Tag: anxiety

Categories
Ponderings

Interoception, senses, and anxiety

I’m reading The Extended Mind, and the first chapter is about interoception as a form of thinking we do. (Interoception is awareness of what’s happening inside our bodies.) An example the author gives is that stock brokers tend to have better interoception than the average person (correlation or causation unclear) and are willing to act on it — basically, following their “gut instinct.”

That reminded me of something else I read recently (a source): a racing heart may cause anxiety, just as anxiety can make your heart race. Feeling sensations that are symptomatic of anxiety could prompt feeling anxious.

It got me wondering: might people with anxiety have more sensitive interoception than others, but aren’t correctly interpreting their bodies signals and instead expressing it as anxiety?

Continue reading “Interoception, senses, and anxiety”
Categories
Getting Shit Done Lifestyle Self Care

Read How to Calm Your Mind

Read How to Calm Your Mind by Chris Bailey

How to Calm Your Mind is a treasure trove of practical, science-backed strategies that reveal how the key to a less anxious life, and even greater productivity, is a calm state of mind.

I took my time reading this over the past three months to let it really soak in. It’s great and totally aligns with my own shift in thinking over the years.

I’ve followed Bailey’s work for many years, and enjoyed his previous two books, but also struggled with anxiety, stress and burnout. Culturally it feels like many Millennials are going through this transition at the same pace, throwing ourselves into work and burning out through our twenties, then rethinking priorities in our thirties and recognizing the societal factors pushing us to work so hard and yet ineffectively. We see decades of our careers remaining ahead of us and are acknowledging that we can’t keep brute forcing ourselves till we’re eighty.

I appreciate this comprehensive recentering of the value and importance of rest and calm to let us live the lives we want to. Stress and anxiety have physical consequences to the way our bodies and minds function, and make it harder to be intentional. He covers the scientific backing behind burnout and stress as well as offering a whole host of practical steps to try calming your body and mind, while reminding readers not to overdo it by trying to change everything at once. Even as someone who’s practiced meditation and mindful breathing and such, I found new ideas.

I appreciated the deeper grounding in root causes, especially the framing of looking at activities in terms of stimulation. I was reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr at the same time as this,  which provided a perfect complement of messages on the impacts of digital spaces and the value of analog. I don’t 100% agree with Bailey — like his assertion that hanging out virtually “doesn’t count” as social time — but overall agree that I’d like to use my digital devices less and more thoughtfully, and replace digital with analog where viable.

Categories
Mental Health

A skull full of poison: an apt metaphor for depression

Liked It’s very weird to have a skull full of poison by Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History)

I don’t know exactly what to call the thing I felt. “Mental health” and “mental illness” feel corporate and euphemistic, the kind of phrases you use when you’re trying to sell a meditation app, or when you’re explaining to your boss why you didn’t finish the PowerPoint on time. I prefer to think of my experience as having a skull full of poison.

I thought I’d recover from my skull-poisoning and everything would go back to normal, shipshape, better than ever, really! Redemption would have straightened out all the strangeness, like “ah yes, I get it now, this was all for something.” I mean, if there’s no arc, what’s the point? You just felt bad and then you felt less bad? That’s it?

I will happily take feeling better, thank you very much!

I wanted to solve my bad feelings the way I had learned to solve everything in life, which is by being a diligent student and a good boy. But you can’t ace feeling good like it’s a math test, and trying only makes you feel worse.

Relatable 😂

Categories
Personal Growth Reflection

Evaluating your fears

Bookmarked Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month by Tim Ferriss (tim.blog)

I do an exercise called “fear-setting” at least once a quarter, often once a month. It is the most powerful exercise I do.  
Fear-setting has produced my biggest business and personal successes, as well as repeatedly helped me to avoid catastrophic mistakes.

I’m a little iffy on Tim Ferriss but this sounds like a helpful exercise.

Categories
Mental Health Personal Growth

Listen to yourself

Liked Taking a break from personal projects: Mental health and coding by James (jamesg.blog)

[I]f you feel anxious or worried about progress on personal projects, don’t feel that you have to continue.

👏 A good reminder that personal projects are not obligations, and sometimes quitting a project is the right choice.

Categories
Getting Shit Done Mental Health

Watched How My Mental Health Affects My Productivity

Watched Mental Health And Productivity: A Peek Inside My Journey by Sarra CannonSarra Cannon from heartbreathings.com

Mental health is a topic close to my heart, because my own journey toward my goals has been as much about mental health as anything else. Today’s video is a casual, real chat about how my mental health affects my productivity, what my journey has been like up to this moment, and how I’m working […]

Anxiety and depression do impact your productivity

Task clarity — bite-size actions identified in advance that help her feel like she’s making progress towards her “dream future”

  • appreciate small joys
  • focus on physical basics — sleep enough, eat well
  • pay attention to your behavior — look for triggers of negative spirals
  • acknowledge your tough days, let yourself do simple tasks when feeling bad
  • pay attention to negative self-talk
Categories
Mental Health Self Care Society The Internet

Read Notes on a Nervous Planet

Read Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig

The societies we live in are increasingly making our minds ill, making it feel as though the way we live is engineered to make us unhappy. When Matt Haig developed panic disorder, anxiety, and depression as an adult, it took him a long time to work out the ways the external world could impact his mental health in both positive and negative ways. Notes on a Nervous Planet collects his observations, taking a look at how the various social, commercial and technological “advancements” that have created the world we now live in can actually hinder our happiness. Haig examines everything from broader phenomena like inequality, social media, and the news; to things closer to our daily lives, like how we sleep, how we exercise, and even the distinction we draw between our minds and our bodies.

Very casual writing style, like a collection of blog posts (even listicles 😂). I don’t have as much trouble as he does with phone use, but can relate to the overall overwhelming information intake of the internet and the constant marketing pressures. Enjoyed reading through this slowly. Complementary to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

Continue reading “Read Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Categories
Health Mental Health

Anxiety and depression increase risk of long COVID

Bookmarked Psychological, not physical factors linked to long COVID (news.harvard.edu)

“We were surprised by how strongly psychological distress before a COVID-19 infection was associated with an increased risk of long COVID,” said Siwen Wang, a researcher in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School who led the study. “Distress was more strongly associated with developing long COVID than physical health risk factors such as obesity, asthma, and hypertension.”

[D]istress before COVID-19 infection, including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness, was associated with a 32 percent to 46 percent increased risk of long COVID. These types of psychological distress were also associated with 15 percent to 51 percent greater risk of daily life impairment due to long COVID.

I hate self-fulfilling prophesies.

Link to paper:

Associations of Depression, Anxiety, Worry, Perceived Stress, and Loneliness Prior to Infection With Risk of Post–COVID-19 Conditions by Wang etc al, JAMA Psychiatry (2022)

Categories
Personal Growth Relationships

Read Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

Read Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

An introvert spends a year trying to live like an extrovert with hilarious results and advice for readers along the way.

This was entertaining — more memoir than serious non-fiction. Biggest takeaway was to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.

Encapsulated in this quote: “That’s the truth of the world… Nobody waves — but everybody waves back.” – Nick Epley, a researcher she talked to

Being charismatic:

  • Hold eye contact while shaking hands
  • Ask a genuine open ended question
  • Ask how they feel about it
  • Validate their feelings

Events for networking:

  • Go to events that actually sound fun
  • Stay at least an hour
  • Arrive on time
  • Talk to 3 people
  • Try to really connect with 1

“Some women don’t need so much help with public speaking as with the self-doubt and self-loathing that hold them back from getting involved in it.” – Viv Groskop, How to Own the Room

Categories
Romance

Read The Arrangement

Read The Arrangement

Carter Haywood lives for the weekends—specifically the one weekend every month when he escapes real life, with all the pressures of work and caring for his special needs brother, to do whatever he wants, with whomever he wants. Sex is only a release; he’s not looking for love, a relationship or even a second night with the same man, until he walks into a bar and finds someone who makes leaving it all behind impossible. After one incredibly passionate encounter, he breaks his rule and goes back. He needs to see this man again. And again.

Damaged goods. That’s all Reed Kincaide sees and hears when he looks in the mirror. Anxiety and ADHD define his life and he’s learned to keep people at a distance, never letting them get close enough to know who he really is. When Carter proposes a monthly weekend of sex without strings, it’s the ideal arrangement for him. Or so he thinks. Every month, leaving Carter proves to be more and more difficult. It’s not only the intensely hot sex they have in their hotel suite; Reed wonders about the secret life Carter refuses to share.

As months pass and they grow closer Reed finds himself falling for Carter, but he needs more than hurried hugs and farewell kisses. He wants it all. Letting Reed into his carefully constructed family life could upset Carter’s whole world, but it might be the risk he’s finally willing to take, if it means keeping Reed. Once bodies are engaged, the heart is sure to follow, and Carter and Reed discover that holding on to each other is the first step in letting go of the past.

Liked this although I wasn’t sold on the main character Carter — he had a lot of bad behavior to make up for. It was great to see Reed come into his own, to stand up for himself and what he wanted.