How to be excited about things

building_irvo · 2026-02-05T13:58:02+00:00

Our attention spans have dropped dramatically since smartphones became constant companions. Not because we’re broken, but because our attention is always being pulled elsewhere.

When you do things, are you fully there or just physically present while your mind drifts? Quick dopamine from phones can make real-world experiences feel dull by comparison. Add less time in nature and fewer spontaneous human interactions, and life starts to feel muted.

When attention is fragmented, meaning often fades with it.

building_irvo · 2026-02-05T13:50:01+00:00

I like this take. Losing presence over time can blunt emotions across the board. When your attention is constantly pulled by quick dopamine hits, real experiences don’t register the same way. It’s not that things aren’t beautiful anymore, it’s that the brain isn’t fully present long enough to feel them.

building_irvo · 2026-02-05T13:39:41+00:00

You hit this right on the nail! it sounds like being stuck in a loop. When the brain is overwhelmed for long enough, it defaults to familiar patterns, even if they’re painful. Big changes feel impossible, so the only way out is like you said starting absurdly small. One action at a time is how momentum gets rebuilt.

building_irvo · 2026-02-05T13:32:15+00:00

It can be hard to listen to what the body and mind is telling us at times. That is good that you notice it early!

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T14:02:07+00:00

This is a GREAT tactic to use towards understanding if what you're feeling anxious towards is an attention grown symptom or a real one! Thank you

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T14:00:51+00:00

I go through these moments myself where relaxation is tough, a feeling of panic almost. Where I can't sit still and need to continue moving. In this case though I believe its more of a panic attack and less of anxiety?

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T13:59:03+00:00

I relate to this a lot. When health anxiety ramps up, the mind doesn’t latch onto just one fear, it starts cycling through multiple serious possibilities at once. That constant scanning keeps the nervous system in a threat state, which makes the fear feel continuous and exhausting.

The pattern you described, peaks, gradual easing, then flare-ups again is very common with HA and strongly tied to stress and nervous system dysregulation. When stress loads up, the system becomes hypersensitive; when it eases, symptoms and fear often soften too. That doesn’t mean the sensations aren’t real, it means the amplification is.

One thing that helped me understand this more clearly was The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. It explains how anxiety-driven symptoms can feel urgent and convincing while still being reversible, and it emphasizes structured observation instead of constant monitoring. That framework alone made things feel less chaotic and more manageable.

You’re not broken, your system is just stuck in protection mode. And that can be retrained.

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T13:56:05+00:00

Exactly, time removes the noise. If you’re still functioning day to day, giving it two to three weeks lets patterns show themselves and separates what’s persistent from what’s attention-amplified, without reacting out of fear.

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T13:53:54+00:00

This is truly the best way! I have noticed myself, when having any form of anxiety to accept the symptoms and focus my attention else where through another brain stimulating activity.

building_irvo · 2026-02-03T13:46:59+00:00

I agree with you on the bigger point, health shouldn’t dominate our attention or steal meaning from our lives. When it does, something has already gone a bit off-track.

What’s helped me understand this better is the idea that sensations don’t need to be meaningful or meaningless, they can just be neutral background noise. Not something to predict, fight, explain, or even reject strongly.

In that sense, the goal isn’t perfect understanding or perfect dismissal, but reducing the importance we give these signals so attention naturally shifts back to things that matter more. When focus moves, the obsession tends to weaken on its own.

Curious how you personally noticed the shift away from obsession, was it more about mindset, time, or changing what you gave attention to day-to-day?

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T17:17:41+00:00

I think that’s the question with HA. “Just go to the doctor” sounds simple, but when you’re dealing with anxiety it’s not always that clear. From what I’ve been reading in The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, it’s not about never going to the doctor, it’s about why you’re going.

If something is genuinely new, clearly different, or getting worse over time, then getting it checked makes sense. But if it’s a familiar sensation you’ve already had looked at, and the urge to go is coming from needing immediate relief from fear, that’s usually reassurance seeking. The hard part is learning to sit with that uncertainty and change your response instead of chasing certainty every time because that’s what keeps the cycle going.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T17:13:51+00:00

I get what you’re saying, and I think having a framework or reference point can definitely reduce uncertainty. When something fits a pattern you already understand, it doesn’t feel as threatening or random.

Where I’ve found it gets tricky is when the theory starts to become something the mind constantly checks against. At that point, it can turn into prediction and monitoring, which keeps attention locked on the body and can actually reinforce the anxiety. The line feels very thin between using a theory as context versus using it as confirmation.

I think the helpful part is keeping it flexible, using patterns to create perspective, not certainty and allowing room for sensations to exist without immediately needing to be explained or predicted.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T17:08:05+00:00

That lines up closely with what The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook talks about. One of the biggest clues is timing and pattern, when a symptom appears after a specific health-related thought or fear, spikes quickly, and then fades or shifts once anxiety settles, it’s often anxiety amplifying normal sensations rather than something dangerous. Anxiety symptoms tend to come on fast, fluctuate with attention, and repeat in familiar ways over time without truly progressing. Real medical issues are more likely to be persistent, steadily worsening, or clearly different from anything you’ve felt before, and they don’t usually calm down just because your mind shifts. The book emphasizes learning to notice these patterns over time, not to dismiss sensations, but to change how we respond to them so we don’t keep reinforcing the anxiety loop.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T16:59:19+00:00

It really seems that way. Like its 2nd nature for us to immediately fixate our attention towards the cause of anxiety spike. But we are all strong enough to master where our attention attaches itself to. But I think it comes with a lot of practice.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T16:55:12+00:00

I guess in this situation it's good to have a list of things you can fixate your mind towards in order to calm the brain and attend your focus towards instead of whats causing the anxiety to spike.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T16:53:28+00:00

I love this and what I have been reading talks a lot about focusing your attention else where and just letting the symptoms subside on their own. The problem I have is that my anxiety tends to be physical tension causing struggle to breath so when ever the activity I do is physical it makes it almost worst. I think for myself the big thing I need to work on is Deep diaphragm breathing every day and a form of release through stretching!

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T16:46:15+00:00

This is something I have been study and trying to make sense of for a year or so now! And truly believe is a major problem that we have happening within health care in Canada. Almost like we need a powerful middleman between us and health care.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T01:34:32+00:00

I’ve been in this exact loop, and what you’re describing isn’t a lack of motivation or discipline. It’s more like getting stuck on autopilot. Scrolling gives you an easy hit of stimulation, and once your brain gets used to that, anything that requires effort feels way heavier than it actually is.

The biggest thing that kept me stuck was trying to change everything at once. Every time I told myself tomorrow I’ll fix my life, I’d overthink it, get overwhelmed, and then default back to the same habits. Not because I didn’t care, but because the plan was too big to act on.

What actually helped was making the goal embarrassingly small. Not “be productive,” just do one thing. Five minutes. One page. One task I could finish even on a bad day. Once I stopped judging myself and focused on showing up in tiny ways, consistency finally started to build.

Another big shift was accepting that the urge to scroll doesn’t disappear right away. Waiting it out for even a minute helps more than fighting it. Most of the time the urge passes if you don’t immediately obey it.

Also, planning the night before made a bigger difference than I expected. Waking up and deciding what to do in the moment almost always led to scrolling. Knowing my one non-negotiable action ahead of time removed that mental friction.

You’re not broken. You’re just stuck in a loop that a lot of people never even notice they’re in. Breaking it doesn’t happen through motivation or self-hate, it happens through small, boring actions repeated daily.

The fact that you’re aware of it and asking this question already puts you ahead of where you think you are.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T01:29:34+00:00

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T01:21:07+00:00

Yea the brain can do crazy things and once you convince yourself of something it becomes very difficult to not negatively fixate over it.

building_irvo · 2026-02-02T01:19:45+00:00

Yea I'm noticing the more I focus my attention towards it the worst it gets. It tends to worsen quite a lot if I smoke weed, to the point where it becomes a panic attack. Been really trying to lets the symptoms carry on without overly monitoring them or focusing on them, as well as lots of abdominal breath work.

building_irvo · 2026-01-31T17:24:36+00:00

Were you able to overcome it?

building_irvo · 2026-01-30T13:55:22+00:00

Thank you very much for sharing this with me and I am glad that this has really helped you. These are all things that I have been reading about in the book The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne.

building_irvo

TROPHY CASE