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Comment by throwawaysorry | Hacker News Reader

I had an almost the exact same experience, couldn't flip back up after rolling over, and first time whitewater kayaking, rocks hitting my head, etc. However, my feelings about the event afterwards were completely different. I was in a state of complete euphoria for more than a week. Watching, listening, interacting with anything brought me joy. The food tasted better, the birds flying around made me happy, anything... It was as if I took oxy or anti-depressant pills. I was just SO happy to be alive, I couldn't not shake the warm glow that I was still here.

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I’ve had a different experience unfortunately. I had a completely unexpected stroke nearly two years ago (I was 38 at the time). I was extraordinarily lucky and suffered no long term effects, but for an hour and a half the entire right half of my body essentially didn’t exist. I could barely speak, and early on I was mostly just confused about what was going on.

Now sleep is very difficult for me (it was before, but now it’s significantly worse; I assume because it happened while I was sleeping) and I deal with anxiety off and on. It’s almost never anxiety “about” something, just an intense experience of dread. I fret about the fragility of life way more than is healthy. I do appreciate every day that I have, but I’m constantly aware that any moment could be my last. Or, perhaps worse, that at any moment my ability to do the things I love could be taken away, leaving me unable to speak or think clearly or ride a motorcycle or snowboard or do judo.

I wish I could let it go and just live my life. But it’s hard, even with therapy.

That sounds really tough. I guess you're saying that you suffered no long term effects to your ability to move and sense but is there a way to determine if your anxiety and emotional resilience problems are a direct result of the stroke?

Most likely it's a psychological consequence and not so much a physical/chemical consequence. I have a very, very tiny bit of permanent damage in an area of the brain related to reinforcement learning, but that shouldn't cause the effects I'm experiencing.

You might find it beneficial to do a series of drawings of natural objects (flowers, fruits, plants, stones, etc.) focusing on drawing the inner contour lines in order to convey their dimensional form to paper.

Your experience reminds me of how I felt after a situation that was more like chronic trauma, vs an acute near-death experience.

I did Teach For America it was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done. This definitely isn't true for everyone in the program, but I think my personality combined with the circumstances of my placement led to a very difficult experience for me.

Every single day, I got out of bed, tired, to go into another day of getting my ass kicked. Sunday was the worst day of my week because I had 5 days of trauma ahead of me. And honestly, I don't think "trauma" is an exaggeration of the experience of having 5 consecutive days of continuous stress overload every week for weeks on-end.

That was 14 years ago, and ever since I've felt like I'm walking on sunshine nearly every day since. Which is weird because I dealt with a lot of depression before my teaching experience.

However, I know a lot of people who experienced the opposite, with a lot of bad and lingering mental health challenges.

I have been fascinated by this phenomenon ever since listening to the Ologies podcast episode about near death experiences. What you describe is extremely common.

This is fascinating to me and I have so many questions! How do you feel about life now? Did you eventually end up feeling how you used to feel about life? Was it just a week of euphoria and then a “snap back to reality” (for lack of a better phrase) or was it gradual?

Not OP, but I've had a couple of pretty awful NDEs, and in my case, at least, while the euphoria fades after a few days to a week, each one genuinely did seem to reset my anxiety baseline to a lower level. Things that had bothered me 7/10 became 5/10, tops, and that has persisted across years. I would be very happy to have not had those experiences in the first place, but the silver lining is real.

>each one genuinely did seem to reset my anxiety baseline to a lower level

Yes! for me as well. It reminds me of a response Jack Tramiel (Founder of Commodore computers and holocaust survivor) made, when asked about dealing with the stress of cut throat competition.....something to the effect of .."stress.. what stress? Compared to Auschwitz.. this is nothing"

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