Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

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In our world today it seems impossible to complain about stress. Everyone around me from boss to family to even therapist keep telling me to remind myself of how great of a life I have and that I should know better than to complain. But it feels to me like I'm drowning in an ocean stress everyday with no way to escape it. I keep being compared to others who can seemingly take the stress well and am questioned why I can't take similar level of high-stakes, indeterministic responsibilities with severe dangers that are beyond my control, and little to no positive pay-off for me. Some people around me are extremely health conscious, they avoid all kinds of chemicals, eat religiously well, work-out regularly, sleep well etc yet when they show obvious signs of stress because they're working 12 hours a day in their torturous FAANG job, I'm treated like an antivaxxer for pointing it out. In this world of hustle culture, it seems like a taboo to talk about how unhealthy stress is. Stress today is like 70s cigarettes, everybody is doing it, so no need to worry about its health effects.

And yes I have graying hair at mid-late 20s. Sometimes I'm astonished how people don't complain about their stress levels. I feel weak, child-like, immature, and feeble being unable to tolerate maybe 10% of what my wife can.

Unsolicited advice : have you tried stopping coffee / caffeine? This improved my stress levels immensely although I only drank one cup a day.

I drink coffee and tea more for their beneficial phyto chemicals. If I were to stop them, I would lose this benefit. I limit it to a single cup of each.

B6 as P5P at 20 mg twice daily has helped my stress. Similarly, magnesium citrate has too. Theanine is also relevant at night.

I think the best cure for stress for someone who has saved up money is to quit their day job.

+1

Yes, very frustrating. I cannot take stress. It literally makes me psychotic. (I have Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Type) I was making six figures at Cisco in 1999 when I lost it all from the stress.

But now that I have seen my actual genetics, I get it. I am different and there is no adapting for me. My environment needs to look much different or I will die early like my brother and mother. I could work if the job was flexible enough but that is impossible.

Capitalism needs us to be all the same because that is easier to manage. Now that they weeded people like me out they are ramping up the stress and weeding out the more stable people with this BS gig work and hustle meme. You are being crushed for someone elses profit.

P.S. Full head and beard of grey hair at 58 and I love it, would not change it. My grandfather was grey at 50 and lived till he was 98 so who cares.

You can work hard and not be stressed. Stress often comes from lack of control, what are the severe dangers?

The most significant danger seems to be you get a low performance review. As a faang engineer that's a pretty weak a significant danger as there are many other jobs that will simply assume you're good.

>Stress often comes from lack of control

Not just lack of control, but lack of a light at the end of the tunnel. A lot of people can tolerate high stress for a while provided they know there's a payoff at the end, an assurance that things are gonna get better.

But when that payoff is taken away or non existent (no money, dead end job, shit living conditions, no chance of home ownership, no having a family, friends group, etc) people can start to fall apart even with low amounts of stress.

Being able to tolerate stress comes down to reasons. If you're doing stuff for good reasons you focus on those and keep your head down. If you don't have good reasons either find some or stop taking on pointless stress.

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