Ask HN: Do you wake up with anxiety?
I am just a regular software engineer at a Silicon Valley company. I go to bed and wake up with anxiety on an almost daily basis. It all seems to stem from work.
Psychologically and philosophically speaking, the root cause is not work, rather my own mind etc. but :shrug:
I want to do a pulse check to see how common it is for folks working in tech, to suffer from this level of anxiety.
70 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadFor me, after some experimentation and ruling things out one by one, I found it to be bunch of things. First and foremost for me it was caused by work. Those lovely insane deadlines from the board are a big source of anxiety for me. Also, what I am consuming. Consuming from a diet perspective, news, social media etc etc. Oh and dont forget the after work beer or two some days!
My solution that has worked was to do the usual diet tidy up, reduction of alcohol, EXERCISE. Then some thinking on a daily basis. Not the cool kids meditation but more just mindful thankfulness for what my life has given me. With all the craziness in the world, being thankful for the little things made my daily existence more content and happy.
Important to take time out for yourself too. Get yourself a hobby or some other interest that sparks a passion in you again. Or just timeout to do whatever floats ones boat. Your time is important. Even if that means getting up with the lark, do it.
I have also found a technique, by accident, when I am feeling anxious or being confronted with a stressful situation in work or other situations. The technique involves a mental note to almost "rise" above or "tape a step back" from myself and the situation I am in. In real-time too. This enables me to detach from the moment, without going into shutdown and see what is causing the emotional build up. Normally, its the lack of understanding, the known unknowns if you get me. Most worry comes to zilch. Remember that.
Hope this helps you friend.
I try my hardest to do one hour's vigorous walking a day when I can, audiobooked and podcasted to the max. When it's raining cats and dogs I'm doing some yoga (I'm using my free trial of apple fitness but there are loads of similar programmes) and it really helps me. It's 100 times more effective than self-medicating.
I still wake sometimes but less often and when I do, I'll get out of bed for 10 mins (cooling down seems to help) and, daft though it sounds, repeat to myself that I'm in control of what I feel.
Anxiety is absolutely horrible and I think you've got to experience it to realise how awful it can be.
For me, anxiety is very bad, and often results from stressful situations, bad relationships and uncontrollable risks. My recommendation is: take notes of all your worries in the morning, try to find a way to address them; if some can’t be address then it’s no longer a problem. Friends and family also can help with anxiety a lot!
#2 is very effective in going back to sleep and has yet to get old / used up after years of use.
Reasoning one’s way out of anxiety is an attempt to avoid fear. Fear asks: “what if X happens to me?” Avoidance is an attempt to short-circuit the fear: “Oh, don’t worry! X can’t happen because of Y.” This may provide quick relief, but your anxiety is just as motivated as you are. It’s only a matter of time before the anxiety undermines Y with another doubt. So next, you need to prove Z, so that Y will definitely be true, so that you don’t have to be afraid of X. At each step of the way, you’re training your brain to believe that X is truly so dangerous that you must do everything in your power to get it off your mind. This causes the fear and the anxiety to get worse, not better. This is not the path that gets you where you want to be.
Avoidance can take many forms - rationalizing is just one of them. Even very healthy behaviors can be avoidant if you’re using them to run away from your anxiety.
If you’re struggling with anxiety, I can’t recommend psychotherapy strongly enough. Preferably, from a practitioner of evidence-based treatments such as CBT. Anxiety is so treatable! It’s amazing how manageable our worst fears can seem once we’ve learned how to approach them.
for me reasoning about something that made me anxious means to find the positive things that i can do if that thing does happen.
if i miss the deadline, then the pressure is off. it's only money, i'll need to reduce spending but i'll survive. the customer might cancel their contract? well, at least i don't have to deal with that jerk anymore. actually, why don't cancel the contract?
in other words rationalizing is to realize that X is not as bad as i think it is because or Y. not that it can't happen, but that it will happen, and that i can deal with it.
now i got a plan how to deal with X and so now i no longer need to be anxious about it.
That’s a great question, and the answer is: it depends! In the abstract, what you’re describing sounds like the opposite of avoiding a feared consequence. With fears, you want to be able to look them right in the face and say: “Yeah. That might happen. I can’t predict the future and I can’t know for sure. But if the worst does happen, I will find a way to accept that reality and adapt to it as best I can.”
(This sounds simple, but if you’re in the habit of avoiding fears, it won’t be easy at first. Your brain will twist itself into a pretzel to work out some way of avoiding the feared thing. This is where therapy is so useful: a professional knows how to guide you through a process of learning better mental/behavioral habits, and they have helped many people before you).
The nuance is intent. It’s healthy coping to open yourself up to the scary uncertainty and possibility that something bad may happen, and to commit to finding a way forward if and when that happens. But it may be avoidance if you’re trying to PROVE to yourself that there’s nothing to fear. It can also be avoidance to identify every possible scenario that might unfold and how you would deal with it - in that case, you’re trying to avoid the uncertainty by mapping it all out. (You can tell that this may be happening because your thinking becomes pretty baroque, and it always seems like there’s just one more scenario that needs to be mapped out and “fixed”.)
Generally, we humans have a hard time tolerating uncertainty. But the truth is, almost everything in life is uncertain to some degree.
There is a difference also between taking a realistic assessment of the facts of a situation for the purpose of making a realistic, fact-based assessment, versus “lawyering” the facts to get to a preferred conclusion. The former is healthy and appropriate: anxiety does skew our perception of facts, and it’s good to ground ourselves in objective evidence, whatever that evidence might say. The latter is an attempt to reassure the fear away, and the relief it offers just doesn’t “stick.” The anxiety tends to come back with a new what-if: “Oh yeah? You can handle losing that customer? Well what if you you lose several customers all at once? Then you won’t make your mortgage payment!” If you notice that happening, you want to slap a big, sticky label on that thought: that’s anxiety! And the answer is: “I don’t know. Yeah, I might lose every customer at the same time, lose my house, and end up on the street. But how likely is this? Is it an appropriate use of my time to plan for this contingency right now?”
As an example, trying to come up with reasons why the thought does not apply or is stupid is engaging with it. Trying to reason with the thought is engaging with it. Asking "how likely is this really?" is also engaging with it. Your anxious mind will always tend to fire new arguments at you, new doubts, and you'll just be giving the pointless thought more weight by ruminating on it. Just let the thought come and go, and then sit with the feeling of anxiety until it goes.
The book "Overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts" by Seif and Winston is a very nice book about this approach to dealing with anxiety.
And you're right -- trying to evaluate how likely the feared event is can be a form of engaging with the anxiety. You can even start cultivating satellite fears about whether you've got the right read on the situation and so forth.
Nevertheless, I would caution against a blanket rule that says "never touch an anxious thought." Sometimes, you need to make a decision. Let's say you're feeling feverish, and you think: "maybe I have COVID-19!" It is appropriate to fetch the thermometer from the medicine cabinet and check your temperature -- once. If the reading is normal, and you have the impulse to check again 30 minutes later, that would a good time to simply label the anxious thought and refrain from responding to it.
I would not self-diagnose here. I'm not sure what the :shrug: conveys, but you seem to somewhat downplay the anxiety by saying it's all in your own mind. I'd definitely seek professional help. It's pretty great, it's like debugging your mind and will help you further in your professional life.
I'm next to you
Historically, there were few bad periods. Looking back, each time it was because the environment in work was bad in some way. Either it was objectively bad in a way that I normalized in my head (meaning actually toxic but I considered that behavior normal at the time). Or, simply, you are bad match for actual position you are in. "Software engineering" is not one job, it is more of many different positions requiring different personality kinds.
The general healthy advice all worked for me to different degrees.
Exercise, meeting friends and having non-desk/screentime intensive hobbies.
Meeting friends and nurturing those relationships helped hugely. And sadly, the second most effective thing was switching to a less-intense team.
I've definitely seen other friends with unhealthy habits and anxiety in the industry too so I'd try some of these and see if it helps.
And you could definitely try therapy and/or medical help too.
I’ve wondered if the pandemic and quarantining has exacerbated this. I don’t have much going on in my life right now besides work, and get little human contact beyond Zoom calls with my coworkers.
This all started about six months into quarantine. Went away briefly but now back with a vengeance.
While I do have some personal drama going on, I'm thinking SAD is playing some part in this too-- the days are shorter and darker. I was already prone to that pre-COVID.
Mind that your relaxation space and work space are now permanently commingled. You can't get away from work. It lives with you now.
I don't have a solution for you, but hang in there. It should get better when you regain the option of leaving your work at the office.
The result has been several years of easier waking in the morning all year and no more SAD during winter.
The downside is the gloominess of other people’s dimmer lighting is very apparent to me.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional in medicine of any kind, just another techie, recovering from the depths of anxiety.
Do not blame yourself for your anxiety. Look for causes in your environment. By the shrug you seem to accept it, yet you know it's wrong.
Seek help, be it professional or supportive environment outside work, be it a new hobby, be it sky watching, etc... Add different stimulii to your mind before going to sleep.
Once you find out what is wrong, address it. Is your anxiety caused by uncertainty? What uncertainty? Do you have control over it?
BTDT, never again. All the money one making will all go to health care. There are plenty of discussions on HN about recovery advice.[0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25546043
Factors that help me coping when it hits anyway: - Breath slowly, deeply and on exhale remind myself that its only temporary - Put my feet on a cold floor - Smile and nod - Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (google it) - Walk outside
The best combination has been cutting sugar definitely plus a lot of sports (freeletics + a lot of running. Running helps A LOT)
You can't imagine how sugar affects anxiety before cutting it entirely. This is insane. Just having some sugar raises my anxiety for a few days.
Just try to follow Escapado advice and you'll endure it way more easily.
I vividly remember one day around that time I was on my way to a therapy session and I started crying in joy while on my bike, literally sobbing because I was so happy about how much my life has improved simply by changing this one variable. I went from "I don't know if I can live like this another year" to "I love my life and I can accept my handicap as an occasional unwanted companion but now I define what my life is and not my anxiety".
I always wonder in discussions like this how much more common they make the issue seem, because people don't exactly start threads saying "Ask HN: I don't have anxiety, and everything is great, is that common?"
The day of my return, as I drove in, I noticed I felt physically sick. It took me a few moments to realise it was anxiety, and that I had forgotten what it felt like.
I handed in my notice 3 days later.
I feel physically sick just thinking about joining the morning standup from home.
Working remotely has made it cutting off from work much easier.
I end up feeling anxious and guilty and sad all day.
>Naval Ravikant on Happiness, Reducing Anxiety, Crypto Stablecoins, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show - YouTube
https://youtu.be/HiYo14wylQw?t=2376 for the anxiety bit.
It's not a perfect strategy, but it helps to remind me not to be in a peak or trough, and instead think and see things long term and from a higher perspective.
One thing that was crucially important for me was to understand the biological causes of anxiety and how it occurs in the human brain. The book Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine Pittman and Elizabeth Karle helped me a great deal. The biggest insight that I got from that book was understanding that there are two distinct causes for anxiety (one that comes directly from external stimuli and one that comes from our thought processes) which we need to deal with in fundamentally different ways. The book gives a lot of advice and strategies for coping with both causes and I highly recommend it.
I started exercising a lot more and now find I am so tired I don't wake up before my alarm, reducing alcohol intake helped too.
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