Please (please) append the word "Essays" (or "Book") to the post title ASAP. This reads like an obituary and I'm sure many others will be concerned when seeing it in this form like I was.
>Please (please) append the word "Essays" (or "Book") to the post title ASAP. This reads like an obituary and I'm sure many others will be concerned when seeing it in this form like I was.
1. I'm not a moderator and can't amend the title.
2. Why is it a priority that people not be "concerned"? They can just click the article and see what it's about.
I’m the post author. If people are deciding what the article is about based on its title (and the title is nothing more or less than the name of the article’s subject), they aren’t people I want as readers. The title stays as it is.
First time I ever had to leave a comment surrounding the HN Guidelines, but "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
Just today you wrote "[...] Russians, you're a fucking Trump supporter!"
HN is the best and I'm sure you agree. Please take it easy with these kinds of comments.
It tramples curiosity when no one questions why the Russians are blamed for everything which is intellectually dishonest. A few hackers isn’t indicative of the entire country. It’s almost starting to border on bigotry
Nobody is blaming Russian people, they’re blaming the Russian government. All large foreign powers engage in espionage of their rivals and have done so for literally millennia.
(Note: if you feel that this is just "regular" anxiety and it can pass, my wall of text is something you can skip. Only thing that should be considered are developing coping skills! I'm just trying to be helpful.)
I'm thinking you'll reach the end of this dark tunnel here soon - but with a bit of work! The posters here have been thoughtful and there's a lot of good stuff to consider - I may be able to touch on this from another angle.
If you have the funds, I would strongly encourage you to see either a psychologist or psychiatrist. I have suffered with clinical anxiety and regular panic attacks for over a decade. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 and Psychosis about 2 years ago, which are very rough and sometimes "team up" to make my existing anxiety/attacks worse.
Even though this "teaming up" effect has been given me more anxiety than I can handle... trying out a 1 or many medications, reading books on coping skills/etc, and putting in the effort to test out said coping skills are great for many people.
If you don't want to go this route, I would at least spend some time looking into and testing out various coping skills. You can use them as soon as things are headed in the wrong direction. This approach will also help if you have non-clinical anxiety as well.
note: not a doctor... just a "patient" and can relate :) - I think you got this!
You make very good points and I concur that getting professional help helps a lot - from past experiences. It seems that most likely I exhausted my coping mechanism pool, and if the state continues to deteriorate, I will most definitely reach out to some professional. Thanks!
"It seems that most likely I exhausted my coping mechanism pool".
Been there, done that! I have about 10 "core" mechanism that have stuck, but some stop being effective because I needed to change them up to make it more suitable to address my suffering.
The psychwards I went to before my Dx/meds taught (DBT) (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) it's more about coping and life skills to execute on. You can also find therapists that practice with this modality. In a nutshell, DBT is all about "mindfulness" and "skills" (basically more involved coping mechanisms). It's more "actionable" than regular CBT in my opinion - but I'm biased.
You can skip the DBT therapy and look up all of the skills and practices on your own too. It's good to have a professional as a therapeutic guide and hold you accountable, however. I won't go too far into that, but you have to track "bad habits" (PG-13) and if you followed through with what you set out to accomplish for you illness.
Also, if you're in the US, you can freely/anonymously join the local DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support) meeting. The name is misleading though - it's basically for any mental or "advanced" mental illness. My sample size is 1, but their were folks in the meetings that had debilitating anxiety / anxiety disorders soo..
I'm very passionate about the UFO subject ("ufology" as some call it) and am happy that we're getting more "official" reports like this which leads to public awareness. I follow the subject pretty closely and 90% of it is all about book sales so it's annoying/pushes it back from being taken seriously in terms of science.
As far as I'm concerned this ^ and the Phoenix Lights are the most credible UFO sightings.
Personal note: I'll never forget the first time I saw a UFO and it was with my Dad! We couldn't believe it - my cheap Virgin Mobile flip phone camera was not capable of... well anything, unfortunate. I have seen 2 or 3 UFOs since then (one with an ex-partner so I wasn't just seeing things).
BTW, I'm you're typical "smart" logical programmer and don't just believe whatever I hear... I'm betting on more of these reports coming out and hope that science starts to factor into the subject.
I think the TPTB decided that a next pandemy may wipe the whole humanity off, and decided that it is the time to start giving out the information, piece by piece.
Can't say I was a narcissist, but I had an epiphany at one point about "being too full of myself" as well as taking over conversations too often. I really dug into certain philosophies to help course correct.
The most useful philosophies (for me) were/are Secular Humanism and Utilitarianism PLUS all of the sub-philosophies inside of each. There are definitely some problematic ideas in each, but I think you'll gain some new perspectives.
There are other areas to look at, but what I listed is a good start. Stoicism can also help with emotional control and being more aware of your thinking. It's kind of like a "practice".
You can buy books or browse the web for this stuff, of course.
NOTE: I have ZERO credentials in philosophy... it's just my hobby. However, I don't think my recommendations here are out-of-line as they are pretty high level. Would love to have more seasoned folks comment/point out other areas of philosophy that are useful in gaining insights for the OP's issues.
People with Bipolar: Seriously talk with your psychiatrist before trying Kava - it was great for me at first, but then I noticed some undesirable mood changes. I wish we knew more about Kava and also drug interactions.
(This comment doesn't really need a thread or arguments about natural solutions :-P ... just a note/data point to maybe save someone a bit of trouble)
Thanks for the anecdote; it's probably the first one I've read from someone who's Bipolar. There are a lot of anecdotes from people with OCD (mostly positive). The latest study found kava to be ineffective in the treatment of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), although the authors of the study (and countless anecdotes online) still recommend it for situational anxiety (say before public speaking or an interview).
Like you, I wish we knew more about drug interactions. One to keep in mind is the grapefruit rule. Drugs that are incompatible with grapefruit are incompatible with kava.
Nice! It sounds like you are keeping tabs on this anecdotally/with studies for multiple mental disorders. Maybe my comment is sort of useful to some! Also, I'd like to expand a bit, actually.
My "version" of BP is "Type 1 with Psychotic Features" - it's a rough one, so doc recommended __total__ sobriety (for me, that was only quitting marijuana). The reasoning was because of potential med interactions and a higher chance of going into mania/depression. My comment above says "[Kava] was great for me at first" because it was like 20% of a marijuana high, very calming, and I thought it was safe/not a "drug". I actually felt like I was cheating and then noticed instabity pretty quickly after that.
I've been sober for over a year and a half (strictly for my disorder, not because of typical reasons e.g.: drug addiction). At this point, I'll take stability over any tea (or anything) that provides a light high. :-)
For everyone else, I'm hopeful Kava is a helpful medicine.
It definitely is. And thank you for the extra details. In Fiji (where I live), kava is a recreational beverage and there is almost no info on medicinal use. As kava use grows in the west we're slowly learning from anecdotes like yours.
Thank you for bringing up the grapefruit rule. I only learned about it recently. At first it sounds kind of silly, but then when you hear the stories you realize it has to be taken seriously.
If you regularly eat grapefruit, make sure your doctor knows. Be careful ramping medications up or down without discussion first.
And definitely go research this for yourself as well. :)
Based on the studies I've read kavalactones, the group of related psychoactive compounds in kava, indirectly activates the GABA-A receptors without directly binding to the benzodiazepine receptors. So it produces the same effect as a mild benzodiazepine, similar to Xanax. But the exact mechanism is still unknown, so there's definitely a risk of interactions with medications, especially benzodiazepines or medication or supplements that interact with the GABA receptors. Plus one of the kavalactones, yangonin, binds to the cannabinoid receptors. It's a selective agonist of the CB1 cannabinoid receptors and a full agonist of the CB2 receptors.
Hi all. This project uses Ansible to install all kinds of desktop software for the "Everyday User", "Programmer", "Artist", "Musician", "Engineer", and "Gamer". It works on Ubuntu 18.04 and related systems (found in README).
Please let me know what your thoughts on the solution are.
If you are interested in helping to evolve it, these are the top TODOs:
- Currently, Snap, Apt, Pip3, and NPM are the main package managers. We need to also harness Yum, Pacman, and RPM.
- Simplify the install process.
- Consider building a very user friendly GTK UI application where programs can be individually selected in a given persona.
"cTAKES REST Service: A JSON-based rest service to process unstructured clinical text through a smart natural language processing system."
I’m pleased to say that my friend and colleague Gandhi Rajan and I are noting that our REST layer over the popular cTAKES NLP (http://ctakes.apache.org/) project is ready (version 1!)
Thanks.