[graeme]

>I think this is the most difficult part to get back to normal: The brain brings you in stress mode for no obvious reason. Then you have to reason about it so the stress goes away and you will slowly reset your brain. But I doubt the paths in the brain will ever go away. It will be like a overgrown path in the end but it is still there.

I had this. Try square breathing every time you have a stress trigger. It was almost magical in how quickly it stopped things. Basically telling my body “false alarm, stand down. Repeat, stand down and recalibrate”

Basically: trigger, hold breath, exhale for 4 seconds, inhale for four seconds, repeat if necessary, focus on breath and counting while doing it.

I would say I did this for 2-4mweeks, then didn’t have to anymore. I was well into the “everything is ok s]again” phase when I did this, had done other correctives prior. This was the finishing touch.

[mistermann]

> I would say I did this for 2-4mweeks

Every time you had a trigger you did this, and symptoms lifted after 2-4 weeks?

https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing

[graeme]

Yup, pretty much exactly that. YMMV of course. For me my triggers were linked to breath anyway. I would have them, and then when I exhaled get tension in my neck and shoulders. Doing the box breathing with an exhale short circuited that. I think it gave my mind a thing to focus on, and helped train my stress response.

For sake of completeness, I did do one other thing. I had periodic worries about financial certainty in my business. But as with stress, I was past the point where this was a realistic concern. Problems could arise, but it would never be instant, total destruction of my business.

So, I wrote down all the things I was worrying about, how realistic they were, how much harm it would cause, and what my responses would be. I then kept thinking about this for a few days. Did a lot to remove worry. Then the breathing combined well with that.

I also found out fodmaps caused me digestive trouble + stress feeling, but the breathing had had its day to day impact before I discovered that.

[graeme]

I should note that it seemed to help very quickly. I could feel the stress stimulus, but then it was blocked. Eventually my stress stimulus reactions adjusted, within 2-3 weeks.

If it doesn’t feel right from the early days, it may not be the thing to solve your problem.

[mistermann]

Thanks for this useful additional detail. Debugging medical issues like this is extremely complicated, in no small part because a lack of organized anecdotal stories.

It's unfortunate that we have this widespread mentality of believing something is only true if it is measured and published by "authorities in the field". This belief rests on the axiom that that everything that can be known, is. Axioms like this are not just false but dangerous, and thousands to millions of them are present in humanities' "understanding" of reality, both at the high level "expert" level, as well as at the every day person level.