Dear Daniel C.:

As you are well aware of, your ongoing distress is working against you, not only in how you experience life but in the effectiveness of your studying, learning, probably processing information and retaining it. This distress and lack of relaxation, lack of fun is working against you, against your potential mental well being AND against your performance in school.

Got to either change schools (closer) or lower your work load significantly. I would vote for changing schools AND lowering your work load. As is- it is not working for you, but AGAINST you.

Now, what is the LOGIC of maintaining a schedule, a lifestyle that is operating against you?

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

It was a rhetorical question, asking for the logic behind doing what is against your mental well being AND your performance in school. There are reasons, sure, like not seeing a way to break out of it, but no logic, no objective logic.

Moving closer to school and reducing homework load- steps in the right direction! And even if you were the only one who is feeling overwhelmed (I doubt it)- well, it doesn’t matter if you are the only one- you are overwhelmed, YOU are the only one that matters in your life and in considering what to do next.

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

Many people pay a high price for caring about others more than about themselves, trying to please others at own expense. Please be selfish if that means making yourself the first priority in your life. You are not selfish when you place yourself as number one in your life, you are healthy if you do that.

Trying to be a saint, that is putting others’ welfare in place of your own, doesn’t make you good; it makes you sick.

We are animals and animals are meant by natural selection, survival, to do what needs to be done for their own survival.

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

Take care of yourself. Use your intelligence for the most important use it can possibly ever have: taking care of yourself, short term and long term.

This I believe is your personal responsibility: what you owe yourself. Regarding social responsibility, what you owe others, is to participate on your end in Win-Win interactions and relationships, where such benefit -AGAIN- YOU and the other person. Not Lose-Win or Win-Lose or most common: Lose-Lose.

anita

Post again, Daniel C., let us know how you are doing.
anita

Thank you for your … slight amount of humor, I am having a slight smile on my face right this moment! And great work on taking the steps to make your life better. Here is an A++ from me.

anita

Dear Daniel:

The anxiety is a result of certain connections or pathways in your brain, connections between neurons that get activated by this or that thought or perception. Once activated those pathways generate the anxiety. To physically disengage those pathways, you focus on your breath, air going in, air going out, and as your brain wonders (anxiety pathway re-activated) you go back to your breath. That way you give your anxiety provoking pathway a break and a chance to get your awareness away from it, to dis-identify with it and start a new pathway after the disengagement, a new focus. And you do it again and again.

Other than the breath you can focus on a sound, a sight, a smell, a touch… anything to take your attention away from the anxiety producing pathway, that is you disengage from it by engaging in a sound-related pathway (music, for example) or a touch related pathway (how this or that feels in my hand) etc.

anita