My New Understanding on Dealing with Anxiety
Lately, i’ve been reading a book by Mark Manson called ‘A Subtle Art of Not Giving A F’, thanks to Devina Indah Christianti for recommending this book tho. I’m a digital-prefer guy so this book is my first one and surprisingly a mind opening — and hopefully a lifechanging — one.
So, i’ve been dealing with anxiety lately, no i mean i’ve been dealing with this since i was a kid, because you know, this is every introverted-person problem. But for lately, my anxiety bar has just raise to highest level, i know it sounds exaggerating, however its just as crazy as it sounds like. The reason behind this problem is because i was finally given exposure to the real life problem, problem that matters to be given a f*ck, but also at the same time i already gave too many f*cks on things that turns out dont matter.
If you read my previous post, you will know that i’m currently doing an internship at GO-JEK. The program there really treats interns as they are one of the ‘real’ staff, and it drives me to give too many f*cks on presenting, showcasing, meeting new people, talking about my life, while life itself actually the biggest problem. And because of this too-many thingy, this stuff always make me literally shaking and nearly-faint.
The problem here is because, i am becoming anxious of being anxious, i am overthink of being overthink, i am feeling bad of being an un-normal guy, and yup i’m always looking for a short cut just to avoid problems that are likely to occur. These doubly thing — anxious of being anxious — are called The Feedback Loop From Hell, things that never stop looping if you dont cut the circuit.
The book has taught me that things like these are common, its part of life, dont try to find a shortcut just to avoid suffer, precisely use your suffering, your pain, as a tool to laughing at your tears as you cry them. Yup, this bolded line here is my way to break the loop circuit.
But the above Feedback Loop problem turns out was not the only problem i have, and the other one is about my value of living life. So, often people ask me why i was so afraid on being public’s attention, well i guess because my value of life is to be happy. Quite not make any sense right? so here it is. Happiness is a side effect, can be obtained from any action, and my act here which is so wrong was to have many friends and be loved by all of them. Here i assume that to be loved by many people means you have to hide the worst part of yourself and show the best one, so you have to behave as you’re a great guy. So, ya, i got that anxiety when i talk in front of many people because i overthink on showing the best part of me and hide the worst. Fortunately, Mark Manson — the author of the book i’m talking about at the beginning — on his book tells us about how to define good and bad values. So here are the criterias:
Bad values are:
Superstitious, socially destructive, not immediate, and not controllable.
Where good values are:
Reality-based, socially constructive, immediate, and controllable.
By these, i’ve come to realize that, using happiness as my value turns out was not a good idea, because happiness is not a controllable variable, its a side effect. Why i say like this because happiness rely on external events, which obviously we cant predict, if the source of your happiness gone, then it will definitely torn you into pieces, and you have no reason to live again.
Hence, i have to change my value of life from now on so i can deal better with anxiety problem. I will not talking about my new value of life here because this post is dedicated for different purpose. There’s actually more of the goods from the book, but it will require me to create my own book just to talk about all the great things from that book. Yup i will just end this post here, thank you so much for your time.
See ya
