Could Use Some Advice on Dealing with Anxiety

[autumn08]

In the background of my mind, there's a constant existential terror, self-hatred, and fear of failure, which causes me quite a bit of misery, but I can't stop listening to. When I try, I feel like I'm giving way to the conveyor belt of death and becoming like a cow being obliviously carried to slaughter. As a result, I resume grasp on these mental states to keep myself from being pulled away.

I don't know what I should do about this. I can't change these mental states into more positive ones, because I agree with their basis. I can't stop listening to them, because, as I've explained, doing so feels like giving way to death. And, at the moment, I can't make significant changes to my life (I have a lot of responsibilities), let alone move to a less individualistic society.

Any ideas?


P.S.

Just to give you some background, I'm writing this and feeling especially anxious because I have a deadline and, probably, because I took too much of a certain substance.

Also, I'm sorry that this question doesn't seem transgender related. I'm posting it here, though, because, one, this is the best online support community I've encountered, and, two, my former struggles with gender dysphoria and internalized-transphobia, and my continuing struggles with all the consequent ailments and issues they were a major cause of, are a significant reason for my anxiety. I'd explain how, but to properly do so, and distinguish them from the other causes, is well beyond the limits of a forum post. 

Also, I'll probably feel much calmer and like an absolute idiot after I get some sleep (it's past 6 am where I am), but I'm still posting this because my problems with anxiety are very real and debilitating, so I want to turn their current consumption of me, and my resulting focus on them, into a catalyst for dealing with them.

Also, I'm sorry that this post is so scattered. Normally, I try to be very organized, but if I start organizing this the time will slip away.

[Allsorts]

Hi autumn,
I'm sorry I can't think of anything particularly helpful, especially with my head currently stuffed full of lurgy.

I'm hesitant thesedays to give advice on stuff like this because over the years I've experienced and learned that there is so much variety of experience even between apparently similar problems, and so many circumstances and other factors that influence things... it seems very personal and doesn't fit well to some sort of flow-chart. You know?

For me and my mixture of depression and anxiety and existential breakdowns, I couldn't change my beliefs about them either. So much of therapy seems to be about changing beliefs, but I guess I take the philosophical position that you cannot really change beliefs. If on the best evidence and arguments you conclude that something is true, then you cannot change that by sheer force of will, to a more palatable alternative. That isn't "belief" as I understand the definition. So for me it was about finding a way to live with the unpalatable implications and consequences of what I believe to be true.

Anyway. I was unable to find a counsellor or therapist in the end who worked in a different way. I ended up doing an awful lot of meditations of various types, a lot of reading around Buddhist and Taoist literature. A process of somehow trying to coming to terms with the untenable. Of finding a way of being okay with things not being okay - hard to describe exactly - not the "it's okay that things aren't okay and you can cope" sort of thing. Almost nihilistic, but in an oddly freeing way. A way to let go of everything without totally melting down or losing my last threads of sanity. It's still a touchy subject with me. Sensitive. I can just about keep it straight in my own head but when other people make glib comments or misunderstand I get all caught up in it again. I can only vague put it into words. A seemingly paradoxical state of accepting the inevitability and unpredictability of death and the pointlessness of it all, whilst simultaneously trying to learn to live in the moment and take delight in the small things. Living and dying at the same time. I guess the most practically helpful part of when I am able to hold on to that sense of only being in and trying to deal with the present moment. It's the only thing that can stop me losing the plot (euphemism for acute mental health crisis lol) There is nothing else but what is here and now, breath, sunlight, ground, rain, noise, whatever, and my experience of it. And that is all I can ever truly have, unconditionally. Finding that sweet spot and trying to stay in it and make the most of it. Taking my primary happiness from the little things in it and keeping the bigger stuff as a more precarious uncertainty that I dabble.

Which all sounds really cliche and blaaauuugh.
That's just my personal story, I don't know if you can take anything from it or not.

But I am sorry to hear you are struggling with anxiety issues and wish you luck in finding whatever will help you with it.
I'm glad you posted and shared what you are feeling, no apologies needed.

[autumn08]

Hi Allsorts,


Thank you so much for responding! I always love reading your posts, and this one was especially helpful to me, as it's not often that I meet someone else with chronic anxiety and existential angst, an inability to change the beliefs that are causing the anxiety and existential angst, as they agree with them, and who takes a deterministic outlook (this situation + me = this result, and this result can't be changed unless the material conditions of either this situation, or me are changed).

To give you an example of how this manifests in my life, last week, my mom, who's an addict, scrounged together her savings in order to buy what she hoped would be enough drugs to last her a year. Unfortunately, she was robbed, and has fallen into a deep depression. I can't change how much my mom's situation devastates me, as I can't without basis change my values, empathy, worldview, etc..., and trying to separate from my feelings, and carry on without them, seems like trying to separate from my existence.

The advice most people give me is to look at situations that are troubling me differently, even when I explain to them that I've thoroughly examined these situations and can't find enough evidence to change the way I'm looking at them. Therefore, I really appreciate that you've approached this from a different angle and have suggested instead that maybe finding a process, "of being okay with things not being okay," would help me. However, just like with changing how I view things, I don't know how to do this. I can't be okay with how some things stand.

I completely agree with you that there are so many factors involved with what causes someone to act how they act that I'd be asking for something that's impossible for someone to give me if I'm asking them to elucidate my path out of anxiety. So, thank you for answering in the best way that anyone could, which is by sharing your personal experiences and empathy. As I said before, reading your post was very helpful.

Anyway, I hope you soon recover from the dreaded lurgy! I've mostly come down from the substance I mentioned before, so I've regained some perspective, but still haven't slept. I didn't meet my deadline, either, and am still miserable, but things aren't too different from how they were yesterday. I know I have to take on less at a time, sleep more, get out more, breathe more deeply, stretch more fully, and not try to cope with certain substances. The one thing I think I'm doing right is getting plenty of exercise (vanity is helping to keep me going, lol).

I think I'll eventually get back to where I was before, which, in most situations, is me not taking life too seriously, and being able to enjoy the melodrama of Mozart, rather than listening to Arvo Part's "Stabat Mater" at night, in an effort to dislodge a sadness I can't fully express. Maybe even further down the road I'll get to a point where I can honestly say that I'm happy. Or maybe not. But I can't help but hope so.

[Sno]

Hi Autumn.

There are times for styles of music to speak to us, and Arvo Part has a large repertoire that is uniquely his - see if more talks to your soul in the way that Sabat Mater does. My go-to is the symphony of sorrowful songs by Henryk Gorecki.

My T appointment is tomorrow, and my homework each fortnight is always a challenge. I have a preliminary diagnosis of cPTSD, and have spent 6 months so far trying to move along the path of self compassion - I totally understand how you are feeling, as I'm wrapped in a similar battle with myself. We do understand.

Have a look at Out of The Storm - I have a sneaking suspicion that it may resonate with you, but feel free to send me a PM to chat and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

So. You exist. You are valued. You are valuable. You are loved (by us here at the very least), and you make worthwhile contributions to society as a whole. Your understanding of you, your role and gender is perfectly valid, and is rooted in your truth, even if you, yourself can not define it.


Rowan

[autumn08]

Hi Rowan,


Thank you so much for responding!

I love that Gorecki piece, too, but I usually turn to it for comfort, which is strange given that it's a tragic story. However, since I was raised male, and the piece's perspective is from a mother whose heart is bleeding for her son who's going to war and, in the third movement, is coming to terms with the fact that her son is most likely dead (at least that's how I remember the story going), and I was raised in a Polish speaking household, and the lyrics are in Polish, that's what it does for me.

As far as other Part pieces, some of them come close to Stabat Mater's ability to dislodge sadness that I can't express (Part is particularly good at this), but the strained string intro, the strained voice that soon comes in, the chorus that then takes turns with the single voice, the string flourishes, etc..., of Stabat Mater, make it the best piece I've found for this.

I googled, "Out of the Storm." The first thing that came up was a website about cPTSD, which since you've recently been given a preliminary diagnosis for, and which I'm very happy to hear that you're on the path of self-compassion for, I'm assuming you were referring to.

Yeah, my symptoms match quite neatly, and my intuition has been pointing me in this direction. Even though I'm not a believer in free will, for a long time, I've been trying to exhaust the possibility that (like many books on willpower, self-control and procrastination basically say) I'm just not trying hard enough to solve my problems, but, in the last couple of weeks, I've been opening up to possibility that I may be too traumatized to solve them as I've hoped. Intellectually, I can see that this is true, but just like when I was coming to terms with being transgender, it's hard for me to accept that my troubled feelings are worthy of this classification.

Anyway, I'm usually so hard-boiled that even many of those closest to me can't sense how I'm feeling, and often this hard-boiled posture comes through in my writing, but I hope you know that I greatly appreciate your love, and that I'm trying to enter into those feelings with you.

[autumn08]

I hope no one minds if I indulge in some journaling. I probably should go back to therapy, but, at the moment, that seems a little too daunting for me.

So, after being awake for two days, I fell asleep last night at around midnight, which is the earliest I've fallen asleep in awhile, and woke up around 4 am. Unless I take the daily limit of diphenhydramine all at once, that's more than I usually sleep.

Upon waking up, I had the most intense wave of suicidal ideation I've had since I read Yuval Harari's "Homo Deus," soon after it came out. I loved the book just as much as I loved Harari's prior book, "Sapiens," but, unlike his prior book, this one shook the foundation on which I situated the meaning of my life; my optimism on humanity's future. This caused me to reexamine some things, reread some things I've read on dealing with death anxiety, and have some conversations before finally returning to my usual equilibrium

That's not the path I took this morning. I felt more like I was walking down the halls of the high school I went to. I felt jolts as I remembered painful things, but also a sense of comfort in knowing that I'd spent a good amount of time in this place and survived.

Anyway, I concluded by deciding to minimize my anxiety for the next week, and so swore off any substances (I'm not a consistent user, so this isn't hard for me to do) and, as I went for my daily 4 mile run, scanned my iPod for something other than my usual running albums by Opeth, Cradle of Filth, Devilment, Death Grips, The Agonist and Wintersun. Other than most Opeth's albums, these albums don't hit a deep part of me, and, while I love them, can't take them very seriously, but, nonetheless, I wanted something less intense than these.

I thought about Tom Waits, but couldn't put myself in that powerful yet withdrawn of a mood, so I ran with The Cure's "Pornography," and "Faith" albums, and cooled off with the first movement of Brahms's "Piano Quartet No. 1." Honestly, I don't think The Cure are very good, but their gothy vibe and my inability to take their music as seriously as they do, fit my mood pretty well. As far as Brahms, I think he's a master of expressing a wide range of complex emotions, but, like Beethoven, at the moment, he's a little too high minded for me.

As a result, as I listened to him, I thought about switching to Ezra Klein's latest podcast with Tyler Cowan, but decided that to minimize my anxiety, I should also swear off anything political for the next week. I hope nothing terrible happens (war, corruption, recession, people's healthcare being taken away, etc...), but somehow the political world will have to survive without me. Instead, I'll be using my reading time to finish Murakami's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki," and listening to some Miles Davis albums and Grant Green's "Idle Moments."

As I approached home, my best friend called me. His life consists of juggling multiple parallel lives, and he may take even more substances than my mom (depending on how you count them). Also, like my mom, he struggles with anxiety and depression.

I answered and, after some prodding from me, he opened up about some guy stuff, which he hadn't since my coming out, like that his fiance started wearing 10 pairs of underwear at night, because, even with all the drugs, he still has the libido of a room full of 16 year olds. We then turned to exploring various questions on human nature and the human condition.

It was nice to talk to him. Sometimes I get so caught up with life that I neglect him, and he locks up, and then all I see of him is him working on his latest invention in his garage, and peeing in plastic bottles, because he doesn't want to go inside his house and get chastised.

As I'm finishing this post, I'm feeling somewhat hopeful. At this point in my life, I'm more open than I've ever been about my anxiety, so even if I continue to suffer from it, I may at least not suffer in the same way I have.

[autumn08]

So, unless things end sooner than I expect, another day has evaporated into the approximately 1/3 of my life that has passed before me in the blink of an eye. At the moment, I'm feeling kind of nonchalant about that. I just had a conversation with a friend, which started with him asking me in an accusatory tone, "Where were you last night?"

"Sorry. I was just busy contemplating suicide. Anyway, do you still need help with that thing this Saturday?"

I don't want to make you think that I'm unhinged. My demeanor is usually very contained. My emotions, though, usually fluctuate between 5 states; depressed, anxious, compassionate, focused, and nonchalant.

Earlier tonight I was in my depressed state. I felt myself locking up. My exterior was turning cold and hard, and my interior was turning sad and empty.

During that time, a different friend called me. I was open with how I was feeling, and he responded very kindly, and with more openness than usual. It felt good, but since I'm so accustomed to hating myself, I had to sabotage that feeling. I didn't do anything dramatic; just pretended not to be aware of some subtext.

Thankfully, I picked on what I did soon after I did it, and patched things up, which filled some of the emptiness I was experiencing, without filling it enough to allow myself to be happy. This lead me to my current nonchalant mood.

I think I could really use some good sex, while listening to Chopin's Piano Concertos (or whatever the other person wants to listen to). It's past 3:30 am, though, so I'll have to settle for late modernist poetry.

I really should go out this week.

Anyway, I'm sorry for continuing to litter this forum with my stream of consciousness posts. I wish I were instead responding to others' threads with life changing advice, but I'm really not in any position to give anyone advice, right now. Maybe about simple and practical things. But then again, what do I really know about that?

[autumn08]

Staying away from drugs; opening up to those closest to me about my struggles and receiving love from them; establishing some new boundaries; staying away from politics and anxiety reinforcing music for awhile; viewing myself from a distance, getting angry about the way I've been treating myself and then treating myself more kindly when I notice that I'm having a negative emotional flashback, rather than telling myself that I should be stronger and trying to fight through the flashback; journaling; and some other things have begun to noticeably pay off. For most of yesterday, I was in my compassionate mood, which is usually the most enjoyable for me and those around me, and was pretty content with life and so pretty content with death. I'm about where I was a month ago, but with some new experiences that will hopefully help keep me from going back to where I was last week.

So, moving forward, I'm going to try to keep the main front on my war on anxiety in the exterior world, rather than torturing myself in my inner world, keep building on what I've accomplished, and keep looking for things I can improve upon. I'm sure I'm going to have some set backs, so I may keep journaling in order to hold myself accountable (if no one minds that is).

[autumn08]

My mood from my last post ended quicker than I expected. It started yesterday with a jolt that made me feel like time was racing past me. The last few days seemed all blurred together and to have passed in a matter of seconds, and so I decided I needed stop trying to fill everyday with as much as I can and tomorrow should start getting back into the habit of meditating once daily.

Tomorrow is here and so earlier I decided to take a break from work, and meditate. Upon reaching my sixth deep breath my heart began pounding and thoughts like, "It's all passing by so quickly and I can't slow it down!" and "What's the point of trying to hold onto any of this?" entered my mind.

Thankfully, the thoughts didn't consume me, and I just let them exist. However, even after I finished my meditation session, they didn't completely disperse and I could feel myself heading towards my depressed mood.

I resumed my work, until my best friend called. The conversation started great. We were having quite a few laughs and were being very open with each other. However, when I speak to someone, I like to move back and forth between subjective and objective perspectives, and at one point when I moved into an objective perspective, he felt hurt as he felt I was being cold. I responded by trying to figure out how we could both get more of what we want from our conversations, but we didn't get anywhere before he had to go (I was still being very objective).

Afterwards, I thought about how our thoughts will either never be experienced how we experience them, or experienced at all by another person, and about the fact that soon, mostly likely, we'll be returning to the state of nothingness that we feel we experienced before we were born. These thoughts made me a bit depressed, and, as a result, I had some suicidal ideation. Thankfully, I didn't fall too deep into the ideation for it to become too serious.

Sorry for being so depressing, and, probably, boring. I'm going to get back to work now, try to have productive day, and try to be kind to myself. I hope that by doing this I'll eventually stop feeling like my days are wasting away, but are worthwhile.

[autumn08]

I've arrived at the final of the 5 mental states that I mentioned in an earlier post: focused. It's the only of the 5 mental states where I don't just appear cold, but am cold. The positive side, though, is that I feel very calm and time feels like it has slowed down (which is something I desperately needed for feel) and so am getting a lot of work done. I'm on 2 hours of sleep, have been working most of the last 20 something hours, but am motivated to keep working.

In this state, I don't care about the past or the future: only now. Death isn't now, so it doesn't matter. Failures happened in the past, so they don't matter. Things I want to do, but can't do now, don't matter.

I'm eventually going to get exhausted or triggered by something, slip into a different state, and possibly feel like I'll never be able to calm down, so thank you for letting me document this as reminder to myself.