Struggling with Anxiety as a Developer – What Are My Options?

Here are couple of thoughts:

- Whenever anxiety fills my mind, I like to look deep space images to remind myself that all the human problems here on Earth are just made up. No other animal cares "economy", "startups", "performance reviews", "jiras" etc. What we humans have created here is truly form of "matrix" that forces to play by its rules, but it is illusion.

- If you think what other people think of you, the most probable answer is, they don't think anything of you, or if they think, one such thinking might last ~10 seconds. There are just too many people and too little time to think other people. No one probably cares, at least that is my own experience.

- I have always been the slowest performer in my jobs (and many times got special coaching/discussions because of that), yet it usually have been me who got promotions. It is because faster people usually just churn the same stuff, while my slow work has given me time to think what the work is actually about, and produce something completely new line of thinking and valuables that other people just don't do, because they just keep churching and churning the same.

- Keep up with the most important basics: sleep, healthy food, and physical exercise, to have energy for mental work.

The ACT approach worked for me. It's compatible with CBT, but with a different emphasis. The following names may help:

Claire Weekes, who somebody else in this thread recommended. She's the pioneer of the approach. She wrote mainly in the mid-20th century but her work is still accessible.

Also look at Kevin Majeres' work, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGa-jQJazpY

Also look at the DARE Approach to anxiety: https://www.youtube.com/@DareResponse

They all say variations of the same thing, which is that you need to train your brain not to fear your anxiety.

This approach ought to be the standard -- it really works, and is well-demonstrated in the literature.

Also exercise every day, or as often as you can. Both weight-training and cardio are good. Swimming is excellent.

Don't spend much time analysing some deep-seated reason for your anxiety. A little bit is fine, but going too deep is a waste of time, and can actually make it worse. You want to train the rational part of your brain to disregard the anxiety signals coming from your amygdla; and over time, the amygdla's messages will become less and less intense. If you spend time thinking 'why why why am I feeling this way?', your brain starts treating the anxiety signals as important, which is the opposite of what you want.

I would strongly recommend against changing careers. You will not be making good decisions while anxious, and other careers will not be less stressful.

I quit my last job because I was so destroyed by anxiety, to the point I had physical issues like shortness of breath, throat tightness, racing thoughts and even some thoughts of not wanting to exist anymore. I quit that job to focus on getting healthy. Now that I am feeling healthier though, this job market is destroying me and I haven’t been able to get a “true” software developer role since. I do software at a meat manufacturer and its very chill. The funny thing is that I have so much mental energy that I can work on stuff I want to. Before I was doing backend software development but wasn’t super passionate about the technology. Now I am learning vulkan, ray tracing, 3d modeling and rigging, among other things. So idk I would love a job in those things, but for now having a less demanding job is better for me than a more demanding job doing something I am not that passionate about.

> code reviews, sprints and constant deadlines.

Don't accept a job where teams do Scrum.

Scrum is an anxiety-inducing never-ending marathon. If people without anxiety make it work for them, great - but it doesn't work for me, so I reject it.

More broadly speaking, figure out if you have other boundaries you need to set, and make discovery of whether or not those boundaries would be crossed a part of any interview process. Decline jobs that cross them.

I find that smaller companies outside of the startup world are better. Look for bootstrapped small software shops, or an internal IT department of a non-tech company. Find a place where you are helping the business run, but not directly producing the product that defines the business. Or work on enterprise platforms - Salesforce, SAP, etc. Such platforms tend to need work more along the lines of configuration, scripting, and data updates, which results in a different type and pace of work.

Have you discussed this with your doctor? If not, I would schedule an appointment ASAP. It's possible that medication might be able to help significantly. If it does help, it could be that it helps you enough to turn things into a more manageable situation at work. This might not be your long-term optimal solution, but it could make life less miserable until you do find your long-term optimal.

This helps me: don't do social media or any news or any thumb-memory-based anything in the morning. Don't grab your phone first thing. Just let your mind slowly warm up to work -- the legit work that you need to do. When your brain is pulled in many directions it feels overwhelmed, and starting the day that way compounds it.

Try small businesses, large corps which don’t sell IT products, or even universities / government / etc. Avoid startups / competitive places.

You probably want to address your anxiety as well - where it comes from, how it affects you, can you do something about it, if you can’t how you can deal with it, etc

I’m supposed to be a high achiever professionally speaking ( by most metrics I’ve done well enough at least good enough for me), but still have to keep my natural anxiety in check. Surprisingly enough I’ve eventually figured out that when I’m stressed out there’s a reason, and that I can actually find it if I search for it. If I don’t look for it then I just end up completely paralyzed. The solution usually boils down to addressing the thing I’m afraid of.

Changing careers is another option, but there’s no reason why your anxiety won’t come back so I’d work on the anxiety first.

I wish you the best !

Anxiety is a normal stress related state, whats not normal is that in modern life the stressors never end. Which is why a ton of people go into extreme sports, to hard reset what the mind percieves as a "stressor". If you climb and a SLCD gives, all the other stress in the world falls away forever . And it doesn't become as important after that ever again. After this Startups are bad for anxiety because half of them are basically cults, but if you are uncultured , you can sell your services as a service . Do that with some other webdevs together and you can hire somebody to do the paperwork ..

I think you are doing all the right things - meditation, counseling, journaling. I would add exercise if it's possible for you, it has a big effect in lowering anxiety for most people.

> If you have any tips on the above, have similar programming-related anxiety issues, and/or have overcome them, please share what you can. It will really help me out.

I think all devs hate Jira boards and being judged on how many points they score each sprint. Estimating things well is extremely hard so even great devs sometimes don't finish sprints well - which causes unnecessary angst if your boss is the kind of guy that gives a hard time over something like this. There is no magic bullet here - I think the most important thing is a sympathetic boss who you connect with and who doesn't pressure you constantly. How were your previous bosses?

> I do want meaningful work—I don't want to pick my nose all day. But I need a less demanding environment. All I see on LinkedIn are "fast-moving" startup roles. Are there any slower paced web dev jobs?

Yes, for sure. These roles exist, especially in non software first companies and/or big legacy systems. Banking, insurance, manufacturing etc etc. The odds are the pace would be slower.

> The only other option is to change career within or outside of software. I have no ideas here, and to be honest, this is rather frightening. I'd be curious to hear what others have done.

Who doesn't entertain this thought here and there, even people who love software development can get fatigued after 10 years. I have no idea too ; I'm thinking I have no idea I'll even be able to remain employed 5 years from now with the pace AI is advancing at, but that's a different discussion.

Anyway to recap - key to job longevity is your direct boss that's the most important thing. higher chances of slower pace in legacy or non software businesses. Second career is something most of us think about and I don't have a solution either - but I think getting fired once or even twice doesn't mean at all you have no way of succeeding in your next role. It just means you had one bad role. Good luck and take care!

There might be a physiological aspect (not just psychological aspect) that you might be able to mitigate. - Make sure you are getting enough vitamin D (I would recommend a Vitamin B Complex using Methyl B) - Some supplements can reduce anxiety -- stuff that improves the GABA neurotransmitter can be helpful. As well as serotonin. I take saffron, St John's Wort, GABA (starting liposomal soon), Tryptophan. I also take 2 blends of supplements: Dr Berg's Adrenal Stress and Dr Berg's Adrenal and Cortisol support. Between all this, it has me on a mostly even-keel.

This sounds a lot like me. I have a disability that contributes to this. It's possible you could ask for accommodations to lower the pressure, such as async code reviews or something.

On a side note, what they put in the posting about being "fast paced" and stuff is almost always fluff. I don't know of any slow paced dev jobs, but the degree of pace doesn't seem to be correlated to the use of "fast paced" in the posting. It seems random.

I feel like I'll probably get fired and end up working at Walmart. Hope you have better luck.

Lexapro made a huge difference for me. Much more than exercise, meditation, counseling, or journaling. I have tried to come off it a few times and each time it's kind of a disaster.

Do you drink coffee? If so, try eliminating it completely and see if you feel any better.

If your anxiety is so severe that you are having advanced chronic physical health problems then you need to be on medication. That can add years to your life. Otherwise, DO NOT take anxiety medication. The side effects can be horrific for your health and you will become dependent on it for daily functioning. See a doctor to be sure.

Changes to diet can help. Try a low carb diet and drop alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. A low carb diet will focus on mostly meat, dairy, and vegetables. Cardio and weight training will also help. Focus on exercises that increase bone density. Not only does this kind of diet improve your mental health it improves nearly all chronic health problems. In my case it has almost reversed and eliminated arthritis.

Just remember a job is a job. They are disposable. You aren’t a celebrity or senior executive so don’t let it interfere with your health. I would rather be poor than let a job drive me crazy and I saying that as a military guy with 5 Middle East deployments.

I don't know if it'll help, but if everything you tried didn't solve your problem, search for "Anxiety - Kapil Gupta MD & Naval Ravikant" and "Be Free From a Chaotic Mind | Awakening" on youtube.

The book “Hope an Help for your nerves” by Claire Weekes is highly recommended.

Throw away.

Most of the advice you will get is wrong. Not bad-wrong but waste-your-years-doing-100-useless-stuff-wrong. Most solutions attempt to be a cookie-cutter which fits all. Anxiety is body's natural response to an environment. Your job was not the problem. How you thought you were supposed to work - was the real activator. Even if you find a healthy job, you will yearn that "high" from the stress.

Once anxiety is part of you, no medication or meditation can make it just disappear. It will be carried in your genes. You are may be carrying it from your grand grand parents too .

Good news is that you dont have to be affected by your anxiety. If you learn to accept it as part of your natural response, you will calm it down . Use a good meditation app - not the Silicon Valley ones. You may try various therapies to see what you like. But avoid professionals.

The answer does not require you to spend 1$. Even the richest may not treat anxiety in their lives. More money you spend, worse it may get for you.

Hope and Help for Your Nerves By Claire Weekes

I do want meaningful work

What kind of work is meaningful to you?

It does not have to involve making software.

Good luck.

I have a lot of thoughts. Also senior with ~10yoe. I am going to try to be helpful because you seem like you are really struggling. I am going to arm chair psychologist very intensely right now, so take what I say with a gigantic grain of salt.

A lot of the times stuff like this can be from our environments. There could be some one currently affecting your self esteem, and maybe you have gotten used to it. This could be at work or in personal life. This person could also be you. It could have also been the environment when you were younger. Maybe you needed to present an image of perfection to be loved and accepted.

If it is from the current environment it will be extremely hard to heal from and perhaps impossible, ie: you are living or working with someone repeatedly irritating this wound, which is likely not the case but should be mentioned.

If that is the case you have to learn to let it go. You are worrying about something that can't actually hurt you. what others think at work, be cold and robotic about it. You don't need to care insofar as it doesn't affect your employment. Unfortunately many people won't be super rational when it comes to gauging another person, and the best people to work with truly do not care unless it is impacting them directly. Then ideally they will confront you directly about it. "Hey fix this". It's not personal. We all make mistakes. Pretending like we don't is truly delusional. Please accept that if you haven't. If you have, then accept that others need to change and accept that.

The journaling and self awareness is huge. I would keep asking myself why, if I were you. "Why do I care" because of x,y,z. "Why". "I care because I like when other people like me" ... well ... why? determine if you like people who care about the things you care about at the end of your sequence of "why".

Psychedelics (IME shrooms) or meds may help you address these issues.I hesitate to recommend shrooms because of their sheer power. Maybe eventually? It might be good to use anti anxiety meds as training wheels if you feel they will help you make progress at the beginning faster. Because processing this stuff, sometimes your body will throw too much emotion at you.

When corporations say they're fast paced, don't worry too much about it. No corporation is going to say they are "Slow paced" because their customers and investors will literally run for the hills. Typically startups are fast paced (even if that speed is chasing their own tail, not to say all do that) and big co's are slower, so choose those since they appear to align with something important to you. Remember, at the end of the day your workplace is composed of humans like you who typically want a life outside of work.

When it comes to code reviews just accept that a) you are not perfect and b) you are trying. You appear to be trying hard enough. You will make mistakes, you don't need to project an image of perfection. Even if there is something wrong with your brain or your behavior that results in making the same mistake twice it's fine. It's not like your trying to make mistakes. Don't feel pressured to project an image of perfection. You are wasting your time, energy and happiness doing that. Just be yourself, let others deal with it. Granted you need to put on a filter for professionalism because it is a professional environment.

You may need to slow down and take a break. A vacation, maybe. Anything to slow down. Sometimes you can't do this.

I also wonder if you have any hobbies that give you release. Anything to focus on outside of work that you can focus on, that is engrossing to you, as opposed to being robotic or part of you trying to project an image of perfection. Try making music, suck at it, only if you are having fun and it is releasing emotion. Watch a movie. Do something engrossing. I think part of your issue is obsessing over these things that don't matter. Find something to obsess over that truly does affect your happiness, it will be awesome. This is very hard for some people.

This reminds me of a tweet I saw that was like "how did baseline human activities like singing, dancing, and making art turn into skills for a few instead of behaviors for everyone". Not to say those are the only things. For someone else it could be rapping, writing fic/nonfic/whatever, working out, just doing stuff that feels good regardless of what others think.

For many people working out also helps with confidence, and is important to our bodies.

And for the record, there could be serious issues with your diet, physical, or mental health causing / contributing to this. So take baby steps to improve all of these things, if you feel they truly need to be improved. If you expect perfection from day 1) you will likely quit 2) it won't be fun. Give yourself a metric crap ton of grace, no matter what you do. Learn to celebrate your mistakes as growth opportunities, because objectively, that's what happens when you make a mistake. I wouldn't be surprised if you punished yourself proportionally to your obsession with what others think.

A person before making a mistake < a person after making a mistake (and reflecting).

So if you truly want to become better, then making mistakes will make you better.

Maybe you'll get fired for it (extremely likely you won't). Or people will be assholes. Learn to laugh it off. You learned, and no harm was done. Eventually you will do better work because you won't waste energy and time thinking about what others think, making you more efficient. Meaning you will ask questions that will speed you up, you will advocate for yourself, and there may be that benefit from you speaking up as well.

All of these things will make you a more likable person. I think it's safe to say that nobody (who isn't trying to pretend to be a perfect person, or isn't a narcissistic and far gone) truly, in their heart of hearts, wants to deal with someone trying to be perfect. We are humans not robots.

Some people go their entire lives obsessed with what others think and never live their own life which is actually quite sad. These people are often confronted with a choice: continuing to be deluded or dealing with their shit. Many choose delusion. That is the essence of cowardice imho.

Many people can not deal with the struggle you are bravely choosing to confront (and even ask others help with!) and live their own life deluded until they die, maybe it hits them on their death bed. I truly do not know. I can't understate how great it is that you are choosing to truly confront and deal with this issue that can be extremely, extremely deep rooted.

Or maybe I am completely wrong. I didn't get too much to work with.

If the shoe fits, I hope I have been helpful.

I am rooting for you either way.