At our last LW meetup in Berlin one participant A said that he wills anxiety about the upcoming social interaction X. We did a Hamming Circle (spelling for Hemming might be wrong) and I was mainly leading the discussion. At the beginning he was shivering because of anxiety caused by thinking about the issue. Half an hour later he felt courage. I checked up later and he faced situation X in a relaxed way.
Another member of the circle B mentioned that it was like me talking a different language to A. The flow of the whole process was intransparent to B. As such it's unlikely that describing what I did in a LW essay would be much help.
A lot of what's written in the akrasia fighting methods carries little risk. Doing some form of trauma regression to combat your anxiety while you sit alone at home is qualitatively different.
A month ago the loud drilling machine of my neighbors produced an uncomfortable feeling in me. I recognized that having that trigger is stupid and removed most of it. Does that mean I can write a text that teaches you to get rid of it? No.
Of course. I love yoga. It's relaxing and fun. But it's no cure for anxiety. Yoga gives a very short "mental high" and doing it for months had no effect on the anxiety. This approach may work for a lot lf people, but as always, there's a fringe that needs some new approaches.
If I would meet you in person I would have information about your bodily state that helps to put the answer into perspective. Without that it's hard to estimate your state.
It's awesome that you're able to help people so well. At the same time, though, I get the feeling that you're falling into the trap of other-optimizing. In-person support is probably a lot more helpful than internet-based support, I suspect. But when the right people aren't around you, and you can't go to them, having instant communication over the internet is a good second-best. Certainly over the internet there's things you can't do, like determine a physical state. But if people refused to use any method but the absolute best, we'd spend more time trying to find optimal strategies than anything else, and humanity would die out because we'd be too busy designing soylent to eat.
For a site extremely focused on fixing bad thinking patterns, I've noticed a bizarre lack of discussion here. Considering the high correlation between intelligence and mental illness, you'd think it would be a bigger topic.
I personally suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and a very tame panic disorder. Most of this is focused on financial and academic things, but I will also get panicky about social interaction, responsibilities, and things that happened in the past that seriously shouldn't bother me. I have an almost amusing response to anxiety that is basically my brain panicking and telling me to go hide under my desk.
I know lukeprog and Alicorn managed to fight off a good deal of their issues in this area and wrote up how, but I don't think enough has been done. They mostly dealt with depression. What about rational schizophrenics and phobics and bipolar people? It's difficult to find anxiety advice that goes beyond "do yoga while watching the sunrise!" Pop psych isn't very helpful. I think LessWrong could be. What's mental illness but a wrongness in the head?
Mental illness seems to be worse to intelligent people than your typical biases, honestly. Hiding under my desk is even less useful than, say, appealing to authority during an argument. At least the latter has the potential to be useful. I know it's limiting me, and starting cycles of avoidance, and so much more. And my mental illness isn't even that bad! Trying to be rational and successful when schizophrenic sounds like a Sisyphusian nightmare.
I'm not fighting my difficulties nearly well enough to feel qualified to author my own posts. Hearing from people who are managing is more likely to help. If nothing else, maybe a Rational Support Group would be a lot of fun.