[graeme]

Used to be anxious, now I'm not. This stuff may or may not apply to you. Take it as one anecdotal experience.

First, are these in line?:

  * Sleep
  * Diet
  * Exercise
  * Meditation/relaxation time

Whenever I feel anxious now, I notice I've let one or more of those slide. Anxiety resolves when I fix them.

Second, I used to be anxious for the following reasons:

  * I was socially awkward with few friends.
  * I was bad at reading body language. 
  * I didn't have objective things I could point to that I had done that were unambiguously good.
  * My reasons for feeling good were all in one area.

Number 2 was a major cause of number 1. When I couldn't read people, I was always worried I'd do something wrong. This made me shy and awkward around people. This in turn made people less likely to want to hang around with me.

So I learned how to read body language. You don't have to live in fear of harsh reactions if you can read body language. You'll notice people broadcasting loudly "everything is fine, I think you're doing a good job" loud and clear. The odd occasions someone is displeased, you'll spot it a mile away. I can't emphasize this enough.

I used this to also fix any specific weaknesses that made me feel bad. So now I feel very comfortable with my life. I produced a bunch of stuff that everyone unambiguously agrees is good.

Finally, I made sure to put my efforts into a few areas. If work is going poorly this week, at least I lifted more at the gym, and vice-versa. Having your ego fulfilled from different areas prevents you from feeling bad if one goes south.

Hope that's useful.

Note: Advice of this calibre is all assuming that there's no issue that actually requires therapy/medication. I don't know much about those options. My experience was just garden variety anxiety that can affect any human being.

[dhardy]

I know this is a bit off topic and a touch on the personal side(feel free to not answer) but I am curious how you taught yourself to read body language? Did you use books or trial and error, or??

[graeme]

The first step was learning to make eye contact. If you're not looking at people, you're not even getting the chance to read them. I just didn't look much at people for the first 21-22 years of my life.

I remember reading a bunch of articles about "how to make eye contact". I was on sites aimed at people with aspergers, as they're a niche most likely to actually need that kind of advice.

Then you practice. And occasionally get feedback from people. Everything will be awkward as first, but do something long enough and it becomes a habit. The feedback is important, so your new habit is actually a good one.

Then I read some books on body language, and I got this DVD by Paul Ekman about microexpressions. I've since read some stuff suggesting that may be bunk, but the DVD was still valuable because it showed me what a bunch of different expressions represented, and gave me feedback if I was correctly classifying them. (There's a big book of facial expression coding that lists expressions standard across cultures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System)

Then I combined the two. Talking to people, looking at them, and noticing their expressions. A bit one was looking for laugh lines by eyes. If someone is genuinely amused, their eyes will smile in a way that they won't if they're just mouthing a smile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile#Duchenne_smile

After that, it was just practice. Talk with people, pay attention, see if the results match what you thought. (For instance, if you thought someone enjoyed themselves, and then they want to hang out again, then you were probably right)

Over time, by paying attention, and using feedback to assess my judgments, I was able to build an intuition for reading people, one that I believe is quite accurate. People often are surprised that I know what they're thinking or when they're upset by something.

Most of the small annoyances of life melted away. A lot of interpersonal grief just evaporates if you can read the people you're dealing with, and respond appropriately. For instance, I have zero complaints about store personnel, in person. They're all wonderful! Over the phone, I can't see them, and stuff can still get frustrating.

It turns out that people usually aren't jerks. We just react in predictable ways to other people. So if you do something irritating, or ignore someone's discomfort, they'll get irritable. And then you'll get irritable.

But if you can spot the small signs, you can make adjustments, and everything goes smoothly. (To be clear, I'm talking about smoothing minor friction, not being a doormat. But minor frictions cause 80% of social grief!)

So:

  1. Theory
  2. Trial and error
  3. Feedback
  4. Revision, repeat #2

[dhardy]

I know this thread is long passed but I wanted to say thank you! I appreciate the depth of your response and I believe it will help others who have similar anxiety.

[voidlogic]

>>Diet

I would have never believed this, but after I started on a ketogenic diet I realized my stress/anxiety was greatly reduced. (Beware: antidote, n=1, etc).

>>Exercise

I find the days I feel "too busy" (aka really just stressed) for a walk are the days I need it most. I seldom find a 45 min walk to be a waste of time in retrospect.

[websitescenes]

"* I was bad at reading body language."

This was such a huge issue for me. Being so observant, it's easy to judge someone based on body language and tone. Yes we can gain valuable information from this observation but we should not assume those observations are correct. I find it very easy to assume my assumptions are correct and this often creates situations where there are none.

Thanks for sharing.

[graeme]

Just curious, you mean you observe a lot of stuff, but judge it wrongly?

That's interesting. I wrote about my learning process in a comment on this thread. I always looked for real world feedback to assess my judgments, and over time was able to train my intuition to be more accurate.

[websitescenes]

I feel like I put meaning behind things I observe in people, when that meaning is not always necessarily there. I tend to see body language/tone and exaggerate their role in receiving communications. I am trying to not judge based solely on my assumptions and I think that real world feedback will absolutely help.

[robg]

We have data now to support the sleep-stress relationship. Hope to publish that soon. Now sleep is the most important thing I do every day. Then exercise. Then work.