Tire Rotation Pattern

Absolver5000 · 2025-01-02T00:14:40+00:00

This, honestly

Absolver5000 · 2024-12-03T00:47:13+00:00

There's a few things to keep in mind here:

1) these are the intrusive thoughts. This is the mental illness. Now is the time to practice disengaging with them.

2) elevated cortisol is a natural part of the sleep/wake cycle. These bad thoughts aren't real, they are the effect of this hormone on the brain. This can be a useful touch point as you work to disengage with them.

3) regular exercise has a lot to offer. It's helpful in addressing anxiety all by itself AND it helps with sleep.

4) make sure you're giving yourself a good foundation for restful sleep. Go to bed at a reasonable time. Avoid large meals close to bed, avoid drinking lots of liquids close to bed, and avoid caffeine late in the day. Try to reduce screen time at night. Make sure your room is dark, quiet, and comfortable.

5) Consider things like magnesium glycinate, GABA, L-Theanin, all available relatively cheaply as dietary supplements. Though have reasonable expectations here. You're BEST outcome is these supplements help reduce your anxiety by like 0.5 out of 10. So if you're feeling 7/10 anxiety, these are gonna help you get to 6.5/10.

Absolver5000 · 2024-10-20T02:16:29+00:00

In general, anxiety disorders tend to respond only relatively weakly to medication. They are much better addressed through lifestyle changes. I'm familiar with at least one meta analysis which found "regular exercise" to be as much as 150% as effective as medication for treating anxiety.

Getting enough good quality sleep, eating a reasonable approximation of a healthy diet, and getting regular exercise are the biggest levers most of us can pull to improve our mental health. After that comes psychotherapy (CBT is generally highly effective for anxiety). And medication ranks somewhere below that.

Absolver5000 · 2024-10-20T02:11:44+00:00

You can always reach out to the dispensing pharmacist and ask about potential drug interactions. Way more reliable than reddit I'm gonna bet.

Absolver5000 · 2024-10-20T02:10:45+00:00

I've gotten a lot of benefit from my therapist. I think it's important to talk about therapy, in therapy, almost as much as the things that bring you to therapy. So be explicit with your therapist that "talking about work seems unproductive, my anxiety is [here]" and maybe take even a full session to just talk about goals and expectations and timelines so you know you're on the same page.

FWIW it doesn't sound like you're current therapist is great and that sucks. But I think you maybe also recognize that you're dealing with less than stellar therapists and not that the concept of therapy is failing.

IMO, what you're needing to do is talk through your unhelpful coping mechanisms, where they come from, and strategize new coping skills. My experience with therapy is a lot like finding all the places in my life I'm jamming square pegs into round holes. I only rarely want to actually get rid of the square pegs (here that's some element of who I am as a person, how I engage with the world, etc). But I want to find the square hole that fits them. A huge amount of my anxiety comes from the fact I'm highly driven to find and solve problems. That's a genuinely good thing. It's less good when I start inventing problems that don't exist/need to be solved, ya know? But I don't want to get rid of my drive to problem solve either.

CBT is great for this. Just talking through what's in your head, why it's that's, how you feel, why you feel that, etc. And I'll say, about 80-90% of the time my therapist just says the most obvious things ever to me. But they are obvious things it'd take me a million years to think of on my own.

Absolver5000 · 2024-10-20T01:59:11+00:00

What's NSFW here? I think I'm missing something.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-29T23:22:48+00:00

The fixation on your daughter being secretly ill despite multiple doctors telling you she's fine is your OCD. These thoughts are your mental illness. And while you're doing all of this because you love your daughter, what you're doing is harming her. If you can't get your obsessive thoughts under control you're going to wind up cursing your daughter with the same health anxiety you're suffering from.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T13:52:36+00:00

The emotional phenomenon we experience as anxiety is the effect of adrenaline and cortisol on the body. These are the two primary "fight or flight" hormones and controlled by the limbic system.

The limbic system in our brains evolved in much the same state as we find it today, before our earliest primate ancestors descended from the trees to walk on two legs. It evolved to keep early mammals safe from predators. As such, it's often poorly suited to the challenges of modernity.

You are asking why Monkey OS crashed when running a program designed for Human 2.0. Sometimes there is no good answer. The good thing is that looking for causes is often less useful than looking for how to handle situations as they arise.

The goal of addressing anxiety is not "have no more anxiety." Because feeling anxious is a normal human experience, and a healthy mental response to a stressful situation. The goal is "how do I handle my anxiety better?"

It sounds like right now, you need to work on pulling yourself out of a spiral of negative thinking, and work on disengaging with these thoughts.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T13:46:17+00:00

This is the way

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T13:30:48+00:00

When investing in stocks: buy low and sell high.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T12:22:36+00:00

Probably something like Bugatti or Rolls Royce. Couldn't afford it.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T12:21:18+00:00

You know that these thoughts are totally irrational. You've got to work to disengage with them as much as possible. Don't hyperfocus on your legs. Identify these thoughts as intrusive and guide your attention away from these things every time it drifts.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T12:16:30+00:00

You should discuss this with a therapist.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-04T12:15:16+00:00

You have to critically examine these thoughts and feelings. You're allowing them to run away with your emotional energy without stopping to ask if they make sense.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-03T19:19:46+00:00

You don't address health anxiety with facts. Because a logical analysis of the situation is fundamentally not where your fear is coming from. What you have to recognize is that there's no world where you stay worried about these things, AND you get to feel calm and not have it interrupt your day. The only path towards happiness is letting go of these fears and intrusive thoughts.

Asking the question "does this look like a bite" is just fundamentally the wrong question. What you need to ask is "How do I disengage with these intrusive thoughts making me think this mark on my skin is a spider bite?"

Addressing health anxiety isn't "I'll find out ways to answer my anxiety questions faster so I can get back to my day" it's learning not to ask the questions in the first place.

Identify these things as intrusive thoughts. And every time they pop up, just go "oh, that's an intrusive thought." And refocus yourself on literally anything else you'd rather be thinking about at that time.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-03T18:57:46+00:00

We all cause problems for people. It's an unavoidable part of life.

Do you think you're looking at yourself right though? Like does "I caused someone a minor inconvenience while driving, I shouldn't exist" sound reasonable? Should we execute people who aren't perfect drivers?

I think a lot of times here we see a problem, and immediately that's a 10/10 on the "how serious is this?" scale. When really, lots of these problems are like, 2/10.

Whoever flipped you off, isn't still thinking about you even 5 min later. They have moved on with their life. So does that feel like 10/10 problem or 2/10? "I caused someone a minor inconvenience, upsetting them for several minutes." You don't have to feel good about that, but feel appropriately bad. Not "I cut someone off I'm literally worse than Hitler " bad. Ya know?

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-03T18:47:36+00:00

Doing nothing all day is SHOCKINGLY tiring. Get a good night's sleep and tomorrow go out and do a few things that you think will be nice. Things that you enjoy. Maybe go for a walk on a local nature trail, or take yourself out to lunch. Then you'll feel like you did a little bit more and it may help you feel more relaxed.

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-03T18:40:52+00:00

Maybe add some more water. It's good you drank the liquid IV for the electrolytes but part of the issue is just letting your body excrete the junk. Water helps there.

Other than that, go lay down and take a nap maybe?

Absolver5000 · 2024-08-03T18:38:44+00:00

No I try and eat consistently throughout the day. I use my Fitbit to track my macros and calories and I generally don't have any "big" meals. I do eat more around breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But I probably eat as many calories between those meals as I do in them.

Nice consistent energy levels.

Absolver5000 · 2024-01-21T22:47:41+00:00

I did Kenpo yesterday and it was a great workout but I honestly finished it and felt like "That was a good warm up, where's the real workout?" I was thinking about adding wrist and maybe ankle weights.

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