this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
14 points (93.8% liked)

Mental Health

4211 readers
160 users here now

Welcome!

This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1-Posts promoting paid products and services of any kind are not allowed here.

2-All posts and comments must be helpful and supportive. Do not put vulnerable people at risk.

3-Do not DM or ask to speak privately to any of our members unless they specifically request it.

If a person from this community disturbs you in a comment, please report the comment. If you receive a DM you did not request, send a screenshot of the DM in a message to a moderator. This is a bannable offense.

4-Suicide, Self-Harm, Death-- Extended discussions are STRONGLY DISCOURAGED here. First, mods and community members are caring people, but not experts in crisis situations. Second, we want to avoid Lemmy becoming like many commercial social media platforms, where comments can snowball into counterproductive talk.

If you or someone you know needs more help than can be found here, please refer to the pinned resources.

If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.

Partner Communities

- Therapy

Neurodegenerative Disease Support

ADHD

Autism

Fibromyalgia

TMJ

Chronic Pain

Bipolar Disorder

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Friends and Family of People with Addiction

To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.

Community Moderation

Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to ZenGrammy for more information.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey everyone,
I [28F] need some advice on handling anxiety when job hunting.

Almost a week ago I finished school and I'm once again without work. I've been job hunting about 40-50% of my adult life and it has taken a huge toll on my mental health to the point where I'm barely able to apply for jobs anymore. I have gotten a few warnings over the years due to not applying to enough jobs. ( I live in Sweden btw )

I have tried taking breaks.
I have tried waiting for the anxiety to pass.
I have asked so many for advice but it's like they all give the same default answer. If their advice where enough, I would be a pro at job hunting.

I did get an autism diagnosis a few years back and I do feel better about myself, more confident and understanding of how I work so I think this time around will be different, but it's like the old anxiety still hangs around and I don't know how to get rid of it.

Please if you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The way to alleviate anxiety is to willingly approach the thing that makes you anxious. Do it in small enough increments that you don’t overwhelm yourself.

As a person with autism (like me) you likely have lower than average working memory. You can expand your working memory by playing Follow That Frog on Lumosity for 60 minutes straight without taking a break.

People will say that Lumosity has no effect but the procedure I described is not the same one they used in the study that concluded Lumosity doesn’t work. Other studies which have used procedures similar to the one I described (60 mins, same game on repeat, no breaks) have shown efficacy.

Be warned that for two or three days after your working memory training session everything will be worse, not better. But once you recover, everything will be better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the advice, I do have a lower working memory, but Limosity costs money and that is something I don't have right now.
I try to do a bit of job hunting with long breaks in between, taking small steps to make an application, sometimes it can take almost a week to send an application...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here you go, this one's free: https://www.braingymmer.com/en/brain-games/n_back/play/

A word of warning: For me at least, 60 minutes of training makes my brain feel numb and my working memory is way worse for a couple of days. It feels a lot like being sleep deprived; it's frustrating how difficult it is to think. Then after a few days it's the opposite. Everything is easier. But there is that downtime to consider.

But I've found if I do a 20-minute session, I get a little boost in performance without any discernable downtime at all.

I highly recommend that at some point you do a 60-minute session, if only to feel the contrast in working memory before and after. But you have to be able to handle a couple days of feeling stupid and slow.

But if you've got a lot going on and no downtime, no days where you can afford to be lazy and slow and recover, the smaller sessions are probably better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

wow, thanks! I am already constantly tired so I think I'll start slow
Edit: I did it for roughly 5min and my brain is already mushy

load more comments (1 replies)