What should I write as my first post? It’s bugging me more than it should. The strange thing about stress is that that it doesn’t scale logically with success. Like, if I were the President of the United States, I don’t think I’d be more stressed than I’m right now deciding what to write. Your stress should be in accordance with your situation; a higher cortisol spike should happen only when it’s actually worth it, like if I become a big politician or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. For the rest, we will try to beat it.
And I think most people don’t realise how bad these spikes are for you, especially when they happen every day. People are worried about weight, preparation, perfection, work, and life. The work-life balance exists only in stress; both sides give equal amounts of it, amplified by the intricacies of the modern world. But sometimes I think if it was the same for all worlds, from ancient to medieval. Like, a guy is stressed his productivity isn’t as good as he wants. I wonder if, in 1620, a farmer was stressed because he didn’t harvest as many crops as he wanted. But some things are new. Stress about being alone is real; more people are lonely than ever, if we look at the studies being published. That's also a reason for the spike, go and make friends.
Another real stress is deciding which language I should write in: English? Hindi? Urdu? Hinglish? My native language? I really want to write in Urdu. I think it’s the most expressive one. Even though English objectively has the largest vocabulary, I think the quality of words is much better in Urdu. Whenever you translate something from Urdu to English, the loss of meaning feels much higher than when you do the opposite. And I think if you translate from English to any language, the loss isn’t that high. Which is great, because looking at how fast English is being adopted, it’d serve great as a functional language. But coming back to the topic: cortisol spike. I think I should continue in English, since most people would understand it. But in the future, I do have a plan to write in more languages and use words from different languages I know in between. Like, because of a spike, I need sukoon.
So, how do we get rid of this spike? I don’t think breathing helps, to me at least. The best method I’ve seen is dunking your face into ice-cold water, or using an ice pack on your face, because when I get stressed and angry (which are mostly the same feeling for me), I get very hot. Like literally, not symbolically. So any temperature change is good for me, but not absolutely good, tbh. Sometimes even after a cold plunge and a very cold shower, my state doesn’t change. One main source was Taekwondo back in the day, but now I’m shifting away from things that have a high probability of giving me a head injury. There, you need good focus, otherwise you get kicked. But even after taking a few kicks, some spikes don’t go away. And the highest of the highest, it takes a few months for them to go away. Another pattern I've noticed that they increase with age. I’m 22, so what do I know, but for me it has been so. Your baseline stress is much higher when you’re 22.
Music definitely helps. Maybe some of my favorite songs, the ones I haven’t shared with anyone. But basically, nothing that works for the average population works for me, which makes sense. I don’t know when people de facto started considering themselves normal human beings. You should always look at what measures outliers take, otherwise you won't know your natural limits at all. Like, if you think 200 mg caffeine helps you, take 400. Double it. I’ve seen this in the majority of people: they try to be balanced. I think you should always do something much more than the average population, just not when more leads to toxicity. For example, if 60k IU vitamin D is prescribed and you take double, it leads to toxicity. But that’s not true for B12. There is no upper limit, so why not take 3000 mcg (when treating deficiency)? This example is very niche, but same principle applies to many different contexts. Always do more than needed until you see diminishing returns, or until doubling it leads to toxicity. That gives you at least some track record you can point to, and sometimes that also leads to fewer spikes, because you feel a bit more secure.
As a Vipassana practitioner, I would not recommend it to everyone, it’s not for 50% of people, maybe even more. I usually say that if you don’t feel a strong compulsion to go and see for yourself, you should probably avoid it. But if you really feel it (like really), only then try. Because the first 10-day graduation rate is around 10–15% max, so why waste your 10 days? So many things can happen during that time, and it’s not as magical as people think. Quite the opposite, at least for the time periods where we are trying to control the spikes. Like, if you're ok with waiting years into practice to notice some results, only then try it (but maybe not; if you’re thinking whether it’s for you or not, it’s not). You can do so many different therapies, like CBT and others, to control it, or use pharmaceutical compounds. I do this to an extent, but only a few ones. I plan to write a post about the supplements I take.
So, this is my first post. I’m happy about it. Not because it’s the best first post I can write, but because it’s finally ended, and I’ll stop thinking about it. And I got it done in 40 minutes. If you’re here, tell me what you do to control it. Email me.