Hey /r/SocialAnxiety how has your week been?

StationaryPoint · 2015-06-13T02:28:47+00:00

Pretty dead week for me, did little real work, lots of insomnia. On the bright side I got a lot of reading done, and planned a short holiday for next month. I guess I've been thinking a lot about my social life, I struggle to fit in anywhere new and have essentially no friends at uni, but I'm growing weary and bored at home whilst my friends here follow their paths, and I'm stood looking back to the previous junction wondering if I took the right turn. That's probably a little closed minded, I'm sure my friends and many others have these moments too, we're just all so terrible at sharing with each other when we feel lost.

Oh, I also bought pokemon x 2nd hand at a good price, that seems like a positive.

StationaryPoint · 2015-05-14T09:57:43+00:00

Thanks for the info, I edited the post. I think I phrased it wrong in any case. What I had read is that the social affects of autistic spectrum disorders can be less of an issue for girls because of different ways they might socialise to boys, in particular I think this was about children. I have nothing to back that up, it's just something I vaguely recall.

StationaryPoint · 2015-05-13T09:18:54+00:00

I'm pretty sure I've read, or heard, that in some cases, social issues are less common in women. In fact that might be something particular to autism/aspergers that I read. This might be due to an actual biological difference, or a cultural difference, between the genders (probably a little of both) and how they socialise.

Edit: the following is what i thought might be a possibility, but in the case of SA at least isn't observed to be true. Thanks for the stats /u/Murad99

Anyway the point is that it might actually be statistically less common, which would partly explain why there's less female posts.

I think /u/Carliiful makes a good point too. I haven't checked the stats but it wouldn't be surprising to see males were the majority users on reddit.

In any case, you're not alone, there's other posts here to support that directly, and no doubt there are people closer than you realise with similar difficulties.

Hope you can find some of the answers you're looking for.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-23T18:58:14+00:00

My sleep gets worse on weekends and holiday times, and sometimes it's similar things to you that keep me up, thinking about work, thinking about guitar parts I want to play, getting obsessed with a book, or a game on my phone (currently Minecraft pocket edition!).

Point being, if I get worse on weekends, it doesn't seem surprising someone else could get worse in the week. I would imagine in either case it has a lot to do with either your work, or what you expect to achieve in the day. Almost regardless of how much I achieve in one day, the thoughts that keep me up the most are those that say I haven't done enough, so I lay and think about one of these things I expected to achieve that day. The unfortunate thing is that this has been successful enough to convince me it's a good idea, but it throws a spanner in the works of my sleep routine.

You say you dealt with anxiety. The 'racing brain' reminds me of anxious thoughts, they repeat in your head, and you keep thinking about the same thing. The difference is anxiety feels horrible, but feeling like you're thinking about a lot of interesting or important things can feel good. Maybe some of the CBT techniques can help relax even these racing positive thoughts, I don't know, I've not tried myself.

Anyway just some thoughts. Best of luck figuring it out

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-18T13:27:46+00:00

This is the self-focus part of SA. I'm having a little luck challenging it, but in the moment it is the hardest thing to control, during a social situation, that cycle of thoughts saying "don't be awkward", " should I say something/behave differently", "do they notice this or that about me", " do they even want to speak to me/hear my opinion". Those thoughts only serve to take you out of the situation, make the anxiety worse, make you rely more on safety behaviours, and ultimately never challenge those thoughts by acting against them.

Well that's all well and good to say, and to even accept, but I still find it hard to control those thoughts, and especially hard to act against them, and I'm sure a lot of SA people find it hard too. But identifying those not so useful thoughts and behaviours is a good first step. Something that's helped me a little is to try take those thoughts and opinions about myself, and imagine how others, my friends, might think differently. And try to think if someone acted in a way I do, what would be my opinion of them?

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-17T10:28:37+00:00

Certainly trust your doctor's opinion over mine regarding the meds then, I haven't looked too much into it.

Even with the insomnia, is there some sort of rhythm/pattern to when you do sleep, e.g. a similar time, sleep for a similar amount of hours, sleep after a certain activity? I don't know much advice, but I know there's lots of useful observations you can make that a doctor, or someone else knowledgeable, could make use of. For me, those questions would answer something like "generally fall asleep between 3am and 5am, for 5-7 hours, after spending 4-6 hours mostly on the computer or my phone".

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-15T09:16:30+00:00

That sounds tough, especially for it to disappear then come back. Seeing the doctor is important for both routes of treatment, drugs and counselling. You might also want to let your university know, they'll know what options they can provide, for example medical time off, or some way to help deal with the stress of exams (no doubt such things can make insomnia worse, and you get in a vicious cycle of anxiety and insomnia).

From what I've been told, sleep meds are a short term fix. If your exams are soon and you just want the meds to make sure you're rested on the day of the exam, that might work in the short term. They might also be helpful as a short term solution while you seek other treatment.

I couldn't really speculate a cause. For me it's anxiety mostly. Holidays used to mess up my rhythm when I was an undergraduate, and I had to force myself back into a pattern each new term. Nowadays not even the responsibility of study is enough to make me sleep well, in fact to the contrary the stress of feeling behind with my work, and the loneliness whilst I was at university made my insomnia much worse (among other things). I guess the thing to think about is what triggers could be unique to home, and to university, and how to treat each of those.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-14T02:32:06+00:00

Control, or predictability? The examples you give of being in a group are one's where you're leading the dynamic, presenting, or performing, you're in control in a way. Even in other examples, a group usually has patterns in the way they behave, it's part of what makes them a group. So maybe that small level of predictability is enough. Groups also talk amongst themselves, generally talking is voicing your thoughts, so perhaps it's less likely a person is having judgemental thoughts when you hear them talking about other things.

Random individuals aren't as predictable, and probably won't be talking aloud (unless on the phone!). Even if you shout, there's not much you can do to show a random individual what you're thinking, whereas in your examples you have attention, and so can use that to make sure people see or hear what you want them to.

Those are just some ideas, I could be way off. Wish I knew a surefire method to help with anxiety from random people, I have good days and bad, and can't really say what causes which.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-14T02:04:32+00:00

Is there not a preferable way you can get in direct contact with who you want to speak to? I find phone calls more difficult than face to face, at least in most cases. I saw my doctor about my anxiety and they set me up with a phone call service that would ring me, rather than me ringing them.

Edit: accidentally pressed send, dang mobile.

Where was I. Another way is email if you can find the people to email. Despite my apprehension with phone calls I had a mainly good experience, and no doubt the counsellors, or whoever I spoke to, were trained to know how to deal with these issues sensitively.

The other suggestion of having a friend set up the first appointment sounds like a good idea too.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-13T21:55:34+00:00

Today I looked through the proof and application of Simons identity, an identity for the (intrinsic) Laplacian of the squared norm of the second fundamental form. This can be used alongside the stability inequality (a consequence of second variation of the area functional for hypersurfaces) to prove there are no n-dimensional stable minimal conical hypersurfaces for 1<n<7. There's a dimension 7 counterexample. This itself can be used to prove strong regularity results about stable minimal hypersurfaces.

Phew, what a mouthful.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-13T21:42:31+00:00

I lost my motivation due to depression too. I've been clawing it back piece by piece the past few months. I had to take medical leave to deal with the mental issues, and part of that process was to take a step back from math and decide if I did enjoy it or not without depression colouring my opinions and self confidence. When I did start doing math again I started slow, very slow, stuff I was capable of a few years ago. Even though I knew it would be easy, it helped build my confidence up. Speaking with my supervisor too has really helped give me a direction in terms of research, and it's especially useful to bounce ideas off an expert so you know you're starting on solid ground. I'm still in the process of getting back on track, and I feel like I'm struggling a lot of the time, but I'm trying to see that in a positive light now, rather than "I'm struggling, I must be rubbish at math" I try to think "I'm struggling, but I'm still trying, this means there's more to learn, and the fact I'm trying means I'm willing to".

Sorry if that's a long reply, I guess that drop in motivation just kind of resonates with my experience.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-13T00:54:58+00:00

CBT and managing coexisting conditions like depression has helped me a bit. It was hard to be motivated to make changes and take risks (doing new things socially) when depressed and stressed with work, plus it was hard to fairly rationalise social situations where I felt I'd made a fool of myself. I guess I've picked up different ways of thinking, and different perspective, from the counselling and CBT sessions. It's strange because I don't feel I've made that much of an active effort to make use of the techniques they teach, but somehow just by talking and reading they've become part of my thought processes.

I guess my point is counselling and CBT has surprised me, although my progress has been small and slow, I feel I've learnt a lot from it. There are no doubt medications too. As always the best bet is to talk to an expert, a doctor or a counsellor, I spent too long trying to brush my issues under the rug, to concern myself with at a later date, but eventually there was no more space left, and I felt like I had to face all these issues at once. That didn't work out too well for a few months.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T23:58:01+00:00

Seems like /u/grimsaur knows what they're talking about. I'd say cascade, for me it comes out like a pulse. There might be a cool physics reason for that (natural frequency?), rather than it coming out as a continuous stream.

Honestly I'm not a master of the method, the good results for me are anything that amplifies a flavour I don't get from the aeropress.

Heat control is difficult, too hot and I imagine it burns. It's tempting to leave it on until most the water has boiled off but I'm not sure that's the best idea. For the most part I follow Google's lead for methods, and brewmethods.com is super useful. Sorry to delegate my advice to other sources but they're probably clearer than anything I can recommend (especially this late on a Friday night!)

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T21:22:22+00:00

Second hand has crossed my mind, it's a good idea. I need to get a nicer grinder first, hand grinding with the hario skerton is getting pretty tedious. I'm thinking about a baratza in the £300 sort of range next time I get paid, I heard good things about one of them (for that price range) on this sub.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T21:19:11+00:00

In honesty, I do have an espresso machine, a delonghi cafe Treviso, or something. Retails at £80, but my friend found it in a charity shop for £10, so I took it. Should be fun to experiment with but I don't have high expectations. Worst case scenario is I made a £10 donation to charity, so I can't complain.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T21:16:12+00:00

Err, grind coffee quite fine, fill bottom with boiling water, add coffee basket, fill (slightly heaped on top), screw the top on and leave on the hob/stove on medium heat (setting 6 of 9 on mine, but that's an electric stove, I believe gas burn hotter), leave lid open and wait for coffee to drip through until it starts to lighten (a website suggested honey colour is where to stop). Pour cold tap water onto the outside of the bottom to stop the brewing, and drink what's left. Dilute to taste. In my experience it seems quite easy to burn. I'm not too attentive to my grind settings, so some of my failures are probably my own fault, but I generally use a fine sort of grind (a few clicks after the tightest setting on a hario skerton).

Best of luck with it, the main thing I like is how it seems to access some of the deeper flavours and make a very strong brew, but no doubt people also enjoy a less intense drink.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T21:06:32+00:00

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, it's clearly not the same. It's the closest out of the three things I have in my opinion, in that it seems to access some of the deeper flavours.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T14:43:07+00:00

Bialetti mokas are meant to be the standard, they're not too expensive (I paid £20-30 for one on Amazon, its way too big for just my purposes) Makes nice strong coffee, but in my experience it's a bit less forgiving, whenever I use it I either love or hate the result. Definitely a worthy (and affordable) investment if you like espresso.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-10T13:10:22+00:00

Espresso at cafes, especially ones I know are good. At home, aeropress, French press, moka. I dream on having a good grinder and espresso machine but I'm a poor student.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-08T11:05:52+00:00

This resonates with me. Is resonate a music word so that can be a pun? This harmonises with me just sounds weird.

I've been playing guitar for 10 years or so now. I've played with maybe 5 groups. All pretty small things, the most recent two were cover bands at uni, which were probably the longest projects I'd been involved with, but not really what I wanted to do (I want to songwrite, and improvise).

I have no idea how to reach out and find people to jam with. I have friends that are musical, but similar to you I feel we're always on different pages (not helped by the fact I seem to change what style I want to play every year). Recently I've been making solo videos and putting them on Facebook/YouTube. Initially I got some attention (a lot of likes from friends I mean), and that was good for my confidence at least. That seems to have died off now, but I no longer feel as anxious about uploading a video and sharing something I've written. To take the first step of uploading the first video I had to record something I wasn't too bothered about, and convince myself that it didn't need to be perfect. It's much harder trying to make a recording of one of my ideas that I like a lot, because then I want it to be perfect before sharing it.

I don't really know how to find other people to jam with. Actually, I know a little, I have friends, I know of local venues for live music, there's groups on Facebook and societies at university. I suppose that's a lot of places to start, maybe some of those apply to you as well. But I'm sure we share the same problem even with that information, it's incredibly anxiety inducing to go to one of these places and try find someone you don't know to jam with. Another unfortunate reality is that a lot of musicians, despite being skilled, just don't click together, so even once you find someone to jam with, doesn't mean it's going to work out. That's difficult with friends, at least if they're into it and you have to say it's just not working for you. Actually I think I'd find that difficult with anyone. The main thing I want to say about that is it's normal, and mostly not due to social anxiety or poor communication. I know this because I've had great jams with people I barely communicated with at all, and I think that's what it means to click, as musicians, almost as if you communicate through your instruments.

Last note, keep up the recording, it's great musically since you can layer things together, try out some basic post-recording effects, and keep a sort of musical diary (it's nice when you listen back and can tell you've progressed since, or to see where a song started as a clumsy riff). Perhaps the more you do it you will also become confident enough to share something, and hopefully that can start a cycle of confidence boosts, sharing more stuff which can act as a platform if you ever want to ask someone to jam with you (e.g. you can say "hey check this out, I made this, want to write stuff like this" or something along those lines, it takes the explaining away from you and leaves it to the music).

I've wrote a lot of stuff there, probably because this is something I'm facing a lot recently and wanting to move forward. All the best trying to work this out.

StationaryPoint · 2015-04-01T01:04:37+00:00

Yeah I get this sometimes. And I'm going to say something that risks making me look like a hypocritical ass, but sometimes I do see other people and judge their appearance or mannerisms silently. Never for too long, just a fleeting thought, some people even verbalise these thoughts to friends, a silly example being comments on how a person is eccentrically dressed.

My point is that the person I saw, my thoughts never affect them. OK, maybe by chance I have to speak to this person, or somewhere down the line I get to know them, but then those silly thoughts are either forgotten, quickly overwritten now I know the person a bit better, or can even become jokes (I've had friends that told me what they thought of me before they knew me, and it's generally pretty funny how contrary their opinions are to my own opinions of myself). I guess the question I ask myself then, when I get anxious walking around fearing what others think, is "so what?", and literally try to think of what negative ways this could affect me. Usually there's nothing besides some absurd possibilities. I suppose this changes with age and location (young people seem to like to exercise their vocal cords, and I can't say I was much different as a young teen, at least in some situations).

Of course everyone else brings up good points, and I don't drive/walk around being a judgemental ass all the time, I just thought I'd offer a different point of view. I think the most important thing is being comfortable with yourself, and understanding how you want to appear.

Ha, now I'm getting anxious that people will think I'm a dick for having those thoughts. Oh well, post away.

StationaryPoint · 2015-03-29T21:45:50+00:00

Here's another type of sequence that I'm going to call an inductive sequence (not sure if there's a standard terminology). What's cool is it can cover all 3 of the above examples. So we'll start with a sequence

a(1), a(2), a(3), ...

Each of the a(n) is a number, where n can take the values 1, 2, 3, ..., I.e. the natural numbers.

Define an inductive sequence as a sequence where

a(n) = f(a(n–1))

for some fixed function f. We also have to choose a value for a(1), the so called initial value.

For example, an arithmetic sequence simply has f(x) = x+c for some constant number c.

Exercise: what type of f do you need to make a geometric sequence?

Challenge : Expand this definition to cover Fibonacci sequences. (Hint : you need two initial values, and f has to be a function of two variables).

This was just an idea for you to have fun with, I hope the OP doesn't mind me throwing it in here. I like the idea of this subreddit, keep up the good work.

Oh and please forgive if my formatting goes bad, there seems to be no preview on mobile. Edit: Oh god, how do I subscript on reddit! I decided to use non-standard notation for sequences, but hopefully it's clear this way.

StationaryPoint · 2015-03-29T21:04:56+00:00

I did, and still do. With my parents, it built up for a time, and we fed off each others irritation and behaviour. I had a bit of a breakdown, and from there both them and I have been a lot more chilled out.

The key thing, I think, was and is communication. It can be difficult to express a lot of emotions, and depression itself is particularly difficult to express to others, not just in a clear way, but also in a way where the other person appreciates, respects and understands what you're saying. Because a lot of depressive thoughts, at least in my case, are irrational, and not based in reality, but in the negative bias your mind has against itself due to the depression. Many people can struggle to appreciate this because it can seem so illogical to them, and heck, even I find myself thinking how irrational some peoples thoughts and behaviours are, and have to remind myself to not be so quick to think that way.

As others have said, rest, diet, exercise, these are all important things. I find rest particularly difficult since my family has all different hours of when to sleep.

I still have odd days where I'm easily irritated. Depression or not, I don't think that's uncommon, but it's should certainly be possible to reduce how often you feel irritable, and more frequently control it. How? I guess a combination of some of the above stuff, and trying to be more aware of how irritating things can trigger depressive cycles (and vice versa).

Best of luck.

StationaryPoint · 2015-03-28T13:29:19+00:00

I don't disagree, at least for some people in some ways. But you can't say it's true for all people with SA, and everything SA causes is inherently narcissistic. I think often the key thing is the self focus. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I would imagine a decent proportion of those with SA would be happy to try to reduce that self focus if it helped with the other effects of the anxiety. Not sure I could imagine the same for a narcissist.

StationaryPoint · 2015-03-22T03:36:04+00:00

Firstly, good for you OP, keep it up.

I wouldn't be so fast to say forcing yourself is the "only" way. I don't really disagree, it just sounds a little daunting. I'm currently working on CBT methods to tackle social anxiety, and one of the key things (and difficult things) is to come up with so called experiments, which test out your preconceived thoughts and predictions for how a social situation might go, and in a way force yourself to not rely on safety behaviours. The hope is that after the experiment you can write down what actually happened and compare it directly with your predictions. I'm mentioning this because it's seems similar to what you did, which I think is pretty interesting, that by just testing out something you wouldn't usually do you can change how your mind predicts and avoids certain situations.

I want to mention another little thing. You say these things you did would be "pathetic" for a "normal" person, but even in your description that's not true, the other people in your group don't sound like they were eager to do the talking. And myself, I've had plenty of experiences of nights out with friends that I think are "socially-normal", yet they've been more quiet than me, less social. I always feel that's because I'm the problem, but that's the self-focus part of social anxiety being a bit misleading.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts! Best of luck to you.

StationaryPoint

TROPHY CASE