Yes. But maybe Reddit is not the best benchmarck due to their user-hostile behaviour anyway (well, maybe it is "best" because of this). The only purpose of mobile website is to make the user to download their app.
Have you experimented with sleeping while fasted at all? I have heard a few people say they get their best sleep when sleeping on an empty stomach.
I also find white noise and a sleep mask have helped a fair bit. I’m a very light sleeper so little background noises wake me easily, so having white noise on helps there. And wearing a sleep mask notably improved my sleep as our bedroom can get quite bright (even with blackout curtains).
Anecdotally though, the most important factors for me are sun exposure (particularly morning and evening), weight lifting (or exercise in general), and cutting out caffeine.
I've lurked HN for a long time, but finally signed up just to say thank you for this post. This kind of dread has hit me really hard over the last year or so, leading to a kind of existential anxiety/existential OCD.
Everything you've said, and your conclusions echo my thoughts almost exactly. I find myself torn between the absurdity of life and being an sentient monkey in a seemingly endless universe, and then considering the other side, infinite nothingness - or nothing existing at all. Ironically, it seems both of these absurdities have existed at some point.
All I know is that I wake up every day, and life seems to continue as it did the previous day. Channelling Occam's Razor, it seems like this must be real, as everything I experience points to that being true. Until something points to that not being the case, it makes sense to believe it. Maybe if we were a smarter species all of this would make perfect sense.
Thanks again though, I do take comfort in the fact that I'm not alone when it comes to these thoughts and feelings.
One of the very few “very odd” meditation experiences I’ve had which were not “merely relaxing” was one where I got up and immediately sensed something was different… I did sort of an internal mental inventory/inspection and with some shock realized that my entire fear of death was completely gone. And the thing I must absolutely convey is that this made me aware of a unique perspective, which is that we are all, ever-present with a fear of death, even when we don’t notice it… because EVEN THAT got taken away from me after that meditation. It was… such an odd feeling. And it wasn’t like I was going to angle for death, or anything… It was just… a sense of total peace about it.
It only lasted a few days and was honestly so jarring that it frightened me from trying meditation again for some time after
