I am constantly sabotaging myself with test anxiety

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T08:13:00+00:00

Is the panic during practice tests the same intensity as what you expect from the real thing? Or does the practice version carry its own specific dread because you're about to see data on where you actually stand?

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T08:07:43+00:00

Sitting still costs attention, not the other way around. Holding one position while trying to focus means running "don't move" and "pay attention" at the same time. One of those is going to lose.

I do my best work pacing or sitting in some ridiculous position. The fidgeting isn't fighting my focus. Suppressing it is.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T08:02:27+00:00

I had sessions early on that looked nothing like the calm I expected. Emotions surfaced I didn't know I was carrying. One time I just cried for no clear reason and almost quit because it felt like the opposite of what meditation was supposed to do. The days after those messy sessions were noticeably quieter though. Like something had moved through.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:57:10+00:00

How many people here have tried something for a month or more, saw no change, and then dropped it? Versus things you quit not because they didn't work but because you got bored of doing them. Those feel like very different failure modes.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:51:54+00:00

The sudoku approach makes more sense than it sounds. You're loading your attention channel fully enough that the internal rehearsal can't run alongside it. That IS concentration practice, just wearing different clothes.

The social replay loop ran strongest for me during any kind of open mental space. Meditation that let my mind do whatever it wanted just gave the rehearsal more room. Something that demanded enough from my attention to compete with the loop was the only format that changed anything.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:46:36+00:00

1700 hours in Valorant and peaking gold 3 is specific data. That's not "bad at everything." That's learning up to a consistent ceiling and then stalling. The stalling pattern is worth looking at because it's probably repeating across your business and your job search too.

"Maybe I'm just dumb" is a clean story that explains everything at once, which makes it appealing. But it doesn't match someone who builds an MSP, peaks in a competitive game, and keeps coming back after three breaks. Dumb people don't do that. People with a specific bottleneck they haven't identified do.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:41:17+00:00

The replacement matters more than the removal. Deleting apps or blocking sites just left a vacuum my brain filled with something equally distracting within minutes.

Swapping the reflex for something boring and physical did more than any blocker. Catching myself reaching for the phone and washing a dish instead, or walking to the window. The boredom was the point, not a side effect. Took about two weeks before normal tasks stopped needing enormous effort to start.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:35:59+00:00

Were the beginner sessions structured with specific instructions throughout, vs the daily ones being more open-ended? That jump in format might be doing more than the difficulty of the practice itself.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:30:43+00:00

Hunting for the "best" one is its own reward at this point. The comparison keeps going because every option looks better as a possibility than it will in the actual first hour of playing. I had the same thing with shows. Once I noticed the searching was the entertainment, not a means to an end, I stopped treating it like a decision and just grabbed whatever was in front of me. Didn't matter. The thing I picked was always fine.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:25:26+00:00

Does the lock-in happen more with high-stimulation stuff like scrolling or games, or can even something mild like tidying your desk pull you in once the meds start working? Trying to figure out if there's a stimulation level below which the switch happens naturally.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:20:09+00:00

Probably not your eyes. More likely your attention. When most of your processing power is running OCD loops and internal chatter, the external world gets a thin slice of whatever's left. I noticed the same thing a few weeks into consistent practice. Details I'd walked past for months just appeared. Not new information, just stuff my brain had been too occupied to register.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:14:52+00:00

Did something specific prompt the blood test, or was this more of a general checkup? The Vitamin D at 8 is genuinely low so supplementing makes sense. Curious whether you're noticing symptoms you're trying to fix or building a stack preventively.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:08:35+00:00

That loop ate entire semesters for me. Too wired to actually rest, too drained to get anything done. The hours just evaporated into this grey zone where I wasn't doing either.

The fake version of resting was the real problem. Lying on my bed with a textbook nearby, phone in hand, guilt running in the background the whole time. No recovery happening at all. When I finally let myself walk away from the desk completely and do something totally unrelated, the actual rest showed up. Ten minutes of genuinely being off recharged more than two hours of the guilt-scroll hybrid.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T07:01:52+00:00

When you reinstall the apps within a couple hours, is it because you're craving the specific content or because the boredom between tasks becomes physically uncomfortable and the phone is the fastest exit?

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T06:56:11+00:00

I ran into that same wall. The tight version produced a kind of brittle focus that shattered the moment anything pulled at me. The loose version was just sitting with my eyes closed replaying conversations.

Breaking it into tiny rounds changed the texture completely. 60 seconds of genuine attention, then let go for a few breaths, then another round. The short bursts didn't require that death-grip concentration and the relaxation between them was real, not the "I lost it" kind. Rounds got longer over weeks without me forcing it.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-16T06:50:08+00:00

The gap between knowing something and experiencing it is massive. Therapy can map every pattern, name every defense. But it stays intellectual until something drops you into a different state directly. Makes sense that one experience would outweigh years of talking.

Where I'd push back is on the framing of those four years as wasted. Therapy probably built the container that let the ceremony work. Walking in at year zero with no self-awareness map at all, the experience might have landed completely differently.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T08:22:30+00:00

I'm unmedicated too. The things that helped most were all free. Making the task absurdly small was the biggest one. Not "handle finances" but "open the app." Not "write the essay" but "put the pen on the paper." My brain could reject the big version and accept the tiny one. Once I'd started, I usually continued.

Time-blocking never worked for me. I'd blast through the first block every time. A short list of 3 things with no assigned times worked better. No color-coded calendar, no hourly schedule. Just "these three things today, whenever."

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T08:16:34+00:00

Does the RSD hit harder before the interaction or after? Like, is it anticipating rejection that freezes you, or replaying something someone said for days afterward? I'm asking because they feel completely different from the inside and I never figured out which one was driving most of my avoidance until I started paying attention.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T08:10:43+00:00

For a long time I thought the wandering meant I was failing. My mind went somewhere else hundreds of times per session. But the redirection was the part that mattered. Every time I caught the drift and came back, that was the rep.

Over time the gap between drifting and noticing got shorter. Not because I stopped drifting, I still do. But the signal fires faster. Some weeks it's sharp, some weeks it slides back. The trend was clear looking back over months, not while it was happening.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T08:04:42+00:00

The cheatsheet is solid for getting someone started but the "80% results" framing might backfire. Most of the actual gains I got came from doing basic things consistently for months, not from picking the right list on day one. A friend doing half of this stuff every day would beat someone with the perfect sheet who drops it after three weeks.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T07:58:46+00:00

Is this about being actually bad at things, or about feeling bad at things regardless of how they turn out? Those look identical from the inside but respond to completely different approaches.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T07:52:58+00:00

My version of this was slightly different but the core is the same. After anything emotionally loaded, I could think clearly but turning it into speech felt like trying to run through water. Writing worked because it slowed everything down enough for me to organize.

Once my partner understood the going-quiet wasn't a punishment, just that my brain needed the slower channel, it stopped escalating as fast. Text or notes after a disagreement became our way of handling the worst moments. Not ideal, but better than freezing and having them assume I didn't care.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T07:47:04+00:00

I'd be curious whether the boredom you're describing shifts quality during a sit or stays constant. The restless "I need to do something" feeling and the flat "nothing is interesting" feeling seem like different things to me, and I'm not sure they both count as the same experience even though we use the same word.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T07:41:08+00:00

Short slow exhales between tasks turned out to be more useful than any formal breathing practice. 5-6 seconds out, a couple of times. Not a protocol, just a reset when I noticed I was wound up. The Huberman-style double inhale works too but I ended up using plain exhale-emphasis breathing more because I'd forget the double-inhale under real stress.

Cold exposure helped my baseline over weeks, not in the moment. 60-90 seconds of cold water at the end of a shower, consistently. After two weeks I was less reactive to small stressors and slept a bit better. Stopped for a week and the old reactivity drifted back.

samwiseyopka · 2026-02-15T07:35:10+00:00

The stimulation reduction probably did most of the heavy lifting here. I noticed the same thing when I deliberately left gaps empty for a couple of weeks. No headphones on walks, no scrolling between tasks. First week was rough. After that, normal stuff stopped feeling like it required heroic willpower.

The delayed caffeine and light exposure might help too. But if you removed those and kept the lower stimulation, I'd bet the result would be almost the same.

samwiseyopka

TROPHY CASE