While a different situation, I had a pretty rough childhood and felt very similarly (feeling of disaster always looming). It took a long, long time to reprogram myself from constantly thinking "yeah alright, I got a promotion... But I know my new manager is going to fire me any minute". Or while I was still in school "sure, THIS test went well but I know something stupid will ruin my big project". All of the anxiety would also cause disasters! e.g. Over-studying and staying up too late leading to being late for tests in the morning. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

It took a long time to just let myself be successful without worrying that it would all fall out from under me. Let yourself be happy: you're financially stable and in a good marriage which is better than A LOT of people can say. Bad shit will always happen, but at least you're in a position to deal with it! Be prepared (savings, insurance, keeping your marriage happy) and roll with it rather than being terrified of it.

> Bad shit will always happen, but at least you're in a position to deal with it!

I think this is pretty key and doesn't get enough attention.

In child psych they talk about "resilience", the ability to get back on your feet when something knocks you down. It's hugely helpful for kids.

But it's also critical for adults, and especially successful adults who frankly don't have a lot of experience being knocked down and getting back up again. I suspect that most anxious successful adults underestimate their own ability to bounce back from failure -- many of us think that we got super lucky and at any time something could destroy it all, not thinking about how would take advantage of other opportunities already available in the face of failure in one domain.

I suspect another piece of this is the lack of spare resources (money, time) to handle external shocks. We're so busy that when one thing goes wrong and needs extra attention/money/time, we know it comes at the expense of something else -- and we feel that expense strongly.

Curious for others' thoughts on these.

There is ofcourse more to it than that.

"Getting back up" after life knocks you down is a huge factor in their success. There are very few successful adults protected from life's blows given the competitive, cut throat world we live in. They all know something about getting thrown into deep holes and climbing back out.

However, I will say that a majority of successful adults, learn how to be resilient at the expense of the people around them.

Not because they are evil, but because no one has shown them better ways of how to handle situations they haven't faced before.

People don't realize how bad this used to be in the past. Nowadays we have much more access to info, better understanding of the right ways to "cope", better understanding of what to avoid, and the right people/environments that will pull one out of life's deep holes. It's nowhere near perfect but it's much better (if you have the resources as you pointed out).

In the past people were mostly just winging it. It's why you see a whole lot successful people who are also ruthless. And regret it towards the end of their lives as they tally the costs and see examples of better routes they could have traveled.

It's interesting you bring up access to information: it seems like a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, I have more information at my fingertips than someone with access to the entire NYC library system would have had in the 1970s.

On the other hand, the outlier-emphasis of social and news media makes me aware of and able to worry about things someone in the 1970s wouldn't have thought to.

I feel like there was probably an optimal internet (for utility and overall positive impact) from ~1970-1998.

In hindsight, we should have more strongly segregated the information internet from the commercial internet, then let each evolve in isolation.

Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe. Being chronically stressed for tens of years is incredibly damaging to a body and mind.

Childhood trauma and PTSD are little better than a death sentence. Of course, not every child who gets knocked down has trauma. But there's a lot of evidence that people with "rough childhoods" just grow up to have "rough adulthoods".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_...

> Counterpoint: chronically stressed children are left with frantic nervous systems and don't learn how to self-soothe.

The counter-counterpoint is that this is very much a goldilocks things. Too little stress and you don't build resilience, too much stress is just plain abuse.

quite some time ago a co-relation was established between resiliency and the ability of the child to discover ad hoc foster parents. the island of stability normalcy and reasonable expectations created by a child when self-adopting a foster parent, seems to have a great bearing on who survives the traumatic childhood. I am one such child, having experienced extreme and daily physical and psychological abuse for more than 10 years and i have very severe difficulties with wanting to be socially active but feeling extremely pained by the interaction. I feel more in tune with people who are at least 20 years my senior and i am sure this is a result of self fostering

Interesting. I didn't know this was a thing. Thank you for sharing!

I recently had a revelation that neither of my parents were "good" parents. But also realized who my first two "good" parents were. My dad's mental illness turned into psychological abuse and he eventually committed suicide. Luckily, my mom married one of my "good" parents and we currently have a great relationship.

I have two older sisters, one turned out fine. She was born resilient, and didn't really seek a foster. The other sister is a different story, and I had wondered if she had found a "good" parent as a child.

adde unnum 4u, ;-) i think this is 20+ years old and from scientific american as a secondary lit resource. it seems to hold from the psych education ive had.

> But it's also critical for adults, and especially successful adults who frankly don't have a lot of experience being knocked down and getting back up again.

This is a point that certainly needs to be raised more often. Thanks for making me aware of it.

I really think that a lack of adversity is a double edged sword. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and if you don't get to experience your limits you can't tell what things might actually be a threat. And you won't learn the tools needed to face those situations. So you become afraid a of a lot of things that aren't within your immediate comfort zone.

Exercising the situations that we think might be a threat to us in a controlled way might be the best solution.

Your post is akin to telling a depressed person to stop being depressed. You can't just tell someone to stop having anxiety. That's not how the illness works.

i began to realize at an early age that the anxiety and depression were simply neurological sensations, and can be borne locked in a caged, like working with a migraine instead of tapping out for a sick day.

It never goes away, you just get on top of it as something that you inextricably are, like having a scar or poor eyesight. its called emotional repression.

That's your way of dealing with it, I also have that ability.

But not everyone does, nor can everyone learn it, people are unique and often incompatible with what works with other people in a way that cannot be changed.

You can't reasonably expect everyone to use the method that has worked for you, because your method is unique to you and in many cases is completely impossible to use for others, especially those with hard wired responses to trauma.

of course. most kids that experience as i have are dead at thier own hand or an abusers. i am told i am also gifted with a very high score on wechsler. that is also a mitigating factor, as well as what ever geneticaly based wiring is in play.

Just throwing this out here and you may already be familiar with it but I know a lot of people who have similar feelings who wrestled with imposter syndrome.

Parts of that sound a lot like what I see in developers feeling like they aren't capable and will be fired at any time for being an "imposter" despite being totally awesome, knock it out of the park engineers.

Either way, talking about these types of things helps and if it's causing you as much stress as it sounds like see if you can find someone to talk to about it(mentor, counselor, etc).

Thanks for the note.

Imposter syndrome is definitely a reality, and something that has really burned me in the past (the situation I described is about a decade old now) but I think I'm managing that well enough now. Or at least, in line with fears that the economy can tank badly, that I can get crippled in a car accident, stroke, etc.

> talking about these types of things helps

Absolutely - I've been looking. So far one counselor and I agreed it wasn't working (she "fired" me (graciously) at the appt that I was going to do the same) and another -I- declared wasn't working (I was too (over)analytical for someone who wanted to bulldoze over that), but finding therapists with openings that took my insurance was not going well. New job in the last few months means new insurance, so I'm trying again now that the holidays are over.

Instead of looking into CBT, you may try looking for therapists who utilize Solution Focused Therapy. I found one who approached things that way and found it to be tremendously helpful. She approached things initially from a very standard inventory of my family history, personal values, etc. and then tended to let me direct my counseling until I realized I had reached a point that I was ready to stop my regular sessions. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send me a PM.

Awesome, sounds like you're already well on the right track. Different things work for different people but keep on trucking and I think you'll get there.

Speaking of imposter syndrome... I came across Interview Cake the other day from (the comments?) of another thread here on HN and found their explanation of it, and how to understand it very helpful: https://www.interviewcake.com/impostor-syndrome-in-programmi...

I resemble this remark; could you elaborate on just who you feel can be helpful to talk to?

I regularly check in with my manager about my performance and he's very forthcoming on it, yet I still don't believe I won't be found out and canned at any second and end up sick and homeless.

Ideally someone has already beaten you to the punch(Imposter Syndrome is literally item #1 when I take on engineers to mentor). Of my sample size of ~150 engineers across every level my success rate of having people say "Oh my god, I have that" is so far 100%.

More concretely though I would not look to anyone directly in your management chain for a variety of reasons. The best ways I've seen to address it is with a senior engineer or someone that you respect who's willing to take you on in a mentorship role. This should be something where you set aside time to talk through these types of issues(plus all the other wonderful inter-team stuff that comes up in development) over a 3-6mo period.

If you can't find that I will say this: I've found that it comes from a place of caring and giving a shit about wanting to carry your weight or be a part of something. I don't think it's possible to have a desire to improve yourself and not experience it on a regular basis.

The best way I've found to approach it is to recognize when it's happening, call it out directly and tell yourself that your brain is being an asshole in this specific instance. Something I've also seen work well for other people is to do a short list of the things that you work on each day. Review it at the end of the day and take an objective look at what you've accomplished, you'll often find that it's more than you 'felt' like you did.

Hope that gives you some direction. If you're finding you local resources lacking drop me a line at val at vvanders.com and see what I can do to help.

Talk with a therapist or even a life coach if you want to start there. That you notice these feelings and want to do something about them is a good thing. Talking with a professional is good because they can really narrow down what's happening and give you strategies and coping skills.

There are therapists who are well versed in imposter syndrome and help patients understand it and get better. There are also podcasts if you want to take a self help approach first. I mean it's free. I would look for licensed therapists who apply a CBT oriented approach.

For imposter syndrome you have to assess at the evidence you are not capable or otherwise a fraud. Is there anyone else at your work that you feel is an imposter? No probably not. Are you as capable as the average employee at your work? Yes! You have performance reviews as evidence that you are good! What would you advise a friend who came to you expressing that they felt the same way? Would you say they are most definitely an imposter? What is an imposter anyway? How would an imposter be hired in the first place? Recognize that these automatic thoughts are triggering your amygdala and activating the nervous systems fight or flight response.

Also, there's quotes from Richard Branson along the line that if you meet 70% of the job requirements you are qualified to take the job and you should just learn the rest of it on the job.

And remember that even in the worse case, if you are fired, fired! There are still companies and jobs/roles where you are or can be a superstar. You see this all the time in business.

A therapist. No joke. In my case it _seems to be_ a coping mechanism for anxiety. I'm so afraid that I force myself to be successful. It goes under the radar because it's seen as healthy to the outside world, but inside is turmoil.

It was put best to me: Don't tell the dog it's not a chicken, we need the eggs.

I had that when I had kids. I'm an older brother but grew up in a stable family.

The lack of sleep combined with working hard full time is the cause.

If you can take a few months off of work (doing 20 hrs work a week works too), get to the gym and sort your diet out (cut down on fat and try to remove red meat and sugars) you'll feel much better.

It's working for me :)

Your brain probably just got really good at adapting because it needed to, there was no choice really. So I wouldn't feel to to bad about it that it ended up that way. It was just a natural consequence of your environment. If your environment is different now you might have to develop new habits and mechanisms for dealing with the anxiety.

Now maybe the answer that problem is not just exercise but mentally stimulating/challenging exercise that will rewire your brain(dancing, martial arts, music, yoga). But it's possible that the rewiring process will have to be stronger than that the original wiring that causes anxiety. So it might be a huge time and emotional investment, but if your serious it might be possible, especially since the stressors no longer exist in your environment.

People on HN talk a lot about going into different states of mind and that seems to be very effective and switching your conscious process to a completely different one[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#States_of_consci...

You are my doppelgänger. I live in US, am not an American, and feel exactly like this. I don't know if my parents (not in US) felt like this when they were my age, or it is only an American problem, or only an American problem of this generation.

People used to think for their kids and grand-kids financial future. That seems so out of the window now.

It used to be. My parents didn't. We are trying to do better to leave something for my kids like my grandparents did for my parents.

Sounds pretty familiar. I have it to the point that I can only truly relax when I travel for work, alone, but when traveling with the family I am an un-enjoyable ball of stress because I feel I need absolute control and we're just going to get screwed and dropped of at unsafe places etc. I guess I always dealt with it by thinking: I can take anything (sleep on the street, fight, etc). But my family can't. It's difficult to relax. Being aware of it has helped the last years (a career coach pointed it out) but the rewiring is slow.

I’d recommend finding a good therapist that specializes in generalized anxiety. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in particular can be really helpful at giving you tools to manage it.

I just read the book "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure".

About 1/3 of the book is how kids these days are being taught values that are pretty much the exact opposite of what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy teaches and how that leads to more anxiety.

Instead of learning: "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" and to not assume someone's intentions, they are being taught to be on the lookout for microaggressions and to report them.

Instead of being taught to critically question the feelings they have, they are taught that if they feel something, it must be true.

Summarizing about the AUTHOR's views on microaggressions:

Let's say someone comes up to you and says "Where are you really from?"

The motivations for asking this question can be ambiguous.

One way to interpret it is as a subtle racist insult that implies you are an "other". At this point you can be mad at how society is so racist.

An important part of CBT is that you can't read minds. The other way to interpret it is that the speaker is genuinely interested in me and wants to learn more. At this point I can have positive emotions and go about my day.

From a mental health point of view you are less likely to have anxiety if you choose option 2.

Sorry if I was being unclear, the books explains the views much better. The author's want us to avoid the fallacies of emotional reasoning.

Some quotes: "Sages in many societies have converged on the insight that feelings are always compelling, but not always reliable. Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships. Happiness, maturity, and even enlightenment require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and learning instead to question our feelings. The feelings themselves are real, and sometimes they alert us to truths that our conscious mind has not noticed, but sometimes they lead us astray."

"Beck’s great discovery was that it is possible to break the disempowering feedback cycle between negative beliefs and negative emotions. If you can get people to examine these beliefs and consider counterevidence, it gives them at least some moments of relief from negative emotions, and if you release them from negative emotions, they become more open to questioning their negative beliefs."

The author's of the book don't desire "children's alienation from their feelings.".

Let's take for example a student failing a chemistry test which may lead to anxiety. The student might think, "My life is ruined. I'll never get into college now."

The author's would suggest looking for counter evidence. Is it true everyone who has failed a chemistry test doesn't get into college? No that's ridiculous. Even if you aren't able to get into an Ivy League school, does that mean your life is ruined? No, plenty of people I know have great lives without an Ivy League education.

The book presents mainstream views on cognitive behavioral therapy. Do you think CBT leads to emotionally crippling men?

I would be interested to read a reconciliation between this book and The Gift Of Fear.

Edit: also, CBT doesn't work for everyone. I found it infuriating.

> CBT doesn't work for everyone. I found it infuriating.

This is where I'm at so far. I don't want to condemn it, even as a match for myself, with a sample size of 1, but I know a lot of people for whom it was successful, but my one therapist that worked with me on it thus far only caused more strife and anguish.

It felt like training in learned helplessness. "ok, so when your coworker lies about doing their work and you have to put out the fire that causes, you get angry. Have you thought about just not getting angry and accepting that this is how it works?" No, thanks for the tip, but the right answer was to quit that job.

Where does this student's failure narrative come from?

Do you really believe that “the American ideological worldview” treats rape and violence with “deference”? I can sort of see the argument for domination and exploitation—though I think you’re on shaky ground there as well—but, really, deference to rape and violence? How in the world does a person come to such a conclusion?

You’re going to have to do much, much better than that to convince me that the American ideological worldview is supportive or even tolerant of rape. First of all, I haven’t read any of those books and I’m honestly not going to read them, so you’re going to have to summarize the case they’ve made in support of your wildly outlandish claim. Second, you’re clearly begging the question when you claim that the media treats sexual predators with kid gloves: America has a long and noble tradition of treating the accused gently. Besides, the concern over reputation only goes to show how avidly anti-rape our culture is. It’s widely known that if a man acquires a reputation for being accused of rape or sexual assault, he’s pretty much done, both personally and professionally, regardless of whether or not anything was ever proved. These accusations are taken extremely seriously and are capable of destroying a man because America hates rape and sexual assault.

I’m not sure what to make of your last paragraph. You seem to be saying that the difference between a violent male psychopath and a man who doesn’t respect women as much as he respects men is one of degree and not kind. That’s absurd on its face. In addition, the entire phrase that begins with “generally do” and ends with “‘rape culture’” is a fractal of special definitions, hidden assumptions, and ideology that’s completely divorced from reality.

>I’d recommend finding a good therapist that specializes in generalized anxiety. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in particular can be really helpful at giving you tools to manage it.

I would recommend the same, for myself and many of my friends and family who went through similar things and have similar symptoms. Unfortunately such therapy is market priced in my major US city at $400.00 an hour, and health insurance plans even in the top tier of coverage quality produce surprise bills constantly. There is a significant material barrier to every dimension of health in this country and we absolutely cannot make progress on outcomes until we destroy that barrier.

I suffered crippling social anxiety when I was in my teens and very early twenties, got just the kind of help you recommend and I’m happy and functional without needing anti-anxiety medication. I cannot agree with your recommendation enough, it’s hard work, but it’s life changing.

If you feel the stress/anxiety is strongly impacting your life/wellbeing - then I strongly second this recommendation.

(If you live in SF feel free to PM me for a suggestion).

I find myself struggling with somewhat related situation, everything in my life is going good, happily married and a great job that I love however I find myself wanting to watch the world burn, I get excited about the prospect of war and the collapse of society. I keep it under wraps and don't mention it to anyone but I'm really not sure what's wrong with me.

A friend of mine shared similar story with me. He sold his company, has enough money, travels a lot, married etc but he secretly hopes for the war, chaos .

I felt that he just wants a reset in life which he can't do himself due to society, family pressure and hopes some external event will do it for him.

I feel like things aren't quite adding up - you got married, now you're stressed. Yet you think you're happily married.

It sounds like you traded being unhappy single, to being unhappy married. The circumstances have changed, the essence remains the same.

If you feel like this marriage not working out would screw up your life - you're right, it will. Being afraid that a failed marriage would screw up your life - is actually screwing up your life, this very second.

That's the missing bit - living in fear, even if it's mild, is quite miserable once you start to run out of things to look forward to that'll 'make you happy' once you get them. You got the marriage, look how short lived that honeymoon is - now you're right back to where you where you started from :)

> you got married, now you're stressed. Yet you think you're happily married

Well, yes. Lots of other things happened too - this has been at least a decade of gradual creeping anxiety. But being married has definitely tweaked my "I'm responsible" baggage.

> Being afraid that a failed marriage would screw up your life

Been there, done that - this is my second marriage. While I in no way want to undersell how bad getting divorced is - even when it's an amicable divorce like mine was - I'm in complete agreement that an unhappy marriage isn't worth it.

In this case though, I'm not afraid of losing the marriage - I'm just afraid of failing at my responsibilities, and I'm not even sure if they're marriage related responsibilities, or just adulting. We've been together 12 years now, and she's awesome, including not putting responsibility or demands on me. We could live in a box behind a restaurant and I'm confident she'd love me and not be blaming me.

Things have gotten worse for me as I've aged, but I can't say for certain the cause. Saving for retirement, health care, paying the mortgage, these are all things I associate with my marriage (and thus I mentioned it), but that may have been misleading. This could be being an adult, this could be my own success (I'm making almost 10x what I did 20 years ago, unadjusted) giving me more to lose, this could be my lack of friends as I outage many of my coworkers and the others focus on their families, this could be deteriorating health making me feel more vulnerable (I'm also 60 pounds heavier than 20 years ago), this could be the looming dementia on my father's side, this could be...

...a really unhealthy list of things to focus on. :) . Regardless, I appreciate the intent of your post, I can see how I made it seem like my marriage was responsible, but I don't see the line of causality. If it's that I AM in a happy marriage, but I'm afraid of losing the ability to enjoy that part of my life, but then the cause isn't an unhappy marriage.

I think the quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" applies well to you. I never finished Walden but that quote hit me in the guts many years ago.

I'm someone who lives in perpetual worry and it was something that I inherited from my parents. While I'm naturally lazy, a procrastinator, and completely unambitious; the sheer worry during my younger years forced me to try harder.

As a head of household one thing I've come to accept is that it's a role that comes with perpetual worry. It can't be helped.

The only way to mitigate it somewhat is to live well-beneath one's means.

And the only ones who don't worry about disaster looming around a corner are like Aesop's grasshopper.

> While I'm naturally lazy, a procrastinator, and completely unambitious; the sheer worry during my younger years forced me to try harder.

This, so many times this. I tell people I'm lazy and they say "You have two jobs, GM a weekly RPG and a monthly LARP, how can you be lazy?" They don't look at how little I WANT to do, they don't see how perpetually behind I am because given 3 hours to catch up I'll waste 2.5 of them, they don't see how a lifetime of this has taught me to wing it really well, to hide and cover up how behind I am. They'll talk about taking hikes or wanting to travel, but I want to sit and read or play games. Their dream superpower is flying, while I dream of teleportation and telekinesis - anything that means I'll have to struggle with the act of "doing" less.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”

― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I feel the same way as you but I don’t have the same baggage. I also am quite confused by the sitauation, being anxious and nervous all the time. I equate it to having a lot to lose; marriage, kids, house, career. When I was single it was just me and I had none of those things to worry about.

For me, something that really helped was mindfulness.

Sure, being aware of everything good in your life too (classic mindfulness). But more importantly, asking two simple questions:

"What actions can I take about this worry? And on what timescale?"

For a large number of my worries, if I was honest, there was either nothing I could do, nothing more I could do, or nothing more I could do at this time.

And if the answer was nothing, then I decided to stop thinking about it. I was surprised how many worries fell into this category. Or how exercising this ability influenced how I deal with new worries. (Now, it seems much easier, and harder to just let fears run away with me)

For the optimizer, the way I backdoored into this was realizing "Worrying, in many situations, makes me less effective."

"Doctors tell me I should exercise more"

Do you exercise enough? Running has helped me a lot with stress. I used to hate running at school, and now its something that helps me relieve my stress, and i'm much happier.

You may need to do some organizing, goal setting, or writing. Or maybe all of these. If you're worried about how you might have screwed up the past, you might want to write (or type, whatever) to organize your thoughts. If you're a more verbal person, maybe talk about these things with someone. If you get things out of your head and into words, it can help you organize your brain so that instead of foggy, murky chaos, you can start to come up with a plan of action for dealing with the things that you believe are bringing anxiety. Make some (reasonable) goals, with deadlines, and try to meet them. You may need to adjust them as you go, or you may do them terribly at first. This is fine. Just keep going.

> I constantly feel like disaster looms around every corner.

Sorry if this is unwelcome, but I recognize this feeling very well. I'm a lifelong CBT patient, in CBT we call this "catastrophizing", recognizing when you are falling into that thought pattern is the best way to break out of it.

You might consider body-focused trauma therapy. You were deprived of a childhood and it traumatized you.

Feel like the idea that life shouldn’t contain anxiety does more damage than the actual anxiety.

There's a kernel of truth there, but there's also a difference between "reasonable" anxiety (concern over you and your family's health and well-being), and the sort of manufactured anxiety that the article mentions (constantly being barraged with information about your performance/grades, for example).

I am you. Every line of it.