Vlad Naiden

Hacks and Leverages

Stress & Anxiety — What Actually Worked

July 30, 2026

For years, stress ran my life on an unpredictable schedule. I tried a lot — books, vitamins, scans, apps — and most of it didn't move the needle. I wanted stability and calm. Today I have it.

Everything here is just what I figured out for myself, from my own investigation and tested on myself — take it as one person's experience, not advice.

In this post:

  1. The Remedy — the one idea that changed everything
  2. Hacks & Leverages — what to actually do
  3. The Books
  4. The Way of Resolving — the full story

The Remedy

Here's what I figured out for myself:

Stress has three parts — a cause, a process, and an aftermath. And stress will not leave until you resolve its cause. Everything else is coping.

That sounds simple. It isn't. Finding the real cause is hard and it takes time. But it's the only work that actually ends the stress instead of muting it for an afternoon. So the high-leverage move is to invest real time into understanding and removing the cause — while, in the meantime, learning to manage the process and the aftermath.

Understanding this concept mattered enormously for me. But it isn't the whole story — it's just as important to keep paying attention to the Hacks & Leverages below: the habits that help me function, and still do to this day. The concept tells you where the real work is; the hacks carry you while you do it.

Everything else worked in context — a complex of habits I slowly filtered down to the ones that actually helped. The filtering mattered as much as the habits.

Hacks & Leverages

In the moment (shift the focus):

  • Think in another language. Switching the language in my head helped a lot with the ruminator — that loop of chewing on the same thought.
  • A walk, just to change the focus.
  • The gym, in the hard stretches of worry.
  • Bath with Epsom salt and lavender, with the sounds of birds, a storm, or a forest in the background.
  • A hobby where you actually make progress; games; anything where something works out.
  • Talk to someone who matters. Create a real sense of connection. Meet friends, be where you feel at home, share the problem with people who give you understanding and support.

The aftermath (recover):

  • Sauna / banya, small celebrations, getting out with people.
  • Movement — a walk, a run, sport. When there's stress, this is my most reliable reset.
  • A change of scene — a walk, a BBQ, a trip to the sea if it's near, even a simple bus ride (I genuinely love those).

The foundation (daily, so stress hits softer):

  • Sleep. Pair everything with sleep — it's a multiplier for all the rest.
  • The right vitamins. Gotu Kola helped me most. But measure — I used an EEG to see what my brain was actually doing, added what I needed, and cut what was harming me.
  • Meditation & NSDR — it trains focus, and it calms. NSDR (non-sleep deep rest) sessions in particular helped me.
  • An affirmation I wrote for myself.

The meta-hack: layer them, don't chase one trick.

The distinction that matters: in the moment, shift focus to cope. But spend the real time on removing the cause — that's the only thing that makes stress actually leave.

The Books

Books were a huge part of this for me. I'm no expert — these are just the ones that shaped how I think about it, from my own reading.

The Way of Resolving

It was not a straight line.

I started with a book promising 23+ techniques to fight stress. I quit it — dry, technical, no principles. Then I wandered: tried a handful of methods I can barely remember now.

The turn came with Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. Reading it, I realized how little I understood my own head — and that the quality of my brain was quietly setting the ceiling on the quality of my life. So I decided to work on it directly.

I went to a neurologist, bought vitamins, and reorganized them into groups (I'd taken vitamins for years, but never deliberately). The problem: I didn't understand how any of it worked. Some of it was probably harmful. I didn't yet know that you have to verify and validate information and actually test on yourself in a controlled way. So the results were unstable — I couldn't tell what helped and what hurt. I just ran everything at once and became my own guinea pig.

Then I got an MRI. I'd had a few concussions growing up (at 6, and again as a teenager), and I wanted to see the state and structure of my brain and its vessels. The verdict: mostly fine, a couple of things to keep an eye on — but none of it explained or fixed the stress.

Next I did an EEG at a clinic to measure my alpha and beta waves. Finally, a real reading of where I actually was. They told me which vitamins I needed and which to drop because they were working against me. After adjusting, things improved — Gotu Kola especially. I learned which vitamins help me sleep and which don't, and just how tightly sleep is tied to all of it.

I added meditation and understood what it's really for — training focus, and calming down. I used the Amen app. I wrote an affirmation.

And still — stress kept coming back. I couldn't see why. It was unstable, and I wanted the opposite: stability, calm, confidence without the constant undercurrent.

The breakthrough wasn't a gadget or a pill. It was two things: the concept — cause, process, aftermath — and learning to filter: keep what works, drop the rest. Once I understood that stress lives at its cause, the whole thing reframed. Deal with the cause, and the stress goes on its own. Organically.

That's where I am now. Not because I found the one trick — but because I finally understood which part of the problem to actually work on.

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