I relate to this a lot. For me, noticing the loop is already half the battle, but it doesn't mean I can exit it.
What's helped is switching from "debugging" to "externalizing". Writing the thoughts down, like logs, makes them feel less real and less recursive. Once it's on paper, it loses some power.
One small thought exercise I picked up from The Power of Now that surprisingly works for me: when I'm deep in a rabbit hole, I take a few deep breaths and ask myself, "What will my next thought be?" For a moment everything just goes quiet, and the mind kind of resets. I've used this hack multiple times.
Another thing that matters more than I expected is just building basic habits. Exercise, walking, sleeping on time, eating properly. Nothing fancy, but having a pattern makes the bad loops less frequent.
I've also learned anxiety isn't always something you can reason away. Sometimes it's just a physical state and you have to change the input before the mind follows.
Writing down what you are feeling and thinking is really effective in reducing your anxiety. It does not need to be fancy or well written, just get it out of your head and unto a page.
Also helpful is developing a practice of observing yourself. Just make a mental note of what is going on. Something like "I am feeling sad", "My chest feels very tight", etc. The key here is to create some distance between yourself and these emotions.
My last recommendation is to develop acceptance. Most things lose their scariness once you accept them. Once you are fine with whatever scenario is causing you stress, it loses its sting. This can be hard to do but is extremely effective in quieting your mind.
Decades of reiterating to myself it's none of the verbose semantics and socialized sensory memory my brain tries to feed me (imposter syndrome for example), but is just biochemistry habit from exposure to social memes.
4-5 mile walk as often as possible. Any less and a sense of reset does not kick in.
Tested shorter. Takes 2-2.5 miles to trigger a muscle relaxation response in core and shoulders. Another 2+ miles in that state to feel the same release in extremities and head/mental space.
If you are building tools to help with such problems, that is great. But if you need to ask what frameworks exist, you probably should catch up on what resources are already available before jumping into your own solutions, otherwise you risk re-inventing the wheel.
Learning to regulate your nervous system. We are not chased by tigers as prey as much anymore, but when nervous system is in prolonged fight/flight/freeze states an email from your boss can trigger similar reaction
My take is that's wrong, you don't want "mind-full-ness" but rather "mind-empty-ness".
I had a lot of anxiety when I was young and it went away, gabapentin was probably part of it, but I think also life experience was another.
I think preparation is the answer to performance anxiety. For about a month I have been "going out" as a character for doing photography and handing out business cards which has been a stupendously effective "flywheel" to the extent that students regularly flag me down. Unlike other street performers who frankly annoy people being aggressive I frequently get approached by several people a day and my answer is having the right props and a system that "works itself"
I am working on improving my repertoire but the consistent theme now is that anything new is tuned up to be "self-working" so I can do it without any effort. Similarly I have had certain situations where I "lose my shit" and I focus on not getting into those situations.
I went at it slowly and always empirically and had the luxury of it being "low stakes"
About two years ago I felt I got an invitiation to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsunetsuki and then a year ago I found a book that talked about fox mediums in China that made it seem like everything I wished it could be and started keeping an altar. I had some idea of the outlines of the practice but other than making regular offerings didn't really do much, in fact at one point my son was surprised when I told him I was still into that.
Around the end of November I was watching an anime where there was a character who had an animal ear hood (as opposed to a headband) and realized I could get away with wearing that and got the hood and when I started "going out" and the physical adjustments fell into place pretty quickly.
I got into taking photographs as-a-fox because I just take photographs when I go out so of course I would. By this point I had the brand promise, design rules and such figured out and one of them was "no explaining, no being reductionist, no matter what you are not going to come across like Larry Summers". Early in January I got into the first situation where I felt I had to explain it and realized I'd screwed it up and how. That weekend I was a little panicked but I came up with the "cover story" that "this is a character I do to put people at ease when I do street photography" which put my wife at ease because she was worried about how she was going to explain it to people.
Between having the tokens and that story I'm never worried now that I'm going to get tongue tied. I mean, I really wish I had the "voice of the fox" both in terms of the vocal adjustments and the writing down better than I do. But I have enough of the character working and the proof that people believe in it so sometimes I feel like the 1960s Peter Parker who finds that the community believes in Spider-Man even when he doesn't which makes me feel like I can face what is in front of me today, that if I don't feel brave enough to try something it's OK, never push on a string, and always been thinking how to structure things so I don't have to be brave.
Once I settled into the "foxographer" role and felt I had purpose I quit worrying entirely about going off brand. Like I used to never program a computer or talk about my personal history while wearing the hood and now I do what I want.
Sometimes I think "Why couldn't I have figured this out 20 years ago?" but I'm glad I did now.
Feeling Good and/or Feeling Great by David Burns. It should be on everyone's bookshelf, imho. It has the exact step by step process that you're looking for.
review ,carefully , some other incident that was traumatic, but wait, not the incident itself, try, as you might, to remember how you felt two weeks after that incident.......crickets, right
my latest method to help deal with a crunch is to "spend down my larder" and burn through excess resources, and every time I come out leaner and meaner, cut, chearfull, less fucks to give
I decided to live in crunch mode 100% of the time, which I only realised when considering your questions.
The things I want to achive are far enough out that my only realistic and pragmatic aproach is to stay crunchy, not to say that I dont experience a good meal that I can feel revitalising me, even water at just the right temp after a long stretch forgeting to hydrate, is ambrosia. Which I mean litteraly, as human phisiology is hard wired to hit the big dopamine button, with nothing more than water.
I have no idea if the motivations and rewards that "successfull" people get are as good, but I strongly suspect that whatever is possible to experience is hard wired, and getting to "11" cant be faked.
So, go low, to get high.
just not too low, eat, hydrate, scream at a raging lightning storm from a high place, pollish your shoes, blow everything off to attend to that,"#$%&-)($" inconsiquential irritant that will actualy only take 27min after you check the clock, but will feel like a ton falling away, some loose, frayed, ultra minor thing, that catches your eye, every single time, for which you then go, yup, np, will get to it for the millionth time.
dopamine can be got in massive quanties from the most improbable and trivial things, get you some
I relate to this a lot. For me, noticing the loop is already half the battle, but it doesn't mean I can exit it.
What's helped is switching from "debugging" to "externalizing". Writing the thoughts down, like logs, makes them feel less real and less recursive. Once it's on paper, it loses some power.
One small thought exercise I picked up from The Power of Now that surprisingly works for me: when I'm deep in a rabbit hole, I take a few deep breaths and ask myself, "What will my next thought be?" For a moment everything just goes quiet, and the mind kind of resets. I've used this hack multiple times.
Another thing that matters more than I expected is just building basic habits. Exercise, walking, sleeping on time, eating properly. Nothing fancy, but having a pattern makes the bad loops less frequent.
I've also learned anxiety isn't always something you can reason away. Sometimes it's just a physical state and you have to change the input before the mind follows.
Writing down what you are feeling and thinking is really effective in reducing your anxiety. It does not need to be fancy or well written, just get it out of your head and unto a page.
Also helpful is developing a practice of observing yourself. Just make a mental note of what is going on. Something like "I am feeling sad", "My chest feels very tight", etc. The key here is to create some distance between yourself and these emotions.
My last recommendation is to develop acceptance. Most things lose their scariness once you accept them. Once you are fine with whatever scenario is causing you stress, it loses its sting. This can be hard to do but is extremely effective in quieting your mind.
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Two things:
Decades of reiterating to myself it's none of the verbose semantics and socialized sensory memory my brain tries to feed me (imposter syndrome for example), but is just biochemistry habit from exposure to social memes.
4-5 mile walk as often as possible. Any less and a sense of reset does not kick in.
[dead]
Tested shorter. Takes 2-2.5 miles to trigger a muscle relaxation response in core and shoulders. Another 2+ miles in that state to feel the same release in extremities and head/mental space.
CBT - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
If you are building tools to help with such problems, that is great. But if you need to ask what frameworks exist, you probably should catch up on what resources are already available before jumping into your own solutions, otherwise you risk re-inventing the wheel.
[dead]
Learning to regulate your nervous system. We are not chased by tigers as prey as much anymore, but when nervous system is in prolonged fight/flight/freeze states an email from your boss can trigger similar reaction
[dead]
My take is that's wrong, you don't want "mind-full-ness" but rather "mind-empty-ness".
I had a lot of anxiety when I was young and it went away, gabapentin was probably part of it, but I think also life experience was another.
I think preparation is the answer to performance anxiety. For about a month I have been "going out" as a character for doing photography and handing out business cards which has been a stupendously effective "flywheel" to the extent that students regularly flag me down. Unlike other street performers who frankly annoy people being aggressive I frequently get approached by several people a day and my answer is having the right props and a system that "works itself"
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/tagged/foxwork
I am working on improving my repertoire but the consistent theme now is that anything new is tuned up to be "self-working" so I can do it without any effort. Similarly I have had certain situations where I "lose my shit" and I focus on not getting into those situations.
[dead]
I went at it slowly and always empirically and had the luxury of it being "low stakes"
About two years ago I felt I got an invitiation to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsunetsuki and then a year ago I found a book that talked about fox mediums in China that made it seem like everything I wished it could be and started keeping an altar. I had some idea of the outlines of the practice but other than making regular offerings didn't really do much, in fact at one point my son was surprised when I told him I was still into that.
Around the end of November I was watching an anime where there was a character who had an animal ear hood (as opposed to a headband) and realized I could get away with wearing that and got the hood and when I started "going out" and the physical adjustments fell into place pretty quickly.
I got into taking photographs as-a-fox because I just take photographs when I go out so of course I would. By this point I had the brand promise, design rules and such figured out and one of them was "no explaining, no being reductionist, no matter what you are not going to come across like Larry Summers". Early in January I got into the first situation where I felt I had to explain it and realized I'd screwed it up and how. That weekend I was a little panicked but I came up with the "cover story" that "this is a character I do to put people at ease when I do street photography" which put my wife at ease because she was worried about how she was going to explain it to people.
Between having the tokens and that story I'm never worried now that I'm going to get tongue tied. I mean, I really wish I had the "voice of the fox" both in terms of the vocal adjustments and the writing down better than I do. But I have enough of the character working and the proof that people believe in it so sometimes I feel like the 1960s Peter Parker who finds that the community believes in Spider-Man even when he doesn't which makes me feel like I can face what is in front of me today, that if I don't feel brave enough to try something it's OK, never push on a string, and always been thinking how to structure things so I don't have to be brave.
Once I settled into the "foxographer" role and felt I had purpose I quit worrying entirely about going off brand. Like I used to never program a computer or talk about my personal history while wearing the hood and now I do what I want.
Sometimes I think "Why couldn't I have figured this out 20 years ago?" but I'm glad I did now.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
Feeling Good and/or Feeling Great by David Burns. It should be on everyone's bookshelf, imho. It has the exact step by step process that you're looking for.
[dead]
review ,carefully , some other incident that was traumatic, but wait, not the incident itself, try, as you might, to remember how you felt two weeks after that incident.......crickets, right
my latest method to help deal with a crunch is to "spend down my larder" and burn through excess resources, and every time I come out leaner and meaner, cut, chearfull, less fucks to give
[dead]
I decided to live in crunch mode 100% of the time, which I only realised when considering your questions. The things I want to achive are far enough out that my only realistic and pragmatic aproach is to stay crunchy, not to say that I dont experience a good meal that I can feel revitalising me, even water at just the right temp after a long stretch forgeting to hydrate, is ambrosia. Which I mean litteraly, as human phisiology is hard wired to hit the big dopamine button, with nothing more than water. I have no idea if the motivations and rewards that "successfull" people get are as good, but I strongly suspect that whatever is possible to experience is hard wired, and getting to "11" cant be faked. So, go low, to get high. just not too low, eat, hydrate, scream at a raging lightning storm from a high place, pollish your shoes, blow everything off to attend to that,"#$%&-)($" inconsiquential irritant that will actualy only take 27min after you check the clock, but will feel like a ton falling away, some loose, frayed, ultra minor thing, that catches your eye, every single time, for which you then go, yup, np, will get to it for the millionth time. dopamine can be got in massive quanties from the most improbable and trivial things, get you some
[dead]