So I can easily believe that this correlation exists. Always found it interesting when people said to separate “work and personal”. When I’m not doing well in my personal life, work won’t go well either.
I have seen this first hand in loved ones and also experienced it occasionally myself, though thankfully less frequently. I am extremely adept at compartmentalizing, including work and life... but a deep depression knows no limits easily bleeds over into everything. The mental noise is deafening. I was shocked how strong the effect was during a recent episode of depression, despite my typically strong executive functioning skills.
Equally amazing is the 'blue skies' and 'quiet mind' that can be achieved with proper treatment, for which I am infinitely grateful.
Please seek out help if you are struggling.
That's an interesting way to put it! I used to think of it in terms of switching off the parts of my brain that do all the useful thinking, it's like I'm reaching for a tool and the tool is just not there. Last time it happened I even convinced myself that I would never be able to work again - thankfully my boss was very supportive, gave me some time off and allowed me to ease myself back into work. This was almost a decade ago now.
To anyone out there experiencing regular repeating ruminations over workplace bullshit, you are not alone. It might be the job, it might be your manager or colleagues, or it could very well be you, but it doesn't matter once you're losing days to that headspace - I would strongly advise you to just get out when you can.
maybe replace 'depression' with something else but, at work, if i'm on a call with more than 10 people decision making becomes almost impossible. I think anxiety in the virtual room is high and everyone just becomes paralyzed. I've resorted to random dice rolls to make decisions in some of these cases hah.
edit: i'll add that the threat of one of my random dice rolls sometimes triggers the team to come together and figure something out.
Often we amplify a thought by thinking that it is important to us. Fair enough. But is thinking that thought helpful to our behaviour or happiness?
It's hard to directly control our emotional impulses but we can tweak their impact ever so slightly by, as you said, observing them.
The initial stage of dwelling gives thoughts footholds and reinforces them without evaluation of their validity. If a thought is worthwhile, you'll come back to it because it will stand out in the landscape of thoughts that went by.
Adopt of mindset of letting thought flow over and through you rather than catching each one and dwelling on it. When thoughts are shallow and numerous, this is like brainstorming.
He has some techniques in the book for trying to break the cycle of rumination, but ultimately it comes down to willpower and repetition. As someone going through/coming out of serious depression for the past month, even if I'm able to stop my own rumination, if its severe or overwhelming enough, it will likely come back very soon if not immediately. I think time and healthy distractions are great complements.
I also observe that the primary thing an SSRI does for me is that it makes thoughts much less sticky, to the point of forgetfulness.
I self-taught this method at a young age and have picked up a few other "quiet mind" techniques over the years that do similar-ish things. The principle, from my pov, is to basically sit with it and proactively teach your brain to stfu, one thought at a time.
At one point, the videos became less necessary. It was unhealthy in the highest year of the crisis, but less unhealthy than thinking about winning an argument with a bully.
Of course, who knew that having a lot of distractions and sources of satisfaction could lead to fewer addictions, but sometimes you don’t have them / can’t afford them.
"Drive things forward" is shorthand for "stress about and take blame for". If you are being asked to "take ownership", you are being asked to earn your bread by conflating your own self worth with the success of some project, usually one whose success is mostly beyond your control. The paycheck is compensation for the sleepless nights and distant stare you affect with your family at the beach. This /is/ the job.
I think this dynamic will only get worse with AI tools doing more for organizations. Project managers are at least somewhat paid for their organization skills and executive function, even if they're mostly being paid for stress. If a machine can organize and coordinate, the only thing left for people to do is...have emotions, worry, absorb threats and abuse.
Another way to think about this is that the ownership class can probably find machine substitutes for most white collar labor, but these machines can't be motivated and managed in the ways that B schools have been teaching for 100 years. Yes, Claude can try to fix a bug, but you can't threaten it to squeeze more out of it. Alice has three kids and a mortgage. It's trivial to threaten Alice -- you don't even have to do it explicitly. If her productivity is enhanced with AI, and her bargaining position softened, this becomes even more attractive because the owners can pay her less to do more.
I don't think that's necessarily anxiety. I'm sure there's a name for it, but it's a bit like the "bystander effect", where no one does anything because everyone expects someone else to deal with it. Something similar seems to happen in meetings with too many participants.
I once had stitches which had to be removed after about 2 weeks. It was the only time I've gotten stitches.
It's a weird experience which involves a fair bit of tugging and feeling things you've never felt before along with maybe a little blood.
The doctor told me to let him know if it hurt. After the first tug I said is it normal to feel pain?
Then he asked me if what I'm feeling is really pain or is it a sensation?
Then he did it a few more times and he was right. I wasn't feeling real pain.
I was feeling a combination of sensations I wasn't familiar with. Yes there was a bit of tugging, pressure and a little bit of pinching but I wouldn't register it as "actual pain". Maybe it was like a 1.5 out of 10 on a pain scale. A minor discomfort at most and completely manageable.
But even now, years later I sometimes think back to that experience in other contexts and ask myself "are you sure?" when evaluating situations or thought processes. It's not a lack of confidence, it's more about making sure I'm assessing things in a fair and reasonable way.
I've seen people sharing this tip on HN for dealing with tinnitus: Picture a volume equalizer or the FFT waveform and image yourself lower the volume until it goes away. In therapy after we unpacked the unhelpful thinking, we talked about 'rewiring' these unhelpful connections in the brain. We pictured a old style phone switchboard with wires, me finding all the unhelpful thoughts and rewriting them one by one. It felt very similar to the tinnitus tips and it was surprising effective.
Seek these sticky thinker employees, ask them how to proceed with XYZ problem, and when they finally get an answer back to you, do the opposite.
Is it daydreaming about negative future outcomes based on a decision? (If I do this and it doesn’t work, everyone will laugh at me / partner will leave me)
Or is it hyper focus on past bad decisions (I missed out on this / did it wrong and that’s why everyone else is so far ahead. Now I am scared to make same decision again)
Lately I've been seeing life as consistent conflicts, framing it as "emotional combat," and then ironically it calms me down, because I recognize that the one conflict in front of my face is not necessarily the one causing all the feelings I perceive in me or in other people.
Close your eyes. For every thought you have, imagine it to be a soap bubble, floating upwards. After a few seconds of floating upwards, it pops and is gone.
Your post inspires me to think of how to package some of my work of emotional conflict and health for engineers. If you're curious to talk more about it, I'd love to chat here or you can send me an email to the address in my bio.
Even that process isn't easy. I've struggled with depression and anxiety most of my adult life, and only recently learned that ADHD is a major part of it. Just getting to this point (40+) has been an incredible struggle. Even when you're in the system, it feels like you have to do a lot of the work yourself, which can be impossibly hard. So hard in fact, that you some times wonder if it's even worth it. I'm in a pretty good place now, but it also feels like I still have a long way to go, because it turns out just getting ADHD meds doesn't really fix anything, and also brings with it new problems.
I guess it maybe sounds like I'm trying to dissuade people from getting help - I'm really not, but it's just the first step of an unknown amount of steps.
>'blue skies' and 'quiet mind' that can be achieved with proper treatment
I'm not there, but knowing that it's possible is what keeps me going.
It seems hard to do because some thinking about old mistakes seems essential to not make new ones. Am I missing a key element?
Curious as I think I dwell on the past too much and don’t focus on the present
The way to deal with an unpleasant thought or feeling is to experience it. Find a quiet place where nothing will distract you. Sit down, call back the unpleasant emotion, and experience it. Don't try to "let it go" or anything; don't do any kind of thought processing. Instead, dive into the feeling completely and even "turn the volume up" on it. "These people treated me so wrong!" Let it scratch you. Let it have its say, as fully as possible.
What usually happens for me, strangely, is that the emotion has its say and then I... somehow forget what I was feeling. My mind drifts, the edge blunts, the unpleasantness becomes harder to recall. I try to call it back again with all force, and it comes back, but weaker and weaker each time. And then it becomes just another abstract item of memory, its power over me gone forever.
I'd also say that any time you feel like you're in a "system," consider whether it's helping. I'm not sure what you mean here, but systems don't care. Systems don't exist to help you. Systems exist to take your money (or your insurance benefits), or just to perpetuate their own existence.
I think that you're pointing out an important nuance of that method - wether to keep a distance to the emotion or "going into it". I guess something important can also be said about the difference between ruminating - i.e. thinking about the hangup - or sitting in your feeling about it (kind of like massaging the painful thought) and observing how your body and mind responds to it.
I don't really have a clear conclusion about these nuances - apart from it being helpful to try out the variations to see what works.
What you miss is that solutions like the one you suggest simply cannot be implemented by those that are suffering. Folks who have not encountered such a problem cant even understand it. "logical" or "reasoning" solutions do not work. What is required starts with empathy to slowly rewire the brain in those that are suffering.
There is a spectrum in sticky thinking and all of us fall somewhere in that spectrum.
But I like your idea, and those of us who are "normal" can use something like it to eliminate chains of worrisome thinking.
Not to ignore that the complex manifold of interlocking conflicting social rules can add further friction
Thinking: trying to logically reason yourself to a satisfying conclusion.
Feeling: Keeping the thought in the front of your mind and take your time to feel what the thought feels like. See how your body reacts to it.
I helped my girlfriend through the process a few years back, and it's so many phone calls, so many forms, she had to basically trick her mom into filling out some of the paperwork (long story, her mother is perfect and anything wrong with her child is a mark on her "record," it's frustrating) and even then, even once diagnosed, she was fired from a job for seeking accommodations under the ADA, and I swear every single month she has to take multiple calls from pharmacies and her fucking insurance company to reaffirm that yes, she does still need her damn medications.
Fortunately all that shit has kept her too busy to really wonder if RFK is going to send her a fucking farm or whatever.
I believe it can be very effective if done right for certain emotions, but not for everyone.
I assumed it was unlikely I’d be able to do the self-work needed while still suffering all the indignities of the employment.
It’s fucking hard work to dig out of that place mate but keep at it. You can and will get there.
The more days I tackle the little things, the more empowered i feel. And the more I notice, now even on days where only half the list of those basic wellbeing hygiene things get done, I still feel tremendously better. Different. And the less need I feel to treat those chores as the goal and lore as a simple means to living a simple good life, and enjoying the good moments. I see the interplay of physically taking care of yourself and others, incremental progress and good habits, and a more balance outlook on life all toed together and all part of a healthier and happier mindset.
Tldr when I start to slip and spend less time diagnosing and more time finding something, anything, small to change course, and am surprised at the ripple effect is (now) has.
And if you're sick, and unable to work, you will have to deal with The System whether you want to or not (unless you're fabulously wealthy, I guess). And as you mention, and as I've learned myself first hand, the benefits system is ineffective, uncaring, incompetent and occasionally malicious. It's so fantastically complicated, convoluted and bureaucratic, and exists to get sick people back to work, but accomplishes nothing of the sort. Largely a waste of taxpayer money, in my opinion. I could write a book about this shit.