The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
I'm mal-functionally non-anxious and probably less professionally successful than you, and this is big advice for me to give as some jackass on the internet, but consider Thomas Szasz' famous dictate that most mental illnesses aren't in the brain, they're problems in living. What we call mental illness, is often just the world asking something of you that you just can't do. This South Park Episode, but unironically or SA on stimulants in Sillicon Valley.
Consider that just as it's silly to say someone has ADHD because they can't read The Great Gatsby or look at spreadsheets all day, maybe you have anxiety because your life is stressful and it is ridiculous to say that you need drugs to cope. Maybe the simple fixes aren't working because it isn't a simple problem.
Now, hey, if you want to take drugs to be even greater than you could be without them, I don't necessarily object to that. Barry Bonds started taking drugs long after he had won several MVPs. But don't confuse using drugs because you want more with needing drugs to function as a human.
It's certainly possible that I have anxiety because my life is stressful, but I have to admit I'm quite sceptical of that interpretation. I'm steadily employed at a normal 9-5 office job; I am treated with respect and courtesy by my colleagues; I've never had to work late, overtime or at the weekend; I have no dependents; I'm not wealthy but nor am I struggling to make ends meet; I have good accommodation; and I don't have any health problems. All of these things were true two, three and four years ago, and I know I didn't feel like this at those times.
I'd say you're doing a fairly good bit at coping with it. I mean, you still have the job and the girlfriend.
My life situation is completely crap, basically, got nothing going for me except being physically healthy, not broke and on good terms with my parents.
No anxiety though, no problems relaxing most days.
I did watch Edgerunners and also thought about things in a .. unwise way and couple days after I had half a day of feeling anxious and dreading something undefined, and I noticed how much it sucked. Can't imagine enduring something like that for a month.
One possible piece of advice:
**Try fighting. **
One time a therapist talked me into signing up for a boxing class. Between the punishing 1 hour of aerobics training and subsequent sparring, the entire thing was very relaxing and strangely enjoyable. And I think what was most relaxing was the sparring. I was up against 18 year old guys.. who were mostly at least slightly less new to it, and .. it was fun.
Did hurt a fair bit, but the whole 'physical fight' experience was something I had no idea I was missing. It's quite a lot more .. interesting? than a good mental fight (like e.g. a challenging game ). Like comparing a silent 1920s film to a 1980s action film, or something like that. Or some solid VR experience.
Sadly I had to give that up, I had a prior shoulder injury that kept flaring up because getting pummelled (even not at full force) while blocking blows was just too much for it. I've been meaning to do some strength training as that'd probably make the shoulder more robust, but haven't gotten around to it. And probably never will, knowing myself. Lifting weights seems extremely complex, and knowing I'd have to couple that to eating more to get anything out of it just makes the whole thing seemingly too daunting.
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You're probably right then, just wanted to throw it out there.
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