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Comment by spaceprison | Hacker News Reader

This is a great article. For years I didn't know how to handle anxiety so I handled it "like a man" which lead to a pretty decent drinking habit.

Now that I've stopped drinking and being open about what's going on with me, my anxiety looks like traditional anxiety which was easy for my gp to help diagnose.

Taking the leap to be open and get help was the best thing to happen to me in years.

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For this audience, I would add that anxiety is in some sense often a career positive. During the years I spent as a sysadmin, the continuous feeling that something was about to gowrong and I really needed to prepare for it was useful to my employers. Even if it was bad for me, my relationships, and my physical health.

The worst thing about this is that realizing it isn't necessarily the first step to improving your condition. On the contrary, it can lead to cultivating your own anxiety, because it gives you opportunities you wouldn't get with a more healthy work life...

Same job, same problem. The solution was to understand that I am not really helping anyone. I'm just hiding problems and helping incompetents make money and stay in the market when they deserve to fail.

So my new approach: fix it and make it public once, let it fail afterwards if nobody cares.

I often times think my anxiety is what my employers value the most in me and it drives me mad :)

See also insecure overachiever: https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-youre-so-successful-why-are-you-s...

Good ol' capitalism, extracting value from your mental health disorders.

I suffered with it from like 19 (came out of nowhere) til my late 20s when I started talking about it openly with friends, family, other people in general and realized wait im not alone were all nuts yet normal.

Wish I talked about way earlier and came to that realization.

I read the article and noticed something I have been doing recently. I have been drinking heavily. I say I work from home and then I drink. I have been drinking in the night when my wife goes to bed. I have had two anxiety attacks before. I was on medication for several months. I know meditation helps but don’t have time to practice it with all the commute and long work days. I don’t know what to do.

I don't often post here these days but this really stuck out to me and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't yielded any responses. Based on this description, you need to get some help my friend. Depending on your relationship, a reasonable first step may be to talk to your wife about this. If you don't know what to tell her exactly, point her to this comment. There are professionals and there's no shame in utilizing them to become the best version of yourself. Good luck :)

Thank you much for your thoughtful suggestion. I have to get a lot of things in order.

I also wanted to comment here. Cheering you on. Working with a professional has been the biggest relief for me. It's absolutely worth the money if you can afford it (and you can always ask if therapists could offer "sliding scale" meaning they charge less for folks that can't afford the full price). I went on Psychology Today's website and used their listing of therapists. It was scary emailing the first one but I did it and I showed up to the appointment. Now years later I am no longer drinking and have all sorts of tools for my anxiety. You can do this.

If I may be so bold as to inquire, what was your path to stop drinking? Do you find you replaced it with another coping mechanism?

Not OP, but I had a similar experience. Getting to the root of things with CBT caused me to completely change my relationship with alcohol. At this point, heavy drinking has become a clear path to increasing my anxiety, and it’s easy to abstain.

Not OP, and kind of cliché (with the common corollaly to seek professional advice instead of internet wisdom), but:

excercise - and for me it was more anxiety+smoking but less anxiety led to less drinking too(which I did not recognize as a problem at the time)

I consciously used it as a replacement: when I was stressed and need of a cigarette, I told myself that I actually feel the miss of a good run - and for me running really helped somewhat, so it was enough to start a positive feedback loop. It is also good that both drinking and smoking makes excercising harder, which I tried to (and many times could) use as a fact against them ("if i now drink i wont be able to wake up early enough to go for a run", "if i smoke it will much harder to breath")

And another internet wisdom cliché ;) regarding anxiety: stop drinking coffee (tea...)...

How did you practice CBT? Yourself? With a therapist? A workbook?

In my case, getting hired by one of the Big Four tech companies.

Always was a high performer, but didn't feel satisfied at other companies. I felt I was worth much more than what I was getting paid. I needed the validation and at least the perception of being with the best. I kept pushing my application since it felt daunting and I had failed Google once. I also made up excuses why a big tech company isn't worth it anyway, and that I shouldn't have to go through whiteboarding. But I'm much, much happier now. Glad I gave it a shot.

What are the big 4 tech companies? I’ve heard that in accounting, but I don’t know which 4 they would be in tech.

(F)acebook, (A)mazon, (N)etflix, (G)oogle.

A is not Amazon, it's Apple.

Amazon does not have the same technical hurdle as the others.

> AWS

There are 2 As in FAANG.

Microsoft and Apple each have over twenty times more employees than Netflix. I've never understood why Netflix is included, in FAANG, etc.

FANG was coined to characterize a sliver of the stock market. It's all about the returns those stocks were producing over a period of time, and how they frequently traded together.

It has basically nothing to do with: revenues, profits, employees, products, technology.

It's at least 90% because it makes the acronym work.

There's actually 5: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft

I normally see FAANG for Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix and Google. Not sure how to work Microsoft in there - maybe MAFANG or FANMAG or some such.

Netflix is one side business for Amazon and they rely on AWS for hosting. Why put them in the group?

It was originally used as a label for high performing tech companies from an investor's perspective[0], and from there adopted by software engineers and other employees who work or aspire to work for those companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netfl...

How did you overcome the 'I shouldn't have to go through whiteboarding' problem?

The riddles, and the whiteboards, are why I turn down all big 4 recruiter emails.

Power through it? You only have to do it once (or four times if you respond to all four), it takes one day and it's not that hard. There are way worse and fruitless ways to spend a day that we do routinely.

For a lot of skilled engineers with cushy jobs, not going for whiteboard is matter of principle.

I understand, but the question was on how to overcome the unwillingness. I don't see any other way to overcome it than 'just do it'. It is not a physical addiction or a condition and bears no ill effects other than lost time and maybe some pride?

> get help was the best thing to happen to me

What kind of help worked for you? Did you end up taking medication?

Yup. You can't heal if you don't communicate what's going on in your mind.

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