Recently I’ve done some experimentation with Phenibut. I haven’t gathered enough data points yet to do a full review, but it’s an exciting dietary supplement (drug) that actually works. Most drugs that you can buy at a store are at best cut with rice flour and at worst complete garbage.
Phenibut is a drug that kills your anxiety in a way that alcohol does without the negative effect of being a drunk idiot. Using the drug made me think about how anxiety affects pretty much everything we do on a subconscious level. I started thinking about it so much that old memories started coming up that I haven’t thought about in YEARS.
These were instances from my past that caused a lot of anxiety. Seemingly innocent events that happened in my past have shaped how I acted since then. How we respond to events can have an impact on how we filter ourselves in the future, so it’s important to respond to events the right way.
Personal Anxiety
The other day I woke up from sleep and I immediately had this thought that goes back to my childhood. I remember having a practice for little league baseball and doing some drill that involved catching the ball and throwing it around the bases.
This particular day I happened to drop a ball in this drill and this kid starts making a spectacle yelling “Everyone on the team can thank this guy for messing up the drill.”
At the time I was a little kid maybe 7 or 8 years old and had no basis for what to do. Do I walk over and murder him? Laugh it off? I looked to the coach but the coach was this d-bag’s dad and seemed to appreciate what he said. So I just buried the emotion down deep to resurface later while waking up one day.
I can’t say for certain, but I feel as though that incident caused me to be a tentative baseball player up until a few years ago. What changed? I figured out how to use anger, get aggressive, and found my edge.
I still recall this event with crystal like clarity because it pissed me off a good deal. I honestly still feel like punching that kid in the face.
Another specific example of anxiety from baseball was the result of something I did, or should I say didn’t do. Back in my day, there were different levels of Little League. It went T-Ball, Cubs, Minors, and Majors. We didn’t start taking pitches from other kids until the Minors.
In the minors, I was on a very good team and we were facing another good team called Nello Construction. There were two outs and the score was tied. I was on 3rd and there was a wild pitch. I can clearly see this even today years later. The pitch hit the back fence and rolled down the third base line. I was frozen on third fearful that if I went for home I’d be tug out. By the time I realized the ball went way further than normal, it was too late. The third base coach then said, “Boy, if there was a time to steal home that may have been it.” We wound up losing that game in extra innings and I have felt bad about it since.
Nello was undefeated that year and the next year as well. As fate would have it we wound up beating them the next year towards the end of the season ending their reign, but the victory was bittersweet for me.
These events, along with a bunch of other things still haunt me, so I had to figure out how to deal with them. These are just a couple of stories that have caused anxiety, but they stood out to me because recently I thought of them and found it odd I’d still be upset from something that long ago.
Anxiety All Over
Humans have evolved to be anxious because they could die at any time from things in the environment. It was a defense mechanism to be on guard. You needed to be on guard back in the day to avoid getting mauled to death by a jaguar.
Times have changed since then and it’s never been safer being human. You may not get that impression by watching the news, but at least we’re not lining up running at each other with large pointy sticks anymore.
My point is that most anxiety is completely overblown. Nothing bad is going to happen if you act in the face of your anxiety. Unfortunately our response to anxiety is so conditioned at this point that it can become a problem without really thinking about it. Take my two examples above, these events from the past have no bearing on the present, and yet they are contributing to an overall sense of anxiety.
Two Options as I see it
There’s two ways to handle events that cause anxiety in the future. Both of these options will address the problem immediately so as to not have repressed emotions. What you have to do is gauge within milliseconds what response to go with and immediately act.
Extreme Prejudice
Here, you immediately address the event in question and act to stop it or call out what’s going on to the perpetrator. This may involve getting in someone’s face, giving them shit, or punching through someone’s head.
If you start down this road, be ready to go all out and finish what you start. You don’t want to come back to this later and regret not taking action. I’ve done a bunch of stupid shit in my life, but I’ve always regretted the times I didn’t take action way more than the times I took action and it didn’t work out.
Amused Mastery
The problem with using extreme prejudice with every possible scenario that you come across that may cause anxiety is that a lot of the time we have to work within the system. Obviously you want to limit how much crap you have to take, but only you can tell for sure if going all out will get you fired or put in jail.
The answer is to just show Amused Mastery. Amused Mastery is just the attitude that the world is your plaything and you get a kick out of everything. Giving off a vibe of “I’ve seen it all before” and actually believing it, will get a load of anxiety off your back. People arguing with you over the internet? What a bunch of little tricksters! HR giving you shit over something? Oh those little girls are so cute!
I’d say that in this litigious PC world that we live in, your best bet is to go with Amused Mastery 90% of the time. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to start cultivating this mentality as soon as possible. The other 10% would be stuff like people throwing punches at your head, random people fucking with you, or cars crashing into you.
De-Stress
Now that you’ve taken care of any possible scenarios in the future, it’s time to tackle stuff that happened in the past. What you have to do is recall the particular scenario, and take control of it. You can’t go back in time and change it, so you have to be resolute to not let that happen again in the future. You do this by thinking back to the event and identifying the specific emotion. Let yourself feel the emotion and be prepared to tackle it.
After you have gone through the identification process, it’s time to de-stress. I’ve talked about a number of de-stressing solutions on here before. They all work well and work even better when used together. They are as follows:
- Meditation (great for getting in the moment and letting thoughts of the past float by)
- Lifting Weights (a powerful form of meditation in its own right)
- Yoga
- Sauna Sessions
Conclusion
I think that a big problem with a lot of people’s lives can be traced back to their irrational anxieties. Getting over these anxieties and living authentically is the real way to beat the system. Figure out what your anxieties are, get past them by facing them head on, and de-stress.
If your problems with anxiety are above and beyond the advice of this article to the point where you can hardly leave the house, I would consider giving Phenibut a try along with my de-stress techniques.
-Tate
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