I don’t really have the answers, nobody does. But felt I should create this post and put it out there. Perhaps others will read it and realize they’re not alone. And sometimes just knowing that can help lessen the stress levels.
Sorry, just because he personally doesn't have an answer does not mean everyone else does not.
This will likely be unpopular here, but I used to struggle plenty with anxiety and occasional panic attacks until I learned it was better to pray about these things daily (or even as they come) and intimately discuss and honestly trust these burdens to God. ("Cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you...")
All that advice merely snips at the branches of fear/anxiety without uprooting the tree. That's not to say all fear/anxiety will be uprooted, but simply that knowing and experiencing the love of God daily has continued to weed out many of those fear-based anxious roots and replace them with saplings of peace, joy, and confidence.
Anxiety tends to wear one down and make one feel hopeless ("there is no answer"), but there is indeed an Answer who works through us in time, and can lead us to still waters if we ask Him to show us the way. Life won't always feel perfect or anxiety-free, but at least I know to whom I can confidently entrust my troubles.
That's fine. But at what point does an anecdote of a changed mind and life become admissible in the public court of reason? Do you require one story? What about a thousand? A million? Tens of millions?
At what point would a rational person conclude, "Hmm, maybe their answer may also apply to me?" I at least figured I could say "OK, God, if you might be the Answer, then show me the way..."
The fact of the matter is, even among those "thousands" and "millions" you're going to have a lot of wildly different interpretations, understandings and beliefs.
Religion itself isn't even a single answer - it's a personal decision that applies to someone however they choose to apply it in their lives. You may see it as a "relationship with god," but the next person may see it as a set of teachings to live by.
There's not "the" way, there's many ways to find balance or self-enlightenment (even the goals can vary from person to person!) A 'rational person' would never conclude that "their answer may also apply to me," a rational person would find their own answer, whether that answer incorporate 16th century teachings or modern-age psychiatric evaluation.
The validity is not in the source material. It is in the effectiveness. Something that's "effective for thousand" or "a million" guarantees effectiveness for the next person as much as flipping a coin 99 times and getting all heads guarantees the next flip yields heads - with each new person, you get a new mind, and whether or not that mind is compatible with those beliefs is a toss-up.
"Sorry, just because he personally doesn't have an answer does not mean everyone else does not."
He's not talking about a solution for your problem. He's talking about solving the problem for everyone. You don't have the answer that will work for everyone. You have an answer that works for you. That's it. It might work for others.
Claiming that you have the answer might do real harm to others as well. So be careful with what you say, because the way you are saying it is harmful and discouraged by professionals.
An old saying fits well: the plural of adecdote is not data.
Nothing against people trying things, and if it's not harmfull and may help them, I'm all for it. But you wouldn't convince me with tens of millions of badly selected data points.
So how did you ever learn to walk, then? Every time you tried to move your leg, the fact that you moved forward, would be anecdotal and the data should be thrown out.
Huh, that's not an answer. Although, 'thinking less' and not letting your thoughts wander is considered a good advice for depression and anxiety [0], so maybe by 'trusting burdens to God' is the same thing. I learned to 'not think at all' a few years back and I've been much happier since then.
I'm glad it works for you. Anxiety can be caustic. I like to see this positive attitude. However, I'm careful to distinguish the mental relief gained from trusting a higher power, to any conclusions about the existence of that higher power.
Wouldn't it provide about the same mental relief to just accept that all is not in our hands, and leave it at that? I think it does, and I reduce stress that way.
Prayer probably does help, even if there is no God. Just assume that it does work. After all, if it helps a believer to pray, and you can acknowledge that there was nobody else in the room while they were praying, you've got to wonder: how does it work? The only person it could possibly have an influence on is the person praying. And since the activity of prayer requires a focus of some sort, I think the real audience of the prayer is the subconscious.
After all, if you trust yourself to do something, if you trust your subconscious, shouldn't you be able to tell it just once what it needs to do, then not worry about it?
Anyhow that's what I was thinking a couple days ago.
The article is correct in saying that nobody has "the answers." Religion is not _the_ answer, it is _an_ answer.
You may feel as though the previous sentence is belittling your beliefs. However, saying the answer that works for you would work for everyone else is just as belittling to other's beliefs. It's an intractable stalemate that has only one logical conclusion - that no one can (or should!) assert their beliefs as being the only way to go. I wholly acknowledge that your beliefs are what work for you - but I do not recognize them as "the answers" the OP is talking about.
For something to be "the answer," singular, would require it to be the _psychological_ answer to stressors. The reason the article is so psychology-oriented is because "the" answer would by necessity have to be a psychological one, not a personal one. Something that works for one person (like establishing a relationship) but may not work for the next can never be "the answer" that a better psychological understanding of the problem would reach.
In spite of how much religion has done for you, it isn't an answer that works for everyone, and so is obviously not "the answers" OP is referring to. It's still your answer, but that doesn't mean it's the answer. Psychology is the only commonality between all human beings, so that's where "the answers" lie.
I'm glad you've been able to find a healthy way to solve your anxiety issues. That being said, (and I don't want to start a religion vs. atheism debate here) do you think what you do is on the whole any different than someone who uses alcohol or any drug to temporarily escape?
Not the parent but I have a thought on it. I'm not agnostic but a few years ago when I got really anxious about something praying/God helped me. I think the reason was that it took the thing that was making me anxious and passed the responsibility on to someone I thought could take care of the problem for me. I think it's similar to the way you felt comfortable when you were younger staying in your parents house but on your own might have got anxious. At your parents house the risks are the same but you've got someone there you feel will protect you. Essentially I think God/prayer helps because it gives you the feeling someone else more powerful than you is there to help.
I would go so far as to say that if it works, it isn't a temporary escape. If you honestly think whatever you're praying to will take care of your problems, and this causes you to relax to the point where your brain learns not to react to the anxiety.. that's the ultimate goal, isn't it?
This of course says nothing about the objective truth of the beliefs, but that doesn't affect the brain; the connections being created or broken (or whatever scientifically happens) are what matter, not why it's occurring.
Your confidence in asserting what the solution to this problem is a bit concerning(not to mention how your suggestions are hardly actionable). At least the author is somewhat humble.
Why would I be humble about something that has personally changed me? If a man discovers a cure for his cancer, would he quietly keep it to himself, or would he take it straight to CNN and rave about the solution he's found, in hope that everyone could try it for themselves?
There are actionable suggestions, but you would need to take the time to seek understanding. I hope I haven't made it sound simple and easy.
1) How about something sustainable? Something that, instead of removing personal responsibility, enables you to conquer the fear and anxiety? An actual system.
2) There are plenty of reasons why your suggestion should not be taken seriously. Personal anecdotes are just that - anecdotes. Provide me with metrics of how it improved the bio-checmical composition of your brain and removed anxiety, and then we'll talk.
3) You're so confident about something that is not measurable in any way, is highly subjective, and you put down the author for being humble.
> Why would I be humble about something that has personally changed me?
You've answered your own question. The fact that it's personally changed you makes the need for humbleness apparent - your spirituality _yours_. It's something that helps you find balance, but it clearly doesn't work its wonders on everyone. Meanwhile, other methods - meditation being one example - help others find balance, but not everyone as well. Truly, to each their own.
To assume that your answer is "the answer that will work for everyone, if only they find it" spits in the face of their beliefs, which is everything they stand for - the same way someone telling you your relationship with God is merely a "solution that works for you." You have no problems doing this, as you feel that your answer is singularly "correct." However, this is in fact not the case - there are many others who find their balance doing other things, as users have pointed out.
Some people just aren't wired to be religious, but find equally effective means for finding balance in their lives. To answer as though the solution is a trivial "accepting of religion into one's life" just because it was trivial _for you_ to do demonstrates a clear lack of empathy and understanding for others' positions and beliefs.
I always find it interesting when hackers are willing to bicker over the "right answer" (because one exists) on just about every other topic imaginable... But whoa, step into the state of a man's spiritual condition and all bets are off.
Suddenly it's every man for himself, isolated in his own tiny world that (supposedly) has absolutely zero crossover to another man's world. Somehow, gravity in one man's world pulls things up, and in another it pushes all objects to the sky.
But does that even make sense? It's really just hogwash, and a convenient easy-exit from having to wrestle with a challenging state of affairs. We all have the same fundamental needs, and we even live in a world where the very fundamental building blocks of the universe can be explained in distinct formulas with distinct "right" answers.
Unfortunately if that really were the case -- that spirituality really only applied to a single man alone -- then the message of grace from God would have stopped at Christ himself and never spread to another man's life. But it has not, and will continue to affect each man who discovers the spiritual wonders of a grace-filled life. Grace, does, in fact, present a freeing answer to all those who seek it.
> step into the state of a man's spiritual condition and all bets are off
The religion best represented on HN, and that to which hew most commenters here, includes among its basic doctrines the tenet that all spiritual beliefs are equally invalid, and therefore equally meaningless, save only that religion's own such beliefs, which are believed to be empirical rather than spiritual. This makes it trivial for believers to produce public displays of simultaneous tolerance ("whatever works for you") and superiority ("but you can't claim it's The Answer because there is no one answer"), something which they find both personally satisfying and socially beneficial.
Of course, their beliefs are no more empirically demonstrable than those of any other religion, nor are they derived from pure reason as their adherents prefer to believe. For example, believers in this faith universally misunderstand the nature of religion, so as to imagine that no system of beliefs can be called religious save that it involve at least one deity; indeed, this misunderstanding constitutes a crucial slab in the foundation of their dogma, for on it rests the belief that they are virtuous skeptics who can't be fooled by mere religious faith, and are thus apart from and above (all other sorts of) believers:
> Some people [like my own worthy self] just aren't wired to be religious
Which leads us to a popular explanation, among atheists, for the vexatious popularity of other religions: that the human nervous system is so wired as to produce religious experience entirely by accident, and thus meaninglessly. [1]
Well, everyone else's nervous system, anyway; they themselves "aren't wired to be religious", obviously, because if they were, they'd have a religion, and atheism isn't a religion -- it can't be! It has no deity! -- so atheists aren't religious, so they must be "[not] wired to be religious", which must mean they're necessarily smarter and/or "more evolved" [2].
The former belief is hardly limited to atheists, of course, and is merely smug and pretentious. The latter, though, rests in a fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of evolution, and is thus utterly senseless; it is every bit as much a matter of faith as, for example, the idea of divine providence.
(How marvelous it is that these fellows presume to offer counsel on the subject of humility!)
The truth of the matter, of course, is that, if any of us are "wired to be religious", then all of us are. (All of us are.) The only remaining question, which applies equally well to all the many other filters inherent in our perceptual mechanisms, is whether we recognize it as such and attempt to account for its effect, or instead fail so to do and believe its input to be a reliable representation of reality.
That latter category is shared by theists and atheists alike -- each believing, however he represent himself in public, that he has found The Answer, and that those in the other camp must just not really understand the world, because if they did, they wouldn't be in the other camp.
The former category is sparsely populated by comparison, and, would-be bodhisattvas excepted, most of us in it tend to keep our mouths pretty well shut on the subject; neither a theist nor an atheist is often well equipped to comprehend an areligious perspective on anything, and to detail one thus rarely has any effect save to start a pointless gunfight. (Besides, being a member of neither camp makes it very easy to get along with those in both, and why not do so?)
I break my habit of silence on this occasion not because I have any hope of unusually productive discussion on the matter, but instead simply in order to place myself outside the argument which will probably ensue from my observation that I'm favorably impressed, sir, by your bravery and courage in contravening publicly the popular faith, and by the altruistic impulse which motivated you to do so. Irrespective of the reception you encounter in doing so, the act itself speaks well of your honorable character, and that's something I'm always glad to see.
Not being convinced by the evidence (or lack thereof) of every religious faith is not a faith. You can call it a faith until you turn blue in the face, it still isn't one.
Whatever works for you. There's nothing wrong with religion or spirituality as long as it serves you well. Of course, this could be said about anything, but I don't see any legitimate reason for naysayers to single out religion as a crutch or something.
Your approach sounds like some kind of meditation, to me. Certainly that has proven to be beneficial to a lot of people. I'm not one to dismiss the spiritual side of meditation, either.
It's unfortunate that what I have presented comes off sounding as an "approach", because it is a relationship. Praying is talking to God, and reading the Bible is hearing and being able to discern his word (knowing Him).
As scientists and engineers we like to dissect and explain things in terms of our extremely limited body of knowledge. We set up structures and frameworks and rules for living and whatnot. But in the end, it's not an "approach". The best relationships have no one-way approach, they're fluid and you're authentic and vulnerable with each other. And sometimes there really are no words to explain that connection, just the inexplicable shared bond of emotion in the quietest moments.
And so is the same with a relationship with God. To attempt to squeeze something so incredibly dynamic into the limited confines of the knowledge of this world / science would merely rob it of its power. Nor is it self-serving, nor was the focus/goal to reduce fear/anxiety... which can only be described as a side effect.
> It's unfortunate that what I have presented comes off sounding as an "approach",
If I had spiritual beliefs and practices, I would still call that an approach. I could have a really personal and deep relationship with god, or whatever it is, and that is still and approach that works for me. Maybe that diminishes it? Well, I meant more to say that there are many roads to Rome. Some people find the answer in a Christian god, other people find the answer in a god that is more akin to a universal mind. Other people don't think the notion of a god/gods useful or truthful. Some people, and religions, will call this viewpoint heresy.
Do I look at spirituality as a sort of means-to-an-end? Yes. If you find a way that makes you a good person and makes you lead a full/happy/whatever criteria life, then that in itself is a big reward. Is it self-serving? Yes, but I don't view that as a bad thing.
An important factor, I guess, is that my beliefs around spirituality don't involve some struggle against evil, or saving others, or some eternal and final scoreboard, which many religions have. I don't think this life makes or breaks anything. In that sense, I am more curious about how to live a good life, because that's all I have right now, or might ever have.
Sorry, just because he personally doesn't have an answer does not mean everyone else does not.
This will likely be unpopular here, but I used to struggle plenty with anxiety and occasional panic attacks until I learned it was better to pray about these things daily (or even as they come) and intimately discuss and honestly trust these burdens to God. ("Cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you...")
All that advice merely snips at the branches of fear/anxiety without uprooting the tree. That's not to say all fear/anxiety will be uprooted, but simply that knowing and experiencing the love of God daily has continued to weed out many of those fear-based anxious roots and replace them with saplings of peace, joy, and confidence.
Anxiety tends to wear one down and make one feel hopeless ("there is no answer"), but there is indeed an Answer who works through us in time, and can lead us to still waters if we ask Him to show us the way. Life won't always feel perfect or anxiety-free, but at least I know to whom I can confidently entrust my troubles.