Hey everyone,
I [28F] need some advice on handling anxiety when job hunting.
Almost a week ago I finished school and I’m once again without work. I’ve been job hunting about 40-50% of my adult life and it has taken a huge toll on my mental health to the point where I’m barely able to apply for jobs anymore. I have gotten a few warnings over the years due to not applying to enough jobs. ( I live in Sweden btw )
I have tried taking breaks.
I have tried waiting for the anxiety to pass.
I have asked so many for advice but it’s like they all give the same default answer. If their advice where enough, I would be a pro at job hunting.
I did get an autism diagnosis a few years back and I do feel better about myself, more confident and understanding of how I work so I think this time around will be different, but it’s like the old anxiety still hangs around and I don’t know how to get rid of it.
Please if you have any advice, I’d love to hear it.
The way to alleviate anxiety is to willingly approach the thing that makes you anxious. Do it in small enough increments that you don’t overwhelm yourself.
As a person with autism (like me) you likely have lower than average working memory. You can expand your working memory by playing Follow That Frog on Lumosity for 60 minutes straight without taking a break.
People will say that Lumosity has no effect but the procedure I described is not the same one they used in the study that concluded Lumosity doesn’t work. Other studies which have used procedures similar to the one I described (60 mins, same game on repeat, no breaks) have shown efficacy.
Be warned that for two or three days after your working memory training session everything will be worse, not better. But once you recover, everything will be better.
Thanks for the advice, I do have a lower working memory, but Limosity costs money and that is something I don’t have right now.
I try to do a bit of job hunting with long breaks in between, taking small steps to make an application, sometimes it can take almost a week to send an application…
Here you go, this one’s free: https://www.braingymmer.com/en/brain-games/n_back/play/
A word of warning: For me at least, 60 minutes of training makes my brain feel numb and my working memory is way worse for a couple of days. It feels a lot like being sleep deprived; it’s frustrating how difficult it is to think. Then after a few days it’s the opposite. Everything is easier. But there is that downtime to consider.
But I’ve found if I do a 20-minute session, I get a little boost in performance without any discernable downtime at all.
I highly recommend that at some point you do a 60-minute session, if only to feel the contrast in working memory before and after. But you have to be able to handle a couple days of feeling stupid and slow.
But if you’ve got a lot going on and no downtime, no days where you can afford to be lazy and slow and recover, the smaller sessions are probably better.
