For the longest time I had a fear of unfamiliar shower heads well into adulthood. http://i.imgur.com/qcVVJwCl.jpg

Like if I'm in a hotel room and need to take shower, I have to take a deep breath and stare at it, telling myself "it can't hurt me" over and over again. The same kind of nervous I get in a plane that's about to take off. I still get a bit nervous to this day at 38 years of age. I suspect something happened to me at a young age but nobody seems to know what it could be. I've noticed that my 5yr old daughter is also scared of them when they make those whoosh-sounds just before water comes out. Maybe I was traumatized from that too.... I dunno...

If I may: it's more likely you passed along the stress you experience in these situations to her. She learned to that the shower head should be approached with caution because you tense yourself around it.

Moreover, irrational fears are not necessarily linked to the stress inducing agent. It might have been associated later (to prevent your psyche to directly relive the trauma). That psy territory though so I stop there before saying anything stupider ;).

But really, it's because the only emotion I feel is fear, and I try very hard to hide it. That's it. Thinking about it logically, it makes little sense. Similar to how a person may have depression, and to the outer world, their worries/fears may seem minute; yet to that person, it's all about the feeling, and the feeling is very real.

For me it's a catch 22 as well. If I'm not feeling socially anxious then I'm relaxed and it's easy to have confidence. Then there is nothing to fear and I'm not reading into anything or taking anything personally and it's all very easy and fun. But if I'm feeling socially anxious then I'm more likely to come across as unfriendly or weird, read too much into social cues and feel negatively about myself at the end of the interaction. Which feeds the cycle.

Something that helps a lot is meditation and being in the now. It's very hard to be in the now during an anxious social situation, because your brain is trying so hard to distance itself from the situation and get you out of it with minimal damage. But acceptance of the situation and reminding yourself there's no lack and literally nothing to fear in the present moment can help. And definitely presence after a (maybe just perceived) negative social interaction can help a lot as well to break down the cycle.

However, I'm sure you'll agree that the fear in its context is irrational (which is what defines it as an anxiety disorder).

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_Pe... (probably would have worked better had I quoted it properly.)

i can't say i have social anxiety, but i feel very similar in this instance. and, if i can judge based on this statement alone- i don't think it's fair for you to say your fear comes from "no rational reason".

a very rational reason to be afraid of verbal communication as opposed to text, is that text is a much easier medium to control your message.

there are a dozen benefits: you have more time to parse and consider what one says to you, you have more time to formulate your thoughts clearly, you are less open to your words or tone being misinterpreted, etc.

are you anxious right now? this is very much a social setting. if not- and i hope this doesn't sound insensitive- i'm left wondering, whats the difference? and, would identifying the difference help you overcome your anxiety?

This is, after all, a defining feature of anxiety disorders.

Note that he doesn't say that this kind of fear in itself is not rational (propensity towards it might come in handy in certain social situations), but the degree of this kind of fear in the contexts that a diagnosis demands is totally irrational.

Even if we set aside the fact that the disorder in question does not deal with rational things, one can easily argue that (in this context) the text is more permanent, and can potentially reach many more than unrecorded spoken language.

Downsides include the opportunity to get stuck in a loop of doubt and rewriting the entire post. Misinterpretation of the written word is also common. Therefore, the trademark anxious rumination is not less likely to occur by virtue of the medium alone.

Some sufferers of social anxiety might be anxious in these settings, others might not.

All in all: interpretation based on assumptions helps no-one.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/03/25/a-day...

I can also relate to you when you say you do your best to hide it. I never realized I did until now.

Worse, you're doing so with all the experience and wisdom of an avid googler of nootropics.

Getting shitfaced on beer and Scotch works for some people as they self-medicate their social anxiety. For some people that turns from harmless social drinking to alcoholism and can destroy their lives.

In this particular case, excessive energy drink consumption (I personally tend to self-medicate with coffee to avoid the sugar in red bulls) can lead to heart attacks, high blood pressure and associated complications.

"Taurine is involved in a number of crucial physiological processes. However, its role in these processes is not clearly understood and the influence of high taurine doses on these processes is uncertain"

L-Theanine has more studies and is slightly better understood, but there still have not been full human trials and studies sufficient for you to provide medial information to a stranger.

Advancing a supplement as a cure can be harmful even if the supplement is harmless. If a person takes it for a cure instead of, say, talking to a therapist/doctor/psychologist, they could be missing out on an approach that actually DOES help. You may be familiar with Steve Jobs who delayed medical treatment for his cancer in an effort to use "alternative" cures.

What I'd give to go back five years and slap 20-year old me around...

I've turned my life around but I have zero friends to show for it- and I don't blame them.

Just because something is approved by the FDA doesn't mean that it's safe and effective. And, conversely, just because something isn't approved by the FDA doesn't mean it isn't safe and effective.

There isn't something magical about a clinical trial that suddenly removes all doubt about a substance. And this magical government agency isn't infallible, and has frankly made mistakes, some of them pretty major, in the past.

Let me share something with you. I've been suffering from severe RSI for close to 13 years. I've seen about five different doctors; I've had nerve conduction tests; I've had three rounds of physical therapy. Nothing works. I keep going back to the doctor, and they keep assigning physical therapy. Do you know why? Because, it's the only approved treatment that they can offer. Most of the doctors that I've seen refuse to even talk about anything else.

So I go out on my own, and I do some research, and I start trying things. Some herbal supplements, some alternative treatments. And you know what? This thing called trigger point massage therapy, in the span of about four months, improved my symptoms about 80%. I also found that B vitamin supplements helped with the nerve tingling issues. And that was several years ago and I'm still almost completely functional.

If I listened to people like you, I'd still be practically incapacitated and unable to support myself.

I think he's probably intelligent enough to look into any suggestions himself. After all, that's why people have ultimate control over their medical care. You're just being closed minded and pedantic, and your lecture on medical ethics is naïve.

So, if I may, get off your fucking high horse.

It's not like I'm telling this guy to go cut his left arm off. I'm basically doing the equivalent of telling him to go drink a bunch of cups of green tea and try a supplement of a compound that's so safe that it's approved for human consumption without a prescription. If it was dangerous, your precious FDA would yank it off the shelves in five minutes, right?

And if he tries my suggestion and it relieves his symptoms, even a little bit (even if it's placebo), then it's worth it. By all means, go see a doctor, but don't assume that doctors are all-knowing and all powerful and they are aware of and can prescribe the perfect treatment for your illness.

/edit I'll add that this is what happens when you leave mental health treatment exclusively to doctors. Hammer; nail, indeed. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/23/study-two...

You asked why the down-votes, but clearly didn't parse what I wrote.

I made no statements as to the efficacy of your proposed remedy, just that the problem is giving medical advice is dangerous, even if the substance is ultimately harmless (or even beneficial!).

There's nothing wrong with pursuing your own treatments, and I'm glad you've found things that work for you. I don't wish RSI on anyone.

It is, however, extremely wrong to give medical advice to strangers based on a single comment on an internet forum. You know virtually nothing about the individual, their symptoms or really anything at all about the specifics of the situation at hand.

Experts will want to know more about the specifics before providing advice. Fools tread where angels fear to go.

I'm sure you're in an expert in something. Whatever it is, think about the people who think they're experts in that from reading a wikipedia or newspaper article. Or heck, the newbies just starting out learning about that something. They are almost always so confident that they know the answer and share it with everyone around them. That confidence can be endearing and usually nothing horrible in consequences.

Not in the case of people's health. Consequences are too severe.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Personally, I use it not for mere disagreement, but for "I want HN to have less comments like this" -- things like gratuitous errors, gratuitous negativity, unneeded incivility, empty comments like "I agree", and especially comments that just repeat talking points without adding any original thought or substance.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently negative score."

I'm not aware of a comment where he said downvoting for disagreement is a problem. I recall comments about gratuitous negativity, and comments about how certain excessively rude comments were getting upvoted when they should be downvoted. But it's possible I'm behind the times on that front.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347

> My plan for dealing with downvoting is just not to display points on comments any more. The hard part is that to make that work, I also have to come up with alternative ways for people to find the comments they're most interested in on big threads.

But as you say there's probably more to it than that. I'll have a noodle around with search later to see if I can find more.

I mean, why would you care if someone disagrees with your comment? That really wouldn't lead you to self-censor.

Unless you had something important at stake, like reputation, which would only happen if your handle on here was linked to your real life name.