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Comment by davidkim | Hacker News Reader

I've struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. I used to approached it with a fight or flight relationship. As I shifted my ways of identifying with it, I was able to turn that fight/hostility into a gentle dance. From there I was able to start taking the small steps that would help me have better control of it. Start now, or do I let it manifest further for my future self?

Here are some things that have helped me:

  - Meditation / mindfulness
  - Good sleep hygiene
  - Understanding and reading about the condition

There are many more, I'm sure you're aware of them.

I'd be happy to talk with you about it more. You ARE talented, don't let the mind get to you (it will try). All the best!

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Meditation/mindfulness and good sleep hygiene worked wonders for me too. As a grad student, I also suffered with anxiety due to imposter syndrome. Here is my shift in perception that helped me.

Stop taking yourself too seriously. Listen to the stories you tell yourself about you. When your mind tells you that you don't know anything, or how come you didn't achieve anything "significant" if you are so talented. Will you ever say this to your friend? Or to a child? Your relationship with yourself should never be worse than what you have with an acquaintance because you don't really know yourself. I was constantly surprised by myself when I started inspecting myself.

Start taking yourself just as a streched-out child. Life is too short anyways. Find the innocence that is there in you. No matter how many times you fail or succeed, you still love you.

> Stop taking yourself too seriously. Listen to the stories you tell yourself about you. When your mind tells you that you don't know anything, or how come you didn't achieve anything "significant" if you are so talented. Will you ever say this to your friend? Or to a child? Your relationship with yourself should never be worse than what you have with an acquaintance

Just posting to say I recognise a lot of myself in this, and your post struck me as very helpful. As a result I've already decided to change the things you talk about.

Sometimes, the trick is simply becoming aware of things. After that, you can work on them. Thank you for your post :)

I'm in total agreement here. The fight or flight response to anxiety feels really hard to overcome, but it is possible using these and other approaches.

Something else that I feel like I should mention is that if you're feeling overwhelmed, scheduling an appointment with a googled therapist near you to talk about anxiety is an awesome concrete action to take. In the heat of the moment, it can feel like admitting defeat (it's not). It's kind of a way of TDD'ing your view of yourself.

Do you actually mean 'googled'? Or is that a typo and means 'good'? Just curious since it could be both.

Thanks for your thoughts! It's great to hear from others who are experiencing these feelings, and I've also found meditation and sleep to be fundamental. The fight/flight response is a cool way of characterizing the difficulty of running away from and/or resisting these feelings.

As someone who has had that flight / flight response many times as a result of anxiety I think that poster was being literal, not figurative. Also, thank you for posting this; though I've come to learn to manage my condition with sleep, exercise and mindfulness meditation it's nice to see the other thoughts on the subject and see that many others are helped by the same things I've come to over many many years working on this on my own.

All good advice, but don't be afraid to try a medicinal remedy as well. I know people for whom Zoloft (frequently prescribed for anxiety) has worked wonders.

This.

Meditation, CBT, a regular sleep pattern.

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