GeniesLoki

So there's a fun thing called "misattribution of arousal" which is basically that the physical symptoms of an emotion can be hard to distinguish from the emotion itself. Classic example of this is that fear makes other people seem more attractive because of overlapping response.

This is particularly bad when you are experiencing that emotion for real and also for independent reasons experiencing the physical sensation associated with the emotion more strongly.

So for example, purely hypothetically you understand, say you: 1. Are a bit anxious. 2. Experience anxiety as a tense shoulders threat response 3. Also are fucking up your shoulder muscles by a recent change in work environment causing bad posture Then...

...this might result in "a day where you are weirdly anxious". Fortunately I am a very intelligent person who would never fall for such a foolish mistake. Couldn't be me.

There’s a hack based on this principle that works like 75% pf the time for me. Supposedly anxiety/nervousness manifests itself physically quite similarly to the way excitement does. So if you feel nervous, trying to reframe it as excitement can be very effective

I haven’t read up on it very much cause it works fairly well when I use it, which makes me afraid it’s only working due to placebo effect so I’m hesitant to mess with whatever equilibrium it may be in

I think this legitimately works for non-placebo reasons but I've had limited success with it because too many of my anxiety triggers are so obviously not excitement.