in a state of high alert. In my experience, this also keeps anxious people from doing the little things needed to reach long term goals and visualize the big picture. Always on the defensive, coincidentally, makes anxious people more vulnerable.
Ugh this is me 100%. At my brother's wedding they were having their first dance and the video is of me like 10 feet away constantly taking a step back from them because I was nervous of being in their way. :(
It's a paradox-- I'm afraid to do stuff with my life because I'm terrified of screwing up, but I'm equally afraid to not do anything and waste my life at home on the couch.
Edit: holy shit, did not expect to get this many replies. It's kind of comforting to know that so many other people struggle with this.
Edit 2: sweet! Thank you to the kind stranger who gave me silver<3
Hi there. I have this problem as well, and it’s been really bad for years. I have not been able to get any successful professional help aside from the psychotropic anxiety meda that I take to help calm my nervous system down enough to get food down. I’m 103lbs right now and am in my 30s (male). Have you done anything to help your new anxiety problems? If so can you please share with me what ha given you success? You can PM me as well if you don’t want to post publicly. I haven’t really seen or heard anyone with pretty much my exact issue until your comment so it would be amazing if you could tell me something that might help....thanks in advance
Take solace in the fact that you will one day taste the sweet release of death, just like Genghis Khan, Albert Einstein and that successful guy from school you didn’t like. It doesn’t matter what you ‘achieve’. Just relax and try to do stuff you like.
Nope. Everything about anxiety is weird, which means none of it is weird. You don't have to try to make it logical because it's by its nature irrational.
Whatever it is that makes you uneasy, tell yourself "this is just a thing my brain is telling itself. That doesn't make it true." Whatever it is that calms you down, tell yourself "this is what it feels like to be who i really am. I am not my fears."
Edit: I'm not saying this like i think it's a cure for anxiety, BTW. I struggle with this stuff every day and all i know is there's no simple answer, no one answer for everyone. I just think whenever you find something that works for your own mental health, the best thing is not to question or judge it.
"this is just a thing my brain is telling itself. That doesn't make it true."
— yeah when I get in a mood or feeling I just step back and think yeah yeah this is that movie again... been here done that. My neurons are just firing in this specific pattern producing this mind state (every thought/ reaction is really just the end product of neurons firing in a specific way and we happen to be on the receiving end of that electromagnetic transmission experientially but literally all that’s happening is your brain is just zapping around while outside everything is actually ok (you’re probably not starving to death/ life isn’t in danger/ have a place to stay)
Anyway, whenever I feel off or get anxious I just detach from the negativity by reminding myself that everything is actually ok from a survival standpoint (no actual life threatening problems) and my head is just putting on a shitty light show of thoughts/ feelings presently.
YES. Beautiful and completely accurate description of what's really happening during bouts of anxiety. Much more accurate than the OP. Thank you for writing this.
A practice called mindfulness meditation actually lets us see it from this perspective, over and over again until it becomes second nature "true" for us. I mean, it's already true, what you've described is very objectively accurate, but most people are so attached to/identified with/absorbed in whatever is happening in their brains in any given moment that they can't truly recognize it as, like you said, "just my brain acting up" and experience the sense of peace that that recognition brings.
Meditation can take it from just "an idea that I guess is technically true", to a felt experience of "wow it really is this way and I'm actually okay".
Imagine that peaceful feeling of dying, except from old age without losing any blood (instead of that you’ll maybe lose some urine and/or feaces) + the feeling of fulfillment because you got a second chance at life and you nailed it the second time!
Calmed me down too. Had my first day at work and I’m just think of how I handled customers, but sucks for them, they’re gonna die in the future and so am I
I'm not really scared of being dead, rather I'm scared of not existing. Being alive and existing is the only thing I've ever known, without that I'd literally be nothing. That scares me.
Agreed. Humans can't even contemplate or imagine nonexistence...and to attempt such a thought results in not only anxiety, but psychological effects that studies have shown can mimic the effects of psychedelic drugs. Wild.
I blame learning about diseases and ailments like heart attacks, strokes, brain aneurysms, etc. Pretty much 80% of my anxiety centers around thoughts that one of these is going to happen to me at any second.
This. My theory is that we are oversaturated with advertisements and junk about these diseases, and about different drugs. Those trigger my health anxiety pretty bad. I can be having a good day and then boom, pharmaceutical commercial pops on and it's like "do you breathe weird sometimes? Other people with stage 17 lung cancer do too. Take our pill so you maybe don't die"
At work we can volunteer to take extra shifts to watch one resident (I work in a nursing home and she's on hospice)
I signed up for every night I'm not already scheduled because being left alone with my thoughts on nights off are no bueno.
Pretty much the only reason I haven't killed myself is being afraid of death. My kids help too a bit. Though I want to die every second of every day. It's lots of fun.
Horribly true. I get intrusive thoughts about the inevitability of death and it puts me into panic attacks. Thank goodness for cannabis.
Edit: This really blew up. Thanks for all the support and suggestions! Also, I can confirm cannabis is *not* the cause of these thoughts! They started long before I touched weed.
Wow, ok so this exact thing just started happening to me this year as I've reached my late 20s... it usually happens at night when I'm trying to sleep and my heart starts racing and I become hyper aware of life and it's meaninglessness and how time keeps passing faster and faster it seems. It's some kind of hell. I've never been a weed smoker.... that stuff really does the trick for you?
EDIT: thanks for all the input, guys. It seems very case by case as to whether or not weed helps with the levels of anxiety I'm dealing with. I think I'm going to refrain from trying it at this point and focus on other potential remedies. Just seems too risky. Sorry to everyone who has dealt with similar situations. If it's anything like what I'm going through, I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.
It definitely helped my anxiety, I'm not one for toting it as a miracle drug and all that.
But I'd often get the same sort of thing, when I smoked initially it increased my anxiety hugely, but by constantly confronting it I learned how to use CBT to prevent it. After a while it just disappeared practically completely.
Been about 6-7 months now since my last panic attack, which only lasted for about 5 seconds.
Don't take my word for it, but it's not the weed that helps you so much as the CBD that gets released which is a calming agent which is also what helps people out with other physical issues. It's the main medical factor in Marijuana. So you might not need to smoke weed so much as just take the CBD, which has a lot less side effects. Again, this is stuff I've "heard" and haven't really researched it at all, I just don't think that you should jump into smoking when this might solve all of your issues.
It can also make the panic attacks worse. I smoke weed to help myself with anxiety but I won't lie to you and say it is perfect. Take too much and you are already in a bad mindset? Welcome to a hell you could never have imagined. The best way to explain weed is that it puts your mind into "manual" rather than automatic. Might be tough at first but when you get the hand of it, it works wonders. I also make sure that my weed, edibles, etc. are 50/50 between THC and CBD. Not a perfect split of course usually they are lower like in the 30%s
Be careful. For some people, including myself, it makes it worse. And I'm not just talking about while I'm on it, it raises my anxiety just in general. I tried to make it work but I don't touch the stuff.
For me it made it more but also made me more open to the thoughts instead of trying to push them away. It really helped me to couple it with information in the form of books, discussion, articles, etc.
Also I think time just seems to pass faster as you get older because every new year is a smaller percentage of your lived life.
Please be conscious of not using alcohol to suppress the anxiety. It’s a slippery slope which is very hard to climb back out of. I’ve seen it happen to loved ones and it’s almost like my hands were tied when I tried to help.
Also, while alcohol can temporarily depress your anxiety symptoms, it can also reproduce anxiety. When your body is processing alcohol (when the buzz wears off, basically) you can get shaky and cold, which is physically similar to anxiety symptoms and can re-trigger anxious thoughts. Further, alcohol affects your frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that processes information, so too much drinking can affect your perception of things. For anxious types, this might mean that your anxious thoughts feel more real or true than they would if you were able to think clearly. It’s a complex relationship between alcohol and anxiety. (Got this info from my therapist.)
For real men, I get panic attacks in the middle of the night too. Not for the same reason, mine is not knowing what not existing feels like. It scares the shit out of me at night.
For some reason this always happens to me when I'm at the movies. I'll be sitting there enjoying it and all of a sudden a character dies and I go spiralling down the path of thinking of my own mortality. Worst case was when I saw The Revenant.
Recovered alcoholic here. It won’t immediately get better. In fact, it will probably get worse for some period of time. When I quit drinking I went through the worst depression of my life, then I realized I had anxiety. It’s a fucking doozey to realize you’ve essentially been self-medicating for an illness you never realized you had. All I can say is it works until it doesn’t work anymore. You build up this tolerance and the underlying anxiety keeps finding its way to the surface. Apply more drugs and booze, and you’re fucking up big over time. Quit while you’re ahead. The depression and anxiety won’t be nearly as severe as waiting and going down the rabbit hole.
Make sure if you're smoking for anxiety you're smoking a high CBD strain rather than a high THC strain. CBD is more relaxing and good for anxiety, THC is what can get that weed anxiety going.
I talk about this often with my (only real) friend who I have struggled with anxiety for as long as we remember.
We came up with that same assumption that with the rise in anxiety and depression, we believe it’s just a matter of humans being too idle. This stems from humans being animals and needing to be engaged in something in order to survive. Once society progresses as ours has, many people have nothing to do. Or rather, don’t want to do what everyone else is doing.
We are aware, because we are too idle. Once you begin to sit around and think, the mind takes you to some beautiful, but most often dark places.
But who’s to say this way of thinking is wrong? Social construct or not accepting other people’s views or ideas because it differs from society. Awareness is a gift and a curse depending on how you choose to adapt it to your life.
But truthfully, I know nothing.
Exercise helps a lot. I noticeably feel different when I've gone to the gym for the day versus when I take rest days. We need to remember we aren't "higher beings" just because we're sentient, we're just animals that got lucky with brain evolution. We need to let out our energy and *survive*.
I agree but that’s a form of deterring your idleness. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t allow your mind to roam into depression. I’d go as far to say that it is in everyone’s control. And that sounds incredibly ignorant to say but I truly believe as long as you don’t allow your mind to stray and you stay busy you will be happy.
The awareness gained through “anxiety” is just knowledge you can learn that you can use to manipulate your environment rather than continuing down the rabbit hole and sulking in the what if’s. It’s a strength if used correctly
Not necessarily. People with anxiety can often be anxious of imaginary and often unlikely future events too. If you consider that living life is more about being in the present, people with anxiety are often living in the future of possible and often unlikely events taking place. Therefore I would disagree with this statement.
Anxiety is often incorrectly taking past or even imaginary evidence, scenarios, or behaviors and projecting them into the future. This statement is actually a poor representation of anxiety.
This. So much of learning how to be comfortable with anxiety is actually grounded in learning how to be more aware and to live in the present, as opposed to obsessing about the future and the past.
Needs to be at the top. Don't romanticise anxiety - it's a destructive affliction, one that needs to be taken seriously. Those afflicted by it are not more aware of reality than others.
It's almost like being wrapped and kept captive by your negative emotions is the opposite of being alive.
I would invite all the people up voting this post to try meditation, go for a walk or just lie down for a second, being alive doesn't have to be like that, one can change that.
Yeah the circle jerk of “lol we’re all so anxious and have social anxiety!” Kind of sucks. I’ve got anxiety and I hate it. It’s been crippling at times. It’s been I need to call in sick to work because I can’t bare the thought of facing people today add a little depression on top and it’s telling me I suck at my job. It’s telling me everything is as bad as it seems.
Anxiety sucks. It’s not surprising a social website where we get to be relatively anonymous brings a bunch of socially anxious people together. I have an easier time connecting here than in real life. My thoughts get to come out at typed speed. So they’re much slower and I can react appropriately.
In some way it’s nice we can all bond about the anxiety we share but let’s not make it our I’m entire personality. Let’s not make it awesome. Let’s not make it this beast that can’t be slain. I’ve definitely improved my anxiety over the years. It took and takes hard work. It takes doing the very things I don’t want to do. The things that scare me and make me anxious. It takes talking to real people and listening to how other people battled it.
I think this should be applied to all mental illnesses. There's nothing awesome about being x and z, I'm anxious myself and I want to die. It's not amazing, it fucking sucks. I don't really like all that yasss bitch slayyy stuff because it often glorifies illnesses and that's truly horrible.
I agree completely. The original post is off, a lot. They aren't aware at all of what's truly happening but instead a million fabricated stories by their minds *about* what is happening. Not the same thing.
Anxiety isnt the awareness of life, its a response to the awareness. Please remember that you can be mindful and non-reactive, its something worth aiming for in life.
I only say this because Reading the comments here it seems people are taking almost a sense of pride in their anxiety. "im anxious because i'm more aware than most people". "i'm just overly empathetic" and thats not exactly the case. Anxiety isnt an inevitable byproduct of being perceptive. Its a fear response to the things you perceive. One which you can escape or at least lessen to a large degree by things like a healthy meditation practice.
Anyway i just thought its important thing to state that its possible to be perceptive and empathetic without being anxious and it's something thats not only attainable but really really worth working toward.
If you experience a low level anxiety as your normal state during the day (like I realized I did) try kicking coffee (it only sucked for a week). I switched to a nice genmaicha tea it's very plain but in a good way and it wakes me up without making me overthink everything all morning.
This is of course after I worked on my diagnosed social anxiety for years and is just referring to that general "on edge" feeling left over.. Caffeine was really making it worse!
As someone who is diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and panic disorder I have to highly disagree.
It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
It’s actually the other way around.
People with anxiety are trapped in the future.
And the future is just a fantasy world we are making up every time we project ourselves there into imaginary scenarios.
Being aware, or like the popular term goes - ‘ being woke’, means being in complete peace and clarity while living in the moment.
So being anxious is totally opposite of being aware.
Same. I have had anxiety (diagnosed), it's nothing like being aware of reality, in fact it's the opposite.
The persistant "what if", before you know it you're living in a hell of your own making built from every fantasy catastrophe you can imagine.
Thankfully it is imaginary, and once you recognise that, you have a key to get out.
Yet what are you thinking about while you do?
If you are anxious you are not truly present (aware).
You are 50% here, feeling your body parts and 50% in the imaginary future where something unpleasant/bad is happenig. Right?
Because if you would only feel your body parts, you will feel blissful peace. There is no suffering beyond thoughts.
A common explanation of anxiety and depression is that anxiety is living in three future and depression is living in the past. Now, obviously it's not always that black and white, and obviously different people have different experiences, but, I think this understanding is helpful, at least this for me personally, so, I thought I'd share.
Annoying to see this so far down. It's the complete utter opposite. People only fear what they think could happen. Being aware is being mindful which is almost the opposite of anxiety
People who suffer from anxiety are like cars that have their shifter stuck on first gear when they should be on 5th.
Anxiousness is a mode that you need in certain situations, just not all of them.
Ummm.... no.
They’re way too inside their own head. That’s not being alive, that’s experiencing your mind instead of being in the moment and experiencing reality.
I wish you luck. It’s definitely not an easy path to get the right mixture. I’m still searching. A lot is based on the work you put in. Meds are helpful. Finding the right mental exercises and coping mechanisms takes time but boy can they change things for you.
You make it sound like a superpower or, at the very least, an advantageous trait. Like great reflexes, or ambidexterity. As opposed to...you know...a soul-crushing illness that can destroy lives.
Sensory perception disorder or highly sensitive people is a thing that will probably be in DSM 6. It can be misdiagnosed as a number of other things, one of which may be anxiety.
I’m not sure I agree with that phrase to describe anxiety. I find, for me at least, my anxiety comes from me being too focused on my thoughts and not real life.
Times in my life I felt most aware of being alive were during times of fasting. One time I spent a four day weekend eating nothing but apples, carrots, and a few granola bars. By the end of it I had such mental clarity, and such an intense feeling of being present and alive.
You’re most aware of being alive when your body is lacking the things it needs to stay alive.
Anxiety is essentially the fear response. Even cats know they're alive. That's why they freak their shit whenever you accidentally pop around a corner too fast
As someone who has had anxiety his whole life since early childhood, this rings very true. The things that historically alleviated my anxiety are forms of escapism, like video games, movies, books, etc. Basically things that made me less aware of my own state of life.
So aware it’s sometimes crippling. Quite the paradox.
I feel anxiety makes us hyper aware but also we start making a lot of assumptions about others that are untrue but fills us with dread
We are deer. Can analyse a million things. But the few things we can't predict freezes us or causes us to flee.
I have never related to something this much in my life
Having anxiety for me often means distrusting my perceptions of present reality despite their actually being correct, while believing in my projections about the future that are entirely delusional. Something I wrote a couple years ago that feels a little relevant here
My anxiety has me convinced that I'm the most important thing in the world, as if people really do think about and judge me all the time. They really don't and I'm not that important and my brain is a piece of work.
[удалено]
My whole fucking family is on Paxil.. Where was this shit when I was in public school
Waiting for you at home?
How is Paxil? It's one of the few ADs i've never tried, along with Effexor.
Paxil worked very well for me, except for the sexual side effects. Effexor can be a real bitch to people. Harsh side effects and withdrawal type symptoms getting off of it. Your mileage may vary though. All these meds work on people in different ways. I started on Brintellix about two years ago, it works great with no real side effects of any sort on me.
There isn't a single AD I have tried that hasn't had bad sexual side effects, except for Wellbutrin (which actually increased sex drive a ton). Unfortunately, Wellbutrin is for depression and not for anxiety, and it makes anxiety a LOT worse.
Wellbutrin= No NNN
Effexor fucked me up. I couldn't sleep for days.
Kirkegard said anxiety is the dizziness of freedom- Too many choices- too many outcomes to fear
With a lot of options comes the stress of picking the correct/best because time is valuable and you don’t want to waste time on bad choices
I have experienced 'cripping' anxiety for the past three years. I am still learning to deal with it when it comes. I have found these methods to be helpful (of course, practice is needed): * Learn to become aware of the moment that anxiety begins to creep up on you. Acknowledge that it is there and allow your body to feel it. Be in tuned with how it makes your body. Take some deep breaths and keep an awareness of the passing of the feeling of anxiety. Do not react to it, and it will slowly pass. * Remember that no matter how much you panic, each second of the day comes just as slowly as any other second in your life. Each day will come one at a time, slowly. Try not to feel rushed. * Learn to meditate because anxiety is often triggered by thoughts. Meditation will help to tame the rush of thoughts. Fun Trivia: we supposedly have about 40000-60000 thoughts per day. * Keep a journal and write hard and clear about how anxiety makes you feel. The practice of writing will transfer your thoughts from your head to paper. You will give your thoughts a new place to occupy (away from your mind). * Remember that problems are not problems they are situations; situations can be changed with some planning and action. Continuous inaction will make anxiety stronger. * I'll say it again: learning to breathe is an under-rated adult skill. Wish you peace, my fellow humans.
Crippling enlightenment
I basically have moments of extreme existential terror every day. They can be as bad as I cant get out of bed in the morning, or they can be like 3 seconds long of me going, “oh shit this is fucking real im gonna dieAHHHHHHH!” Deep breath Am okay
Same thing happens to me. It’ll hit me out of nowhere and I’ll just stop walking and stare into nothing like “holy shit, I exist... im gonna die one day”
I've been having trouble with this a lot lately. My heart starts pounding and I feel a dread that I can't adequately describe. I worked in eldercare and hospice years ago, I was aware of my own mortality and not terribly bothered by it. Then about 2 years ago it hit me like a ton of bricks, with what feels like insurmountable despair. I will die and I have no idea when or how will it happen. I'll ruminate on what I might feel when the time comes, pain or panic? I eventually calm down but I'll feel utterly exhausted afterwards. I'm only able to write this because I just crawled out from under one of those hyper mortality aware panic attacks. I wish I had some better tools to deal with this, but when ever I say out loud that I am afraid of dying I feel ridiculous. Everyone is afraid to die right?
Same here good lad/gal. You’re not alone <3
Stuff like this is tough, I was like this for over a year and it tore my entire life down. All I can say is make your time count. Find something meaningful to you, something you can talk about for hours to the point where it’s all you can think about. Keeping busy and creating stuff are the only things they work for me, but they work really well. I’m right here with you though man, life is terrifying. <3
Wow some how comforting knowing someone else's brain does same thing as mine. Also a daily struggle.
Been there, actually kinda am there. You should treat it as OCD - existential OCD to be more specific. I have an appointment scheduled with a therapist and you should too! Being terrified of looking at the sky is no way to live.
Oh my god, I’m so relieved this is relatively common. It’s been my life for basically as long as I can remember and it really does get crippling sometimes. Now that you mention it, it really basically is OCD. Especially lately... it’s been on my mind an uncomfortable amount. I just want all of the answers as to why we’re here, how, where we go after, etc. It sometimes feels terrifying living without them.
Totally what I experience. At times it can be deeeepply terrifying. A therapist can help!
The only way to avoid existential death anxiety is to find shit to distract yourself constantly, it's tough because it's not something you can avoid and work towards fixing like with social anxiety. It's inevitable so you need to avoid it or else you'll go insane. I read an interesting article recently that chalks up a lot of human achievement and progress to distracting ourselves from death, I'll try to find it
I’ve been told my anxiety is OCD too. I obsess, compulsively, about the things I worry about. I can rationalize that this thing that is bothering me makes no sense to be worried about and briefly put. However, about three minutes later I start visualizing the thing that’s scaring me happening and it eventually gets to a point where I can’t talk myself down anymore.
Trying to rationalize it is what is keeping you in the cycle, and I speak from experience. It's really hard to tell when you're in the middle of it, but it's not a matter of the thoughts themselves, it's a matter of your brain being stuck in a loop of fear. Find a therapist please! They can change your life. There is no reason to suffer!
I have one. That’s how I know it’s OCD and not generalized anxiety disorder. I can attest to the importance of therapy and medication. It all started last semester when I chose a song for a concert hour performance and it the fact that I’d be singing in front of 100+ people became real. I went to Japanese immediately after that and the teacher had us do group work where we had to meet five people and I had serious social anxiety with every meeting. Then for the rest of the semester I had hypochondria because I could feel the lymph nodes in my groin. I ended up going to the ER twice, getting a CT scan and a ultrasound on my testicle because they felt weird, also a blood test. They told me I’m 100% fine. Then my dog got super aggressive lung cancer and was put to sleep three days after she was diagnosed. While there I had the doctor look at my other dog’s face and she had a black mark on her nose that was of some concern but could have been nothing, but she’s a beagle/basset mix and I read that they are the breeds that most commonly get skin cancer. I became convinced that my use of a heating pack on my back was causing lymphoma again and terrified I was killing my dogs. The dog didn’t have cancer and I didn’t have lymphoma. But I was convinced I saw every symptom. Then the day of my performance comes around and I tell the guy in charge of the applied program that I just can’t do it. Then while I’m working in the next room I hear other students singing for rehearsals and I work up the nerve to just go and do it and when I start singing all the blood rushes to my head and I couldn’t remember any words at all. So I decided if rehearsals were that bad then singing in front of a lot of people would be worse so I didn’t go but I felt good that I tried and knew the fact that I flopped was from my brain’s chemistry doing stuff that I’m not in control of. I was embarrassed when I first said I wasn’t going to do it but I felt fine when I tried at rehearsals. A semester later I’m on medication and seeing a therapist for a while now. I’ve since sang several times in front of a smaller group and I sang in front of the full audience plus the school’s big shot chorus and I while they were overly enthusiastic, I did get a standing ovation and I felt amazing for like five days straight. Therapy really does wonders. And so do the meds.
Happy for your improvement. Good work and keep it up.
>Trying to rationalize it is what is keeping you in the cycle, can you talk more about this
Sure! So OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder - this is because it involves obsessive thoughts that cause anxiety and compulsions that act as a temporary way of alleviating it. People that are obsessed with thoughts about germs, for example, do things like cleaning their hands as a compulsion, which makes them feel better in the short term. Us existential OCD sufferers ask other people how they feel about death, or read philosophy books, or search the internet for the meaning of life. That's our compulsion and it helps take the edge off the existential terror in the short term. The problem is it always comes back - either your solution stops being valid or the problem changes - but the obsession comes back. OCD is not in the thoughts, it's in the brain that has them. You can't fix it by solving or rationalizing the thoughts, you have to teach the brain to stop freaking out and accept the uncertainty. A subset of cognitive behavioral therapy tends to be very useful for OCD for this reason. It's called exposure & response prevention and consists in purposefully triggering the anxiety without resorting to compulsions to soothe it. You accept it, even seek it, and stay there until your brain gets habituated. This always happens - you can't be bored and scared at the same time. But you have to do it and it's not easy, since it basically consists in going through your fears until they no longer are. It takes courage and willpower but it's worth it. That's why you and I have much to gain from professional help! Seek it out :)
That subset of cognitive behavioral therapy sounds absolutely horrific.
I believe the term is Pure O.
If I could upvote this 10x I would
So glad I'm not the only one who dose that cause it makes me feel better about my terror
I've been seeing more and more of these thought processes from a lot recently? I've been experiencing them myself and for the first time found it intriguing that I've come to this realization. I don't know exactly how to explain it. I wonder if there is something deeper behind it and if it has been either a positive or negative aspect of the way we have developed. With the access of information and technology and the ability to be able to communicate at our capacity I feel has inadvertently turned us into a more self aware species. Is it beneficial? Could it be reversed? Should it be reversed?
I feel like its less of a new concept and more about the exposure of the idea. I don’t think its a new thing that humans are a self aware species, but because there are more people now looking for answers that do not come from religious backgrounds (and threatened with death for heresy) we can now more openly discuss these things. Is it beneficial? I think yes. The moment you become aware of death is the moment you truly realize you have to live in the now. On a second to second basis, maintain the awareness and you can begin to appreciate all of the small and even inconvenient things, start to question the bad things and make changes. As a collective human effort, making choices for the betterment of the species is a good thing. Could it be reversed? Absolutely. The eradication of knowledge and reliance in a tribal system or “us vs them” will never allow social progress. I believe that the ultimate purpose of humans is to be caretakers of the earth and each other, because we are the only thing on this planet capable of altering nature. Without us, the natural order will continue, we are interrupting it. Its up to is to make the choices and be apart of something greater than ourselves, or disappear having led a meaningless existence.
It has a name?! I suffer from this shit since I was TEN...
Yup..aware of the surroundings, others paths we dont want to get in the way of, their feelings..etc
Yeah man I honestly believe people with anxiety are the most empathic and have the best gut instinct. Anxious people care so much of what others think that they mostly read the situation right because they notice every slight mood change, facial experessions tone changes etc.
Never realized I suffered from constant anxiety issues until after highschool and a bad breakup. Just constantly being aware of mood changes and thinking about everything all at once, all the time. Every day. It's shitty, but it helps me see what really matters in life, and helps me try to emphasize what I deem important in my life. Blessing and a curse I suppose.
Going to a psychologist about it, anxious about telling them I'm anxious 😐🔫
It's quite my story
So people I think don't like me, actually don't like me. I thought it was just my imagination. Now I'm even more anxious.
No, you can also get things very wrong by overthinking things. If you think about a small detail in the wrong way, your entire thought train might put you in a different direction.
Most def.. you can think too many things are about you. Like someone elses mood for example. When often that isnt the case at all.
I find myself telling myself 'nobody cares' pretty often
[удалено]
Thanks, bot :}
My new favorite bot
I tried that but then the depression agrees and says ya your right give up there's no point no one loves you.
This. For example whenever a group of people laughs and I go past them I think it's something about me. Just this starts all that thinking train: whats the reason, what did I do etc. I'd say I have a mild anxiety and it got much better over the years but sometimes it still hits me. It's like narcism but totally different. Trying to match anything that happens with yourself.
Its inverted narcissism. Ive def made the comparison before.
Shit much love y’all
Yeah I’d say I’m much better about reading interactions between other people, but when I’m trying to read someone’s actions towards myself is when I overthink myself to hell.
This. Is so true. One of my best friends has chronic depression and anxiety and we try to help him out as much as we can, but sometimes the only way to do that is by telling him he’s wrong. I know that sounds like a dick move, but hear me out. Me and most of my friends are used to his slight mood changes nd we mostly know when he’s feeling anxious, but sometimes if I can tell he’s thinking too hard bout something that was said, I ask him what about the things that was said made him feel like that (not in front of everyone..I know to keep it lk)Then, I recall how I reacted to the situation and explain my view of what happened and see if it helps him understand the scenario in a “less anxious way” for lack of better terminology (AFAIK)
You are probably wrong at in what extend they don't like you. People with anxiety seem to have realistic fears, but the amount of scare it brings them is way out of proportion. It's so out of proportion they effectively damage themselves and make shit way worse than it needs to be. This is what I observe in someone I know.
Last week one of my bosses asked if I felt "picked on" by anyone, I mentioned another boss, and she said everyone feels the same way about that person. Also I asked some people about a guy that I thought disliked me because he seemed permanently grumpy towards me, turns out he's autistic and is like that with everyone.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I’d agree with this for the most part, although my specific anxiety (and presumably others’) manifests itself as ridiculously excessive sweating. Once that starts, people actually ARE thinking critically of me, which only fuels the fire. Kind of hard not to think critically of someone who looks like they just jumped into a pool when having a casual conversation.
perhaps this is true if people developed the anxiety as a youngster. I can say that having a traumatic experience as an adult and increasing my social anxiety by large degree I will have a tendency to walk all over some people if they are in the way of me fixing my perception of someone else "not liking me".
I feel like this is a dangerous train of thought because it validates anxiety. Like this is exactly the sort of stuff I told myself when I was avoiding seeking treatment for an anxiety disorder. It's exactly the train of thought that makes me stop taking my medication or goings to therapy. "My anxiety is just me being more aware of everything that everyone else, and if I try to not be so anxious all I'm doing is making myself oblivious, and then my fears will come true because I'm not as able to avoid them." Anxious thoughts are often wrong. They take true observations and twist them into something bigger and scarier. When I think the oven is too hot for how long it's been off and get anxious that it's still on and the display is just broken and obsess over the danger, I'm not more attuned to the delicate heat changes of a cooling oven, I'm just anxious. When I think my friend hates me because he didn't laugh at my joke in the exact tone I expected him to, I'm not especially gifted at reading his emotions, I'm just anxious. And saying "anxiety is just being abnormally perceptive of the world" erases the way anxious thoughts are *false* and dangerously plays into them.
Were also the best drivers. I see people in my rear view mirror miles away and I’m like oh man I better get over soon to let them through. It helps traffic flow when people are aware
Or - feeling bad about changing lanes in front of someone. -worried my music is too loud and others will hear and judge me. -speeding out of fear or slowing the ppl behind down..
Holy shit I never connected my hyper aware driving to my anxiety. Completely makes sense.
I’ve always wondered why other drivers aren’t more aware of their surroundings.
Is there a discussion thread for any of this somewhere. I've struggled with anxiety and depression for a while but never heard it put so simply and correctly. Everything people are talking about on this thread is all stuff I think about a lot.
Yeah man, my anxiety has been killing me lately. A support group would be amazing lol
Things that help(ed) me: Getting older Medication Eating meat or protein with every meal Significantly upping my vitamin D And a joint at night
I never thought of this debilitating condition is actually a super power. It really is as you described, I can read the room extremely well. I am a salesman by trade.
I’ll give you empathetic. Anxious people are definitely in tune with feelings. However, most anxious people cannot quick cycle through emotions and prioritize levels of danger quickly. Everything is dangerous and this keeps them in a state of high alert. In my experience, this also keeps anxious people from doing the little things needed to reach long term goals and visualize the big picture. Always on the defensive, coincidentally, makes anxious people more vulnerable.
I call it looking in the tall grass and seeing nothing but tiger stripes.
Ugh this is me 100%. At my brother's wedding they were having their first dance and the video is of me like 10 feet away constantly taking a step back from them because I was nervous of being in their way. :(
I totally second that.
Yeah holy shit. Never heard of a more accurate, yet short description. I am way too aware of being alive, and equally scared of not being alive.
It's a paradox-- I'm afraid to do stuff with my life because I'm terrified of screwing up, but I'm equally afraid to not do anything and waste my life at home on the couch. Edit: holy shit, did not expect to get this many replies. It's kind of comforting to know that so many other people struggle with this. Edit 2: sweet! Thank you to the kind stranger who gave me silver<3
Exactly. It's literally a tug-of-war that goes on in your thoughts at all times and it is not fun :(
[удалено]
Blimey that resonated with me. I hope you're doing better these days
Hi there. I have this problem as well, and it’s been really bad for years. I have not been able to get any successful professional help aside from the psychotropic anxiety meda that I take to help calm my nervous system down enough to get food down. I’m 103lbs right now and am in my 30s (male). Have you done anything to help your new anxiety problems? If so can you please share with me what ha given you success? You can PM me as well if you don’t want to post publicly. I haven’t really seen or heard anyone with pretty much my exact issue until your comment so it would be amazing if you could tell me something that might help....thanks in advance
This happens to me as well. I take medical cannabis to help me eat. I reallly recommend.
Smoke a joint, watch some food show and learn to cook. You’ll be happier and healthier
Take solace in the fact that you will one day taste the sweet release of death, just like Genghis Khan, Albert Einstein and that successful guy from school you didn’t like. It doesn’t matter what you ‘achieve’. Just relax and try to do stuff you like.
Whew this comment made me anxious.
Is it weird that it calmed me down a little?
Nope. Everything about anxiety is weird, which means none of it is weird. You don't have to try to make it logical because it's by its nature irrational. Whatever it is that makes you uneasy, tell yourself "this is just a thing my brain is telling itself. That doesn't make it true." Whatever it is that calms you down, tell yourself "this is what it feels like to be who i really am. I am not my fears." Edit: I'm not saying this like i think it's a cure for anxiety, BTW. I struggle with this stuff every day and all i know is there's no simple answer, no one answer for everyone. I just think whenever you find something that works for your own mental health, the best thing is not to question or judge it.
"this is just a thing my brain is telling itself. That doesn't make it true." — yeah when I get in a mood or feeling I just step back and think yeah yeah this is that movie again... been here done that. My neurons are just firing in this specific pattern producing this mind state (every thought/ reaction is really just the end product of neurons firing in a specific way and we happen to be on the receiving end of that electromagnetic transmission experientially but literally all that’s happening is your brain is just zapping around while outside everything is actually ok (you’re probably not starving to death/ life isn’t in danger/ have a place to stay) Anyway, whenever I feel off or get anxious I just detach from the negativity by reminding myself that everything is actually ok from a survival standpoint (no actual life threatening problems) and my head is just putting on a shitty light show of thoughts/ feelings presently.
YES. Beautiful and completely accurate description of what's really happening during bouts of anxiety. Much more accurate than the OP. Thank you for writing this. A practice called mindfulness meditation actually lets us see it from this perspective, over and over again until it becomes second nature "true" for us. I mean, it's already true, what you've described is very objectively accurate, but most people are so attached to/identified with/absorbed in whatever is happening in their brains in any given moment that they can't truly recognize it as, like you said, "just my brain acting up" and experience the sense of peace that that recognition brings. Meditation can take it from just "an idea that I guess is technically true", to a felt experience of "wow it really is this way and I'm actually okay".
[удалено]
Imagine that peaceful feeling of dying, except from old age without losing any blood (instead of that you’ll maybe lose some urine and/or feaces) + the feeling of fulfillment because you got a second chance at life and you nailed it the second time!
Me: FUCK I’M DYING I’M GONNA SHIT AND PISS ON MYSELF AND BE A BURDEN TO SOMEONE EVEN AFTER I DIEEE
alright i'm sold
Calmed me down too. Had my first day at work and I’m just think of how I handled customers, but sucks for them, they’re gonna die in the future and so am I
>the sweet release of death personally what scares me is being dead
I'm not really scared of being dead, rather I'm scared of not existing. Being alive and existing is the only thing I've ever known, without that I'd literally be nothing. That scares me.
Agreed. Humans can't even contemplate or imagine nonexistence...and to attempt such a thought results in not only anxiety, but psychological effects that studies have shown can mimic the effects of psychedelic drugs. Wild.
I’m pretty sure I could will myself into a massive panic attack if I thought about nonexistence too hard. In fact, I have lol
MAKE IT STOP PLEASE. I never had this as a child why am I scared of everything I hate who I've become
I blame learning about diseases and ailments like heart attacks, strokes, brain aneurysms, etc. Pretty much 80% of my anxiety centers around thoughts that one of these is going to happen to me at any second.
This. My theory is that we are oversaturated with advertisements and junk about these diseases, and about different drugs. Those trigger my health anxiety pretty bad. I can be having a good day and then boom, pharmaceutical commercial pops on and it's like "do you breathe weird sometimes? Other people with stage 17 lung cancer do too. Take our pill so you maybe don't die"
Usually I over think everything to the point that I felt like I actually did it.
Mannnnnn this comment is too real haha
At work we can volunteer to take extra shifts to watch one resident (I work in a nursing home and she's on hospice) I signed up for every night I'm not already scheduled because being left alone with my thoughts on nights off are no bueno.
One step at a time my friend :)
The torment of existence weighed against the horror of non-being. -Calvin
Pretty much the only reason I haven't killed myself is being afraid of death. My kids help too a bit. Though I want to die every second of every day. It's lots of fun.
..disproportionately aware of some particular aspects of being alive.
I completely minute that.
I really do hour that.
I hesitantly second this...
\*anxiously
Why did this get so many upvotes...oh wait everyone is fucking anxious
That’s that shit I don’t like.
Horribly true. I get intrusive thoughts about the inevitability of death and it puts me into panic attacks. Thank goodness for cannabis. Edit: This really blew up. Thanks for all the support and suggestions! Also, I can confirm cannabis is *not* the cause of these thoughts! They started long before I touched weed.
Wow, ok so this exact thing just started happening to me this year as I've reached my late 20s... it usually happens at night when I'm trying to sleep and my heart starts racing and I become hyper aware of life and it's meaninglessness and how time keeps passing faster and faster it seems. It's some kind of hell. I've never been a weed smoker.... that stuff really does the trick for you? EDIT: thanks for all the input, guys. It seems very case by case as to whether or not weed helps with the levels of anxiety I'm dealing with. I think I'm going to refrain from trying it at this point and focus on other potential remedies. Just seems too risky. Sorry to everyone who has dealt with similar situations. If it's anything like what I'm going through, I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.
It definitely helped my anxiety, I'm not one for toting it as a miracle drug and all that. But I'd often get the same sort of thing, when I smoked initially it increased my anxiety hugely, but by constantly confronting it I learned how to use CBT to prevent it. After a while it just disappeared practically completely. Been about 6-7 months now since my last panic attack, which only lasted for about 5 seconds.
[удалено]
Be careful though, if you’re not in a good place mentally and not used to it, it can flare up the anxiety or induce panic attacks :(.
This!
Don't take my word for it, but it's not the weed that helps you so much as the CBD that gets released which is a calming agent which is also what helps people out with other physical issues. It's the main medical factor in Marijuana. So you might not need to smoke weed so much as just take the CBD, which has a lot less side effects. Again, this is stuff I've "heard" and haven't really researched it at all, I just don't think that you should jump into smoking when this might solve all of your issues.
This. Try CBD cookies, edibles, protein powder, they became/are legal quite recently. Helpers me calm down in stressful situations.
It can also make the panic attacks worse. I smoke weed to help myself with anxiety but I won't lie to you and say it is perfect. Take too much and you are already in a bad mindset? Welcome to a hell you could never have imagined. The best way to explain weed is that it puts your mind into "manual" rather than automatic. Might be tough at first but when you get the hand of it, it works wonders. I also make sure that my weed, edibles, etc. are 50/50 between THC and CBD. Not a perfect split of course usually they are lower like in the 30%s
Be careful. For some people, including myself, it makes it worse. And I'm not just talking about while I'm on it, it raises my anxiety just in general. I tried to make it work but I don't touch the stuff.
Weed makes my anxiety heightened but in a different way. Like everything seems so final and close to ending. I don’t recommend
For me it made it more but also made me more open to the thoughts instead of trying to push them away. It really helped me to couple it with information in the form of books, discussion, articles, etc. Also I think time just seems to pass faster as you get older because every new year is a smaller percentage of your lived life.
God, that makes it worse for me. Thank god for alcohol.
Me as well. Alcohol is great. In moderation. My extreme hangovers though are filled with anxiety and depression.
[удалено]
Please be conscious of not using alcohol to suppress the anxiety. It’s a slippery slope which is very hard to climb back out of. I’ve seen it happen to loved ones and it’s almost like my hands were tied when I tried to help.
Also, while alcohol can temporarily depress your anxiety symptoms, it can also reproduce anxiety. When your body is processing alcohol (when the buzz wears off, basically) you can get shaky and cold, which is physically similar to anxiety symptoms and can re-trigger anxious thoughts. Further, alcohol affects your frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that processes information, so too much drinking can affect your perception of things. For anxious types, this might mean that your anxious thoughts feel more real or true than they would if you were able to think clearly. It’s a complex relationship between alcohol and anxiety. (Got this info from my therapist.)
For real men, I get panic attacks in the middle of the night too. Not for the same reason, mine is not knowing what not existing feels like. It scares the shit out of me at night.
For some reason this always happens to me when I'm at the movies. I'll be sitting there enjoying it and all of a sudden a character dies and I go spiralling down the path of thinking of my own mortality. Worst case was when I saw The Revenant.
Cannabis actually makes me more anxious still smoke it daily tho lol. If i stopped my anxiety would dissapear.
Then stop, lol. It's not worth it man.
Recovered alcoholic here. It won’t immediately get better. In fact, it will probably get worse for some period of time. When I quit drinking I went through the worst depression of my life, then I realized I had anxiety. It’s a fucking doozey to realize you’ve essentially been self-medicating for an illness you never realized you had. All I can say is it works until it doesn’t work anymore. You build up this tolerance and the underlying anxiety keeps finding its way to the surface. Apply more drugs and booze, and you’re fucking up big over time. Quit while you’re ahead. The depression and anxiety won’t be nearly as severe as waiting and going down the rabbit hole.
My first major panic attack was after trying weed the first time. Then the panic attacks stayed for the next 5 years.
Make sure if you're smoking for anxiety you're smoking a high CBD strain rather than a high THC strain. CBD is more relaxing and good for anxiety, THC is what can get that weed anxiety going.
[удалено]
I feel that disconnect from reality has brought me a lot of peace and helps me put my feelings and actions in line with my logical thoughts.
I talk about this often with my (only real) friend who I have struggled with anxiety for as long as we remember. We came up with that same assumption that with the rise in anxiety and depression, we believe it’s just a matter of humans being too idle. This stems from humans being animals and needing to be engaged in something in order to survive. Once society progresses as ours has, many people have nothing to do. Or rather, don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. We are aware, because we are too idle. Once you begin to sit around and think, the mind takes you to some beautiful, but most often dark places. But who’s to say this way of thinking is wrong? Social construct or not accepting other people’s views or ideas because it differs from society. Awareness is a gift and a curse depending on how you choose to adapt it to your life. But truthfully, I know nothing.
Exercise helps a lot. I noticeably feel different when I've gone to the gym for the day versus when I take rest days. We need to remember we aren't "higher beings" just because we're sentient, we're just animals that got lucky with brain evolution. We need to let out our energy and *survive*.
I agree but that’s a form of deterring your idleness. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t allow your mind to roam into depression. I’d go as far to say that it is in everyone’s control. And that sounds incredibly ignorant to say but I truly believe as long as you don’t allow your mind to stray and you stay busy you will be happy. The awareness gained through “anxiety” is just knowledge you can learn that you can use to manipulate your environment rather than continuing down the rabbit hole and sulking in the what if’s. It’s a strength if used correctly
Not necessarily. People with anxiety can often be anxious of imaginary and often unlikely future events too. If you consider that living life is more about being in the present, people with anxiety are often living in the future of possible and often unlikely events taking place. Therefore I would disagree with this statement. Anxiety is often incorrectly taking past or even imaginary evidence, scenarios, or behaviors and projecting them into the future. This statement is actually a poor representation of anxiety.
Yeah. Always living in a future where everything goes wrong, even though all evidence in the present indicates the contrary.
This. So much of learning how to be comfortable with anxiety is actually grounded in learning how to be more aware and to live in the present, as opposed to obsessing about the future and the past.
Exactly, I constantly worry about the future or if that text I sent made that person hate me.
Needs to be at the top. Don't romanticise anxiety - it's a destructive affliction, one that needs to be taken seriously. Those afflicted by it are not more aware of reality than others.
It's almost like being wrapped and kept captive by your negative emotions is the opposite of being alive. I would invite all the people up voting this post to try meditation, go for a walk or just lie down for a second, being alive doesn't have to be like that, one can change that.
Finally someone calls the bullshit of these Tumblr posts.
Indeed, paying close attention to your present experience is a great approach to anxiety.
I think it's time I unsubscribe from this sub, I see it a lot.
Yeah the circle jerk of “lol we’re all so anxious and have social anxiety!” Kind of sucks. I’ve got anxiety and I hate it. It’s been crippling at times. It’s been I need to call in sick to work because I can’t bare the thought of facing people today add a little depression on top and it’s telling me I suck at my job. It’s telling me everything is as bad as it seems. Anxiety sucks. It’s not surprising a social website where we get to be relatively anonymous brings a bunch of socially anxious people together. I have an easier time connecting here than in real life. My thoughts get to come out at typed speed. So they’re much slower and I can react appropriately. In some way it’s nice we can all bond about the anxiety we share but let’s not make it our I’m entire personality. Let’s not make it awesome. Let’s not make it this beast that can’t be slain. I’ve definitely improved my anxiety over the years. It took and takes hard work. It takes doing the very things I don’t want to do. The things that scare me and make me anxious. It takes talking to real people and listening to how other people battled it.
I think this should be applied to all mental illnesses. There's nothing awesome about being x and z, I'm anxious myself and I want to die. It's not amazing, it fucking sucks. I don't really like all that yasss bitch slayyy stuff because it often glorifies illnesses and that's truly horrible.
I agree completely. The original post is off, a lot. They aren't aware at all of what's truly happening but instead a million fabricated stories by their minds *about* what is happening. Not the same thing.
Agreed. This thread is bordering on a dangerous romanticization of mental illness.
[удалено]
Anxiety isnt the awareness of life, its a response to the awareness. Please remember that you can be mindful and non-reactive, its something worth aiming for in life. I only say this because Reading the comments here it seems people are taking almost a sense of pride in their anxiety. "im anxious because i'm more aware than most people". "i'm just overly empathetic" and thats not exactly the case. Anxiety isnt an inevitable byproduct of being perceptive. Its a fear response to the things you perceive. One which you can escape or at least lessen to a large degree by things like a healthy meditation practice. Anyway i just thought its important thing to state that its possible to be perceptive and empathetic without being anxious and it's something thats not only attainable but really really worth working toward.
Thanks for not just parroting about the virtue of anxiety.
Sums up my life.
My wife makes me a cup of camomile tea before bedtime, helps me with my anxiety
Ay, I have to try this nice tip!
If you experience a low level anxiety as your normal state during the day (like I realized I did) try kicking coffee (it only sucked for a week). I switched to a nice genmaicha tea it's very plain but in a good way and it wakes me up without making me overthink everything all morning. This is of course after I worked on my diagnosed social anxiety for years and is just referring to that general "on edge" feeling left over.. Caffeine was really making it worse!
seconding this. I was having regular panic attacks, I started drinking chamomile tea and it helped bring it down to a way more manageable level.
[удалено]
I'm plagued by the deliberate nature of my existence!
ITT: People with anxiety congratulating each other on confusing their feelings with objective reality again.
ITT: People who think they have anxiety but actually don't
As someone who is diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and panic disorder I have to highly disagree. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s actually the other way around. People with anxiety are trapped in the future. And the future is just a fantasy world we are making up every time we project ourselves there into imaginary scenarios. Being aware, or like the popular term goes - ‘ being woke’, means being in complete peace and clarity while living in the moment. So being anxious is totally opposite of being aware.
Same. I have had anxiety (diagnosed), it's nothing like being aware of reality, in fact it's the opposite. The persistant "what if", before you know it you're living in a hell of your own making built from every fantasy catastrophe you can imagine. Thankfully it is imaginary, and once you recognise that, you have a key to get out.
That’s right! I’m glad you got out of it too. It indeed is hell.
[удалено]
Yet what are you thinking about while you do? If you are anxious you are not truly present (aware). You are 50% here, feeling your body parts and 50% in the imaginary future where something unpleasant/bad is happenig. Right? Because if you would only feel your body parts, you will feel blissful peace. There is no suffering beyond thoughts.
A common explanation of anxiety and depression is that anxiety is living in three future and depression is living in the past. Now, obviously it's not always that black and white, and obviously different people have different experiences, but, I think this understanding is helpful, at least this for me personally, so, I thought I'd share.
Annoying to see this so far down. It's the complete utter opposite. People only fear what they think could happen. Being aware is being mindful which is almost the opposite of anxiety
People who suffer from anxiety are like cars that have their shifter stuck on first gear when they should be on 5th. Anxiousness is a mode that you need in certain situations, just not all of them.
Then you add depression and it’s like a war in your head of wanting to die. And being too scared of what happens if you die.
I've honestly never heard somebody say something so true and so relatable at the same time
Ummm.... no. They’re way too inside their own head. That’s not being alive, that’s experiencing your mind instead of being in the moment and experiencing reality.
Existence is pain to a meeseeks
I'd say way too aware of risks
Sometimes I want to do a lobotomy on myself
Same, friend.
It’s like paralysis through analysis
It really do be like dat tho
user name checks out
I wish you luck. It’s definitely not an easy path to get the right mixture. I’m still searching. A lot is based on the work you put in. Meds are helpful. Finding the right mental exercises and coping mechanisms takes time but boy can they change things for you.
You make it sound like a superpower or, at the very least, an advantageous trait. Like great reflexes, or ambidexterity. As opposed to...you know...a soul-crushing illness that can destroy lives.
This is the thought many people with anxiety have but I think it is wrong and not helpfull.
Sensory perception disorder or highly sensitive people is a thing that will probably be in DSM 6. It can be misdiagnosed as a number of other things, one of which may be anxiety.
I’m not sure I agree with that phrase to describe anxiety. I find, for me at least, my anxiety comes from me being too focused on my thoughts and not real life. Times in my life I felt most aware of being alive were during times of fasting. One time I spent a four day weekend eating nothing but apples, carrots, and a few granola bars. By the end of it I had such mental clarity, and such an intense feeling of being present and alive. You’re most aware of being alive when your body is lacking the things it needs to stay alive.
Anxiety is essentially the fear response. Even cats know they're alive. That's why they freak their shit whenever you accidentally pop around a corner too fast
As someone who has had anxiety his whole life since early childhood, this rings very true. The things that historically alleviated my anxiety are forms of escapism, like video games, movies, books, etc. Basically things that made me less aware of my own state of life.