Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me.<p>At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was at any moment, and the more I noticed the more it worried me.<p>Years later I tried mindfulness meditation and found that it helped. But also, I finally hit a kind of turning point where I just realized that there was nothing I could really <i>do</i> about anxiety or the physical symptoms that came along with it. I decided to mostly try to quit noticing and thinking about it. And that <i>really</i> helped.<p>I still feel stress and anxiety symptoms sometimes. They still suck. My conscious mind is still the last to recognize what’s going on. But, overall, I feel I can handle a lot more stress now than I could ten years ago without it ruining my quality of life, and more importantly I can recognize the stress, not worry too much about it so I can get through it, and then rest and recuperate (as soon as possible) and recover much quicker than when I was younger.<p>I’ve concluded that the best advice is to learn not to worry about things. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done, and I’m not sure I have any advice on how to learn to do that :&#x2F;

Eh, a gross oversimplification.<p>Feeling troubled by being anxious in the modern world is a &quot;cerebral&quot; issue. The guy who mistook an innocent animal as a tiger and freaked out because of it didn&#x27;t feel bad for feeling anxious for no reason. We do. Because it interferes with our daily functioning &#x2F; responsibilities in the modern world.<p>Anxiety is also very frequently comorbid with other mental disorders. Especially OCD or OCD like tendencies, depression etc. I am medicated now and feel a lot better but when my anxiety was worse, the chatter of my &quot;conscious&quot; brain murmuring about &quot;what if&quot; scenarios was the worst. My point is, yes, anxiety manifests itself in a physical way, big time, but that is only half the problem. The discomfort with being anxious, constantly thinking about the possibility of having an anxiety attack even if you are not physically anxious &quot;at that time&quot;, evaluating the &quot;what if&quot; scenarios, the constant planning to work around possible issues, all that torture are very cognitive pursuits and they were a lot of a bigger burden on my quality of life than experiencing an anxiety attack now and then.

I think the advice of focusing on how to turn anxiety symptoms down and moderate physical responses are fine, but it&#x27;s kind of missing the point, at least for serious cases of anxiety. I suffered pretty badly from it in my early 20s (apparently typical age for this kind of stuff), and you go very quickly from particular anxiety attacks being the issue, to <i>fear of anxiety itself</i> being the bigger issue.<p>An anxiety&#x2F;panic attack is physically scary the very first time, but by the tenth time what you&#x27;re really afraid of is the loss of control and the anticipation of anxiety. Chronic sleeplessness is often the same way. Dealing with literally sleeping better is one thing, but at some point the real issue becomes the mental concern with sleep itself.<p>Dealing with physical anxiety symptoms is good, but if you&#x27;re mentally anxious your first thought after dealing with an anxiety attack by breathing deeply is <i>&quot;okay, but what if it doesn&#x27;t work the next time?&quot;</i>. It&#x27;s that mental attitude that I think many people have trouble dealing with.

I was almost 30 when I had my first ever panic attack. I was alone and convinced it was a heart attack, called 911, and felt fine by the time the ambulance reached the hospital. Embarrassed, I was ready to brush it off, but instead saw a therapist for the first time. She took out a stopwatch and had me breathe through a narrow straw. Within seconds, my face and limbs went completely numb; I couldn&#x27;t move, and was amazed that I could form words. I sat with my head in my hands for what felt like forever. Eventually it passed, I felt utterly exhausted, and she asked what I thought the stopwatch said. &quot;I dunno, 10-15 minutes?&quot; Nope, 90 seconds. That experience made me start taking my mental health seriously.

So good to see a story about the physical aspects of anxiety at the top of hacker news!<p>I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole software career. I finally identified the big triggers for me - morning standup when I was late on a ticket, when a test would inexplicably fail, when a coworker wound comment in a PR asking me to redo a chunk of work that I knew would take more time. And I identified them based on how my BODY felt.<p>And once I could identify the actually environmental triggers, I could start to resolve them.<p>A lot like this article talks about! My conscious mind wasn’t in control of my anxiety, and the looping thoughts in my head didn’t even have much to do with the trigger. They were the symptom, not the cause.<p>Another software engineer friend and I are starting a company to help software engineers reduce stress and anxiety! We’ve seen some pretty miraculous results so far.<p>We’d love to hear from all of you anxious software engineers :)<p>Tinyurl.com&#x2F;happyhackers

I&#x27;m nearly 40, and didn&#x27;t relate to anxiety at all until I was 35. Until then, I would use lots of different words to describe how I simply wasn&#x27;t good at being in a number of situations. I now believe that was a better way of thinking, because once I identified what was happening to me as anxiety, it actually got worse. &quot;Anxiety&quot; is something that should be treated and actively managed, which puts fuel on the fire. The less I frame my mental health in terms of anxiety, the better off I am.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are any number of reasons why this way of thinking won&#x27;t help others, but I totally get why lots of ADHD sufferers have started calling it &quot;bees in my head&quot; instead of ADHD. What we call things affects how we think about it.

What a pleasant surprise to find this article at the top of HN! Minutes ago I finished a workshop on a somatic therapy technique. It&#x27;s a relief to see these ideas gaining mainstream attention after so many years of making little progress on my own anxiety, depression, and procrastination.<p>For other relevant scientific perspectives, I recommend looking into the theory around &quot;memory reconsolidation.&quot;<p>- Kaj Sotala does a good job of summarizing an important book in the field here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ&#x2F;book-summary-unlocking-the-emotional-brain" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lesswrong.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ&#x2F;book-summa...</a><p>- <i>How Emotions are Made</i> also provides a perspective from neuropsychology on what&#x27;s going on: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Emotions-Made-Lisa-Barrett&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1328915433&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;How-Emotions-Made-Lisa-Barrett&#x2F;dp&#x2F;132...</a>.<p>- The Polyvagal Theory stuff mentioned in the article is also great, and some classic accessible books on the overall topic include <i>The Body Keeps the Score</i> and <i>Waking the Tiger</i>.<p>I&#x27;m personally a fan of a technique called Emotional Resolution (EmRes), which is notably simple and effective, and that you can learn to apply to yourself after a 90 minute course, but there are many other approaches: Organic Intelligence, somatic experiencing, cranio-sacral therapy, bioenergetics and core energetics, and many more. Effective self-therapy methods include Core Transformation, Focusing, and &quot;self-therapy&quot;.<p>Keywords to search for are: &quot;somatic therapy,&quot; &quot;body work,&quot; &quot;energy work&quot; or &quot;energy medicine.&quot;

Nutritional deficiencies should be part of this conversation.<p>A majority of Americans are magnesium deficient. Magnesium calms the nervous system.<p>“In healthy adults, magnesium sits inside the NMDA receptors, preventing them from being triggered by weak signals that may stimulate your nerve cells unnecessarily. When your magnesium levels are low, fewer NMDA receptors are blocked. This means they are prone to being stimulated more often than necessary.“ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.healthline.com&#x2F;nutrition&#x2F;what-does-magnesium-do#brain-benefits" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.healthline.com&#x2F;nutrition&#x2F;what-does-magnesium-do#...</a><p>Mg L-threonate has helped my anxiety 2x more than years of talk therapy.

&gt; Anxiety Is in Your Body, Not Your Mind<p>Yes, and, your mind is in your body, not just your brain.<p>That&#x27;s why human consciousness is different to any common conception of computer consciousness. The difference between computers and humans is that human thoughts are driven by the needs of the body - to respirate, to eat, to defecate, to reproduce, to sleep, and to avoid being predated.

<i>when it comes to anxiety, which doesn’t take place in your thinking brain, it [CBT] places the focus on the thought (“I thought there was a tiger!”) and not the physical response which preceded, and even caused, the thought (“my heart is racing and I’m full of adrenaline and I need tools to calm down”).</i><p>Inexplicably, the article seems to get CBT entirely wrong. A key part of CBT for anxiety is, in fact, about dealing with the body (e.g., the sympathetic nervous system) by activating the parasympathetic—through breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and so forth. This glaring miss on one of the most effective therapies for anxiety made me question the entire article.

I wish there were a little more examples of how this methodology deals with the stress&#x2F;anxiety response.<p>The article seems to spend more time talking about why it thinks &quot;thinking brain&quot; CBT&#x2F;talk therapy doesn&#x27;t work rather than &quot;surival brain&quot; techniques which do work. It also brings up &quot;mindfulness&quot; as one solution, which I consider almost analogous to CBT, or at least a close relative.<p>It also seems counter-productive (to me) that the solution for one subject was to &quot;strike out and defend himself within the safety of a therapy session&quot;. What is that person supposed to do in the moment? Ball up their anxiety and wait for therapy?

It’s certainly both. “Anxiety” it’s your brains response to given sensory input and tends to trigger a release of cortisol and in more extreme situations adrenaline. While cortisol and adrenaline are normal responses it’s a very slippery slope and they can have extremely negative effects on the body.<p>The dangers of to much of these hormones come from both chronic exposure for normal sensory inputs like stress at work or school on a daily basis or constant instability like parents fighting regularly to single acute episodes like an extreme traumatic event. Traumatic events tend to alter neural pathways so moving forward even non stressful sensory input can trigger these strengthened pathways putting people in non stressful environments in chronic states of stress.<p>It’s helpful “not to think about it” whatever “it” is, but it’s often involuntary especially for those that suffered a trauma, as there’s always the risk that you are unknowingly responding to it without even thinking about it and it’s often hard to connect the dots.<p>The other issue is everything in the body is a feedback loop and hard to break or change. For example even just sitting in a chair all day will shorten you hip flexors, causing unnoticeable discomfort but your brain will notice and respond with release of cortisol which will in turn cause tightening of muscles and myofacia, that will further release cortisol in response to those bodily stresses, and on and on it goes with all kinds of “referred pain” (I hate that term) you do notice in maybe your neck or shoulder(s) or back. And good luck at that point you’ll be treating the area in pain that’s not even actually causing the pain only leading to more chronic stress over the inability to make the pain go away. If you work in an office my guess is you have physical pain, and you can ask anyone else in the office and odds are they have physical pain, and my bet dollars to donuts from arthritis to bursitis to joint pain the vast majority with simply blame it on getting old or some posture issue and not a single one will realize the physical pain and bodily conditions are directly related to stress.

Is the body different from the mind?<p>Every experience of ours as a human, is rooted in the mind.<p>The author seems to confuse involuntary action with conscious thought.<p>&quot;We&quot; may not perceive the signals that drive the beating of the heart, but it is still driven by the mind.<p>Hindu yogic practices, especially those of Hatha Yoga [0] make it possible for one to feel even those involuntary processes.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hatha_yoga" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hatha_yoga</a>

I had anxiety for the first time in my life recently in the form of pain in my upper left chest. From a new job I hate (but pays well) and added to that my dad is very sick.<p>Worse still is I&#x27;m the age my grandfather and his son (my uncle) died.<p>I&#x27;ve read how people who have major stress in their lives develop a reduced ability to cope with stress. That seems like a terrible spiral downward.

Something seems contractictory to me with this. It&#x27;s trying to say your thoughts don&#x27;t affect it, yet it describes a scenario where only rational cognitive concepts cause the fight or flight response.<p>How does the &quot;survival brain&quot; know that Covid-19 is scary, dangerous and to be feared? How does it know how dangerous it is to gauge the response?<p>Similarly, how does it know the meeting at work is dangerous if you&#x27;re late too it? That it&#x27;s important for you to be there on time?<p>Etc.

We keep assuming body and mind are separated things, but separating the concept of ink and paper doesn&#x27;t help you understand the full nature of a book.

I sometimes have random anxiety at night. I used to have a bad habit of drinking myself to sleep, but I&#x27;ve since discovered that <i>hard</i> exercise is the best medicine. I do pushups until I&#x27;m completely exhausted. When I lay down, I&#x27;m actually relaxed for a good 20 minutes. It&#x27;s amazing.

Descartes and his duality strike again.

This is a weird article. The headline doesn&#x27;t really match it. Like it says the thinking brain is the last to know and the author suggests this is a physiological response. But all that&#x27;s really saying is that anxiety isn&#x27;t a conscious response. But that just means it&#x27;s a subconscious response and not a physiological response somehow removed from the brain.<p>Also, what does &quot;in your body, not in your mind&quot; even mean? Let&#x27;s face it, the distinction between your mind (or brain) and your body is a useful abstraction, nothing more. Nerve cells extend from your brain throughout your entire body. Where does your brain end and your &quot;body&quot; begin?<p>Life isn&#x27;t software that lends itself to neat abstraction layers.

This was discovered thousands of years ago in the east(indian subcontinent) by meditation practitioners(i.e Buddha, Mahavira etc) solely through thousands of hours of practice and self-realization. These have been codified into various texts which form a major part of vipassana teachings.<p>Interesting how scientists in the west either conveniently pick up the theory, conduct some a&#x2F;b tests and publish them as new discoveries without credit. Even if they had arrived on these conclusions, independently on their own, it&#x27;s important to understand the mind boggling amount of progress in psychology, neuroscience that was made with the limited knowledge of scientific rigor in the east thousands of years ago.

For anyone interested in this, I highly recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who studies PTSD.<p>He writes about this clearly and elegantly—must read for those dealing with anxiety, and certainly with any traumatic stress.

Non-authwalled link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;ycjSSm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;ycjSSm</a>

As a person who is currently in CBT (and seeing positive results), the biggest thing that helped me is to understand trauma, and cognitive distortions.<p>Just as this article says, your thinking brain is trying to piece together and digest what has happened. The problem is often that we repress it during the peaceful down time that our thinking brain is trying to make sense of it. We drown it out with drugs and alcohol, or we try to make ourselves so busy that we don’t think about it (hence creating more anxiety through work issues, family drama, or overstimulation). Best thing that works for me is to learn to accept it. Process it. Digest it. Learn and talk through examples of how it’s safe to experience the world again. This is part of the de-escalation process. Note, this goes against advice of “oh just don’t worry about it”. This approach is essentially “okay self, bad shit happened, let’s finally talk about it”. Your thinking brain is designed to keep bringing this up until it gets resolution. This is resolution.<p>And cognitive distortions helps me because I understand now how my mind plays tricks on me. When I say things like “this bad thing happened, I’ll never be able to get over it”, it’s giving too much power to that bad event. I don’t have to feel or think that way. I’m allowed to change my thought process and think “yeah that bad event happened, but I can’t let it be the end of the world for me.”

&quot;Wait to worry&quot; I tell my self. Can I do anything about the situation at this very moment? No? Wait to worry. Yes? The DO IT.<p>It&#x27;s not perfect, but man, it helps me get through some stuff.

A form of CBT that has been shown to be particularly effective at anxiety and panic is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). If you&#x27;ve been struggling with anxiety, I highly recommend seeking out a therapist who has been trained in ACT.<p>You can also read and watch anything produced by Dr. Stephen C. Hayes, one of the therapists who developed ACT. He did so himself due to panic and anxiety and this was after becoming a psychologist. The whole field is quite fascinating.

I believe that an inappropriate anxiety response is typically one element of a syndrome, and generally not a stand alone response. Most likely, if you are focusing on anxiety to the exclusion of other aspects of your life, and I mean past, present and future life, you are likely missing opportunities to effectively address it.<p>That said, one therapy that has worked for at least one person I know was Dielectical Behavior Therapy[0]. As they went through the program, they learned that their hyper-arousal to any unexpected event led to an anger response that led to saying terrible things to the person who had not behaved as expected. This led to a general mistrust of others and a dwindling supply of friends who transitioned to acquaintances who then stopped calling entirely.<p>DBT get them to recognize that their response was not typical and offered a path to practice alternate responses. They learned to defer their response and seek clarification or confirm intentions before reacting. They&#x27;ve become a much less unpleasant person to be around.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verywellmind.com&#x2F;dialectical-behavior-therapy-1067402" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verywellmind.com&#x2F;dialectical-behavior-therapy-10...</a>

Interesting article. I have occasional (every few years) periods of anxiety. Last time around I went through a course of CBT, some of which I found moderately helpful - don&#x27;t try to suppress feelings of fear, just acknowledge it and move on - but I was certainly not cured.<p>Then my doctor suggested I try out the Alexander Technique. I wasn&#x27;t convinced, but gave it a go. Something about it helped, and quite significantly. The logical part of me rebels against this, as AT is full of woo, but the effects were undeniable.<p>The practitioner I went to focused a lot on feeling the floor beneath you, the seat supporting you, and so on -- I don&#x27;t know how typical that is for AT, but perhaps that was the part of it that was effective for me. It would certainly fit with what the article says.

I have a close friend with an autism diagnosis who has a very unusual relationship between their brain and the rest of their body. One of the consequences of this is that they become very anxious and get trapped in a nasty anxiety vicious cycle that can last several days.

If you have trauma&#x2F;PTSD (even minor) that leads to physical reactions (sweating, heart racing, etc) in certain situations, take propanolol before you have the situation. After you do this a few times, or a few dozen, you&#x27;ll be 90% fixed.

As someone who&#x27;s been coming out of a lot of sexual trauma from my early childhood, I feel it&#x27;s important to take a multi-pronged approach to alleviating the anxiety &amp; pain, psychologically and physiologically. For me, pelvic pain was a huge impediment to having a healthy sex life. Left untreated, it got worse and worse, to the point that I had constant pain my body. Now I am seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist who is teaching me how to relax the muscles, and a psychoanalyst who is helping me deal with reframing the traumas that got me where I am.<p>The Body Keeps the Score is a pretty good book that covers how much trauma affects the body in myriad ways.

One other thing to consider, that I rarely hear anyone talk about, is that anxiety can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying physiological condition or disease. For example, hypoglycemia-related anxiety is a common complaint.

I personally think this was a very interesting reading, and after having tried multiple solutions for anxiety (prescribed pills, talk therapy, tips like focusing on our environment -- as explained in the highlighted paragraph), and being surrounded by people having also tried several solutions, it must be known that not everyone will react the same way to each of them.<p>While the content of this article will not make everyone agree, I think it&#x27;s particularly important nowadays to pay attention to our mental health at least as much as we do to our physical health, and it&#x27;s good to see this topic trending on HN.

Reminds me of the equation:<p>Pain x Resistance = Suffering<p>If you accept pain fully (Resistance = 0), then you won’t suffer. The more you resist, the more you suffer. And if Resistance is high, then even a little bit of Pain can cause a lot of suffering.

The article really tries to present cognitive behavioral therapy as something it is not.<p>Reconnecting with your body and mindfulness are part of the toolset you can expect to be introduced to when visiting a CBT therapist.

So good to see a story about the physical aspects of anxiety at the top of hacker news!<p>I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole software career and finally found something that really worked for me —- identifying the triggers of my anxiety, and focusing on my physiological sensations after I recall them, much as described by Pat Ogden in the article.<p>Another software engineer friend and I are starting a company to help software engineers reduce stress and anxiety! We’d love to hear from any of you.<p>Tinyurl.com&#x2F;happyhackers

Sometimes. Sometimes not. I&#x27;ve seen both sides.<p>My anecdata:<p>My road rage was definitely my body and responded to therapy that targeted the sensations in the body.<p>My anxiety was not. It was a way of thinking. Ruminating thoughts. Cascades of potential disastrous outcomes. I needed medication and I needed to talk to a therapist.<p>She seems unqualified to be giving out misguided medical advice in such certain terms. Minds get in the way of comprehending other minds, and broad statements are difficult to make truthfully.

It was only when I was heavily medicated for depression and anxiety that I realised the physical symptoms of anxiety. Whenever I was expecting a negative outcome, or when I was surprised, my body would give me a jolt of pain along my vagus nerve. Literally any negative event would cause me pain, and it was this pain that my brain was seeking to avoid.<p>My current medication does not remove this pain altogether, though it diminishes the sensation significantly.

I have few early memories because due to having so much anxiety from an early age. I remember a time before processing it as any synonym for &#x27;anxiety&#x27;, my father came to help me with something and I thought, in essence:<p>&quot;Too bad my brain is doing that thing where my thoughts are not useful due to that thing (that I didn&#x27;t yet think of as anxiety), but how nice of my father to spend some time with me.&quot;

&gt; As Stephen Porges, PhD, a psychologist and the creator of the Polyvagal Theory<p>Funny. Just yesterday I googled &quot;polyvagal theory&quot; after accidentally stumbling upon it after googling for &quot;HRV training&quot; after hearing about it from Tim Ferriss on his youtube channel.<p>Anyway - a quick research yielded that PVT and Mr. Porges are both rather questionable. [1]<p>&gt; The thinking brain isn’t what decides whether we’re stressed, whether we’re feeling threatened or challenged, whether we’re going to turn stress on, whether we’re going to turn emotions on,<p>I&#x27;d question that and bring thought loops forward as a counterexample. You can very well intensify a state of anxiety by dwelling on some thought.<p>&gt; So if you want to track your anxiety, your body, not your thoughts, will be your most accurate map.<p>That is true, though - after all anxiety is a physical sensation. I can attest to that waking up now for several weeks almost every day with stomach aching, increased heart rate and shallow breathing.<p>&gt; The problem is that when it comes to regulating our nervous system after a stress response (read: anxiety), our thinking brain is the absolute worst tool for the job<p>I&#x27;d also questin that. It&#x27;s true that the thinking brain on its own will never find a solution for something like anxiety. But you need the thinking brain to identify the problem and come up with a solution. If the thinking brain is a hammer then your guts are a screw driver.<p>&gt; talk therapy analyzing all the reasons you’re anxious, this is probably a hard pill to swallow. Not only did all that talking not do much to alleviate anxiety, but it could also even have made it more acute.<p>Talk therapy addresses the thinking brain and is hence limited. But a good talking therapy is not just being experienced by exchanging words. If the therapist is worth her money she&#x27;ll connect on an emotional level.<p>&gt; Is there any role for talk therapy, or trying to think logically about your anxiety? Absolutely. But only once your body is regulated, Stanley says: “After we have helped our survival brain feel safe and stable, then we can work on our thoughts.<p>This attitude is symptomatic of our misguided medical profession which always seeks to compartmentalize and modularize instead of integrate and connect. Both approaches can go very well hand in hand.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Polyvagal_theory#Criticism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Polyvagal_theory#Criticism</a>

&gt; an increased interest in “brain science” and neurobiology along with continued research on mindfulness and mind-body connections are shifting our psychological understanding from focusing only on the mind to seeing the brain and body as a cohesive unit.<p>This is exactly what my talk-therapist is helping me with. So if these ideas appeal to you and you want to explore them keep an open mind about talk-therapy.

Totally anecdotal, but speaking as someone with Anxiety Disorder + occasional intense panic attacks, once I started Rock climbing heavily and Trail running 2x a week, my anxiety and Panic attacks basically went away completely.<p>This was following years of taking 5HTP, meditating&#x2F;breathing, talk therapy etc, which helped somewhat but nothing like intense exercise.

The idea that anxiety and stress are phyisical things in your body is widely known by yogis for thousands of years!

After starting real home fitness 6 days per week my stress &amp; anxiety level is unbelievable low. I don&#x27;t think it helps in all cases but you definitely should try it.<p>Another suggestion: as long-term projects are inevitable always switch to short-term which can bring fast but <i>realistic</i> result.

&gt; Not only did all that talking not do much to alleviate anxiety, but it could also even have made it more acute.<p>If you’re going to go counter to a large body of scientific evidence (re efficacy of CBT), ya need something stronger than the thoughts of some people trying to hawk products, ya know?

Anxiety is so general a diagnosis as to be useless in discussing treatment with exercise and breathing.

Personal anecdote. Just a few days ago, when I was feeling anxious, I just stayed firm at my desk, and firmly approaching the situation without the thought of giving up, even if I couldn&#x27;t solve the problem, I felt, I could control my anxiety a little better.

i seem to meet more and more people who have experienced acute anxiety &#x2F; panic attacks than ever. it leads me to wonder if it&#x27;s just more understood and easier to talk about now, or is there some phenomenon where the incidence is actually increasing?

Your body and mind are one.<p>It is scientifically inaccurate to believe otherwise.<p>This isn’t a pedantic point: the mind&#x2F;body distinction is pseudoscience that used to be believed widely in scientific circles. This readjustment hasn’t really reached common practice yet.

It&#x27;s both.<p>Approximately half of depression cases respond well to psychotherapy.<p>Approximately half of depression cases respond well to antidepressants.<p>The halves are (seemingly) independent: for about a quarter of all patients both work and for another quarter neither works.

i think no, it&#x27;s not &quot;not in my mind but in my body&quot;.<p>my take is that anxiety occurs first by warping a person&#x27;s attention, and the mental and physical symptoms of that follow.

For those interested in the subject I suggest listening to this<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ntfcfJ28eiU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;ntfcfJ28eiU</a>

First paragraph had a very interesting perspective about stress and the last paragraph had a solution, rest of the content is very repetitive.

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This reminds me of stella ganglion block that was shown to be effective against ptsd . Quite interesting

Just seeing the picture of the article made by throat getting bigger from the inside. Anxiety sucks.

I&#x27;m a bit puzzled as to why the article suggests we should imagine ourselves as Neanderthals instead of homo sapiens? I understand that homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and people today may have a few percent of Neanderthal DNA but the most relevant evolutionary context for us is just an earlier version of us, surely.

It&#x27;s difficult to take advice from an article that has a statement like this mixed in:<p><i>&quot;We are a cerebral culture, which makes us very equipped to deal with problems that require reason and logic&quot;</i>

A long time ago I read about a study which examined people’s physiological reactions to riding a rollercoaster. They compared coaster lovers to mildly-phobics. Their conclusion was the two groups experienced the same physiological reactions. What differed was their mental state, how they contextualized the event.<p>If that study was accurate (and god knows whether it was), then I would conclude that anxiety isn’t strictly “in the body.” It’s more like a feedback loop with the mental state.

This might come as a surprise to some, but it turns out your mind is <i>also</i> in your body

Mind is in the body

This link wanted me to login to read which IMO means I can and should only engage with the post title.<p>Anxiety is in GABA-a and GABA-b IMO. I would suppose they circulate throughout the body and mind. But most the work is getting the influence to take affect in the mind.

For people interested in addressing anxiety&#x2F;depression disorders via &quot;the body&quot;, check out SGB (stellate ganglion block) and ketamine treatments.

Here is an overview of the state of the art in GAD:<p>TL;DR Tofisopam appears to be the ideal long term anxiety medication except it&#x27;s understudied despite being old, which is a real shame.<p>Pregabalin is likely the second best candidate however some people reports horrible anecdotes with it (brain breaker)<p>As always the best blog about the topic is from Scott Alexander: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;13&#x2F;things-that-sometimes-work-if-you-have-anxiety&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;13&#x2F;things-that-sometimes-...</a><p>Best recent meta analyse of the SOTA <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;30712879&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;30712879&#x2F;</a><p>Anxiety is more prevalant than depression yet is extremely under reported. While ADHD and depression have <i>relatively</i> safe and effective medications for long term treatment, chronic anxiety doesn&#x27;t.<p>Some antidepressants are safe long term treatment for anxiety however they are not very potent (compared to benzodiazepines)<p>Benzos are not a long term solution because of tolerance, of their sedative effect and of their persistent impairment of cognitive performance.<p>The ideal medication has the following properties: Required: 1) no persistent loss of cognitive performance Studies shows that popular benzos negatively affect cognitive performance even months (years?) after their use. 2) no hypnotic effect at normal dose<p>Desired: 3) no loss of cognitive performance while in use. 4) No or low tolerance 5) no sedative effect<p>It happens that there are at least 2 benzos derivatives that share those properties:<p>Tofisopam (Emandaxin and Grandaxin) and Hydazepam (Gidazepam IC) are drugs that are benzodiazepine derivatives. Like other benzodiazepines, they possesses anxiolytic properties, but, unlike other benzodiazepines, they do not have anticonvulsant, sedative, skeletal muscle relaxant, motor skill-impairing, or amnestic properties. Moreover Tofisopam (apparently) induce NO COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE LOSS! See e.g this DOI on scihub <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doi.org&#x2F;10.1007&#x2F;978-3-642-74031-2_13" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;doi.org&#x2F;10.1007&#x2F;978-3-642-74031-2_13</a><p>The most interesting NON-benzos:<p>Pregabalin&#x27;s anxiolytic effect appears after one week of use and is similar in effectiveness to lorazepam, alprazolam, and venlafaxine, but has demonstrated more consistent therapeutic effects for psychic and somatic anxiety symptoms. Long-term trials have shown continued effectiveness without the development of tolerance, and unlike benzodiazepines, it does not disrupt sleep architecture and produces less severe cognitive and psychomotor impairment. Pregabalin also exhibits a lower potential for abuse and dependence than benzodiazepines.[43][44]<p>Hydroxyzine has been shown to be as effective as benzodiazepines in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder, while producing fewer side-effects.[13]<p>Moclobemide potentially more potent than SSRIs, however much slower to act than benzos.<p>CONCLUSION:<p>* Tofisopam appears to be the clear winner. <i>Hydazepam might be as well but can&#x27;t find information on cognitive performance. </i>Pregabalin appears to be the best non-benzo * reversible Maois might be the safest&#x2F;potent well studied medication for long term use and do not destroy libido contrary to SSRIs. This is a major issue because anxiety is a major commorbidity of ADHD and given that MAOIs increase norepinephrine&#x2F;dopamine quantities it might interact badly with concurrent use of stimulants. However some anecdotal studies shows that it can be safe, however the use of beta blockers might be needed (for e.g 50mg of Vyvanse) A plausible and surprisingly understudied solution for the SSRIs effects on libido might be TRT.

Here is a tip that works wonders. Delete FB and twitter, both are incredibly destructive to the mental well being of millions (and don&#x27;t go to Reddit). The less time you spend on the Internet the better you will feel.

The body and mind are heavily intertwined. It&#x27;s totally useless to compartmentalize them when discussing something like anxiety. One day somebody in the West will &quot;independently&quot; discover what Buddha and Vedic Rishis discovered centuries ago, and popularize those ideas. Unfortunately, this is the only way those ideas will regain acceptance in the East as well.

Who in their right mind would take their psychological advice from a fiction writer?!?<p>First, no, anxiety is not in your body. Fear, just like any other emotion is in your brain. You might get physiological responses in the form of chemicals in your body. That is an effect, not a cause.<p>Second, neocortex is not &quot;thinking brain,&quot; its role is to manage social interactions. Cognition is a small part of that.<p>Third, mindfulness is the opposite of any therapy I can think of. It is an ego-depletion technique proven to be detrimental to people suffering from anxiety and depression.<p>Finally, I don&#x27;t know who performed therapy on the author but some steps seem to be missing:<p>&#x2F;&#x2F;&gt; when you have an anxiety attack, the only thing you can do is to perform the grounding exercises. Yes, that is the moment you start counting and do square breathing exercises. If people in the military can do it while in stressful situations, you can do it from behind a macbook. Nothing is treated mid-episode.<p>&#x2F;&#x2F;&gt; once the episode is over, you can explore the trigger. Chances are that your response is healthy, you are in a situation you should be anxious, but your behavioural response is over the top. A trigger contains the stimulus, the circumstance and your personal patterns (e.g. personal experiences).<p>&#x2F;&#x2F;&gt; part of the role of the therapist is to help you figure out the patterns. The other is to see if your behavioural responses are productive for you or not. If loud sounds make you run like hell, that is a good thing in an active shooter situation or a war theatre. Not so much at a birthday party where a balloon popped.<p>&#x2F;rant