May I chime in with some more practical experience WRT writing down worries:
- I tried something similar to this Negative Thinking Analysis Form [1]
- In my experience this takes a lot of time, when you try to do it right. You really have to let a thought sink in for a long time to actually find out where it is distorted. And it sometimes even takes longer to find the underlying thought behind a series of thougts and worries.
- But once done the thinking is usually over and sometimes I learned something about the beliefs that underpin my thinking.
Yes, I am exactly the same. While at work I feel very productive eliminating future risk by being very conspicuous towards all design decisions, but the same attitude in "real life" is very troublesome.
For example, a very small random sample of thoughts that routinely pop up:
- Lent somebody your bike? Oh my god he/she may die, because it's badly maintained (and thinking about the details about different kinds of breakage vs. harm caused).
- Opening plastic containers or cans for food: oh my god, sharp edges may fall into the food (how to keep parts of packaging from falling into food while opening is surprisingly complex topic, think about knifes vs. scissors vs. tearing it open, all have very different hehaviour wrt. creating debris :)
- doing mistakes when filing taxes vs. the risk and penalties that may ensue
- furniture / cupboards being insufficiently bolted to the
wall and coming down (and thinking about how it would move, where it would hit and the likelhood of bad injuries)
- risk of injuries due to electricity after fixing electric installation at home (am I sure I didn't damage some insulator, is the ground wire really properly attached, is the strain-relief properly done etc.)
For me this is pretty much modulated by stress level. Doing a lot of sports, less coffee, and sleeping enough usually leaves me much less inclined of doing these not so helpful analysis for stuff outside work. And I'm always amazed how other people can just "wipe away" such thoughts as unnecessary without any analysis at all. Maybe that's the difference between employing proper intuition vs. striving for "mathematical proof" kind of certainty in all areas of life.
[edit] adding another perspective that is sometimes helpful in stopping overthinking: trying to analyse the full tree of possibilities is the chess computer kind of reasoning (alpha-beta search). It is pretty limited in what domains it can be applied to (e.g. it does not work for Poker or the Game of Go). On the other hand try to learn some Go and feel the difference: after gaining some experience you will give up on exhaustive analysis in many situations and just start relying on intuition, because it's the only thing that actually works for complex, unclear situations. Now sometimes I try to remember how playing Go feels when faced with real-world problems where I'm tempted to do an exhaustive analysis. See also [1].
Yeah sounds familiar. I feel it's related to stress and to not taking time to stop thinking or make myself stop thinking (and indeed do sports or play with the kids, while first clearing my head).
I have had moments where I felt I was almost loosing it because I was just constantly thinking about some (in hindsight minor) issue. And I then start to meditate just to stop the thinking. I don't know if that helps or if there is a natural cadence to it but I do get better after doing that for some days usually (10-15 min here and there, I used the free tier of HeadSpace during 1 period as well). I should just also meditate regularly to see if my general mood improves. From everything I read, it should.
I am about to go camping, that will help, although I'm already getting pissed (and finding nice ways to express said emotion) at that fictitious family with the bluetooth speaker on all day in the spot next to me. What a waste of thought. Just stop brain.
+1 for reducing caffeine intake. Some years ago I used to wake up in the middle of the night with extreme anxiety about ridiculously small problems. Cutting caffeine can definitely help (although it may also have an adverse effect on work efficiency :)
I can relate to this. Let me ask you a thing: when you ship things (release a product), do you feel lifted/happy like ppl here tell you, or does your worries increase (like it happens for me, I hate shipping)
When the code works the way I want it to for the version I’m about to release.
Like if I’ve finished the code for v1.6 and am ready to ship it to customers, I feel great. When I actually send it to customers my anxiety kicks in thinking of all the support requests and criticism I’m about to get.
(using throwaway account so I don't have to sanitize what I write)
I can relate to what you write, I also used to feel social anxiety and always felt (and still sometimes feel) in the wrong place when going out with more social people.
"Not having learned how to interact with people" is exactly how I often feel, having spent much too much time in front of my computer (teaching myself programming) during my younger years.
But nowadays those deficiencies don't bother me much any more. Seems like I finally accepted who I am, and developed some sense of humor or towards situations where my lack of social skills become apparent. I think you overestimate how much people appreciate the social skills of the "cool guys". Sometimes it's quite ok to be a more introverted person that doesn't need to bother people with small-talk. It becomes easier once you stop trying to be someone you aren't. While it may be more difficult to get to know new people, once people get to know you, I think there is quite some tolerance towards people with less-than-average social skills. It doesn't make you a malicious person.
About "connecting with people": due to family ties I stumbled into various niche hobbies that connect me with similar-minded people. I started playing the game of Go at various local clubs and also sometimes take part in amateur tournaments that give handicap to beginners to give everybody a chance. I also started training in some niche martial arts club after suffering quite some anxiety after a neighbour started showing physical agression towards my family.
My experience with those hobbies where generally very positive. Those niche hobbies have a relatively small social circle, so you often run into people you already know, which is much less stressful to me than constantly having to learn to deal with new people. Also the "niche-ness" of those topics seems to impose a filter on the kind of persons that are drawn to them. I often meet very interesting, open-minded people that way, it's easy to have conversations and there's not much need for bull-shit small-talk :). A common, niche interest, already effortlessly creates some connection.
Thinking back now, I think when I was younger I totally underestimated the availability of open-to-everybody activities that you can join if you want to meet like-minded people (or at least people that don't make you feel uncomfortable). I'd also say that I generally was too pessimistic about the impression I made on others.
Not trying to dismiss anything of what you write, which honestly sounds like a pretty taxing situation to be in. Just trying to give some more data points for a bigger (and maybe or maybe not) more realistic picture.
Maybe I should also mention that I suffered panic attacks and related general anxiety problems since my youth but did nothing about that until starting psychotherapy sessions a few years ago. In the beginning, this was a very difficult step to take, but looking back, I think nothing else would have helped in the long run. If you suffer from "terrible" social anxiety, then maybe this is also an angle to consider.
> I can relate to what you write, I also used to feel social anxiety and always felt (and still sometimes feel) in the wrong place when going out with more social people.
I think it is important not to conflate social people with extroverted people. Being somewhat introvert I tend to get exhausted around very extrovert people who suffer from verbal diarrhea. To my mind, a social person is someone who can tune in to other people and make them feel comfortable.
It can be hard to get over the anxiety to actually go out and participate in a club/sport. This feeling is pretty common for even people with good social lives. A trick I've found is just to evaluate your excuses. Usually you'll find that the reasons to skip going out are pretty weak and the potential upside to going is huge. Another one is to think about minimizing regrets. There's a comparatively low chance to regret going out over doing a solo activity.
- I tried something similar to this Negative Thinking Analysis Form [1]
- In my experience this takes a lot of time, when you try to do it right. You really have to let a thought sink in for a long time to actually find out where it is distorted. And it sometimes even takes longer to find the underlying thought behind a series of thougts and worries.
- But once done the thinking is usually over and sometimes I learned something about the beliefs that underpin my thinking.
[1] http://discoveryoursolutions.com/toolkit/negative_thinking.h...