[agumonkey]

I'd love to avoid drugs. My very limited experience hints at meditation (just the simple calm, slow, breathing exercise, thoughtless relaxation nothing more) is very potent. Not enough though but more than enough to keep digging this trail.

[hinkley]

Try taichi or qigong. They can teach you to meditate while standing up, which makes it a lot more practical in daily life. Just having something invisible you can do ('work on your standing') in place of fidgeting or getting stressed out when get stuck waiting for something is remarkably effective.

Anxiety and trauma tend to manifest in disassociating your mind from your body. Working to bridge that gap can help a lot in dealing with uncomfortable situations.

Also, just stoop to bribing yourself. If I finish doing my taxes today I'll get those headphones or the fancy chocolates or my favorite ice cream. Lots of small wins, even contrived ones, gives you confidence for bigger ones. I have done this small annoying thing ten times. I can do this moderately annoying thing twice.

[agumonkey]

I did taichi in college (part of a wushu class) and it was damn amazing.

i did the self bribing, it works but not a lot. Hard to be judge and party. For bureaucracy I'm often more proactive to use the system against itself, namely giving them willfully stupid forms so they curate the required data, fill half of it and give me clear directions for the remaining part.

[colechristensen]

Also consider measuring and improving your sleep and doing dual-n-back exercises.

[agumonkey]

I did start to think on sleeping, but nothing very precise. Just a regard toward the 90min cycle thing. Which means I try to jump into sleep cycle when they occur (instead of delaying by browsing) and try to get out of bed after a full cycle.