What do a 16th century philosopher, the Matrix, and a symptom of anxiety have in common? If you’re like half of the general population, you may question reality at some point in your life¹.

I first went down the rabbit hole when I saw the cyberpunk movie, The Matrix, and then again when I saw Inception, the 2010 movie that, much to his fans’ dismay, didn’t earn Leo the long-awaited Oscar. What if everything around me was the work of an evil genius, like the automatons in the Matrix, or an inescapable dream, like in the Inception? Reading Descartes and Aristotle in my Philosophy courses this summer brought back a surge of familiar thoughts.

“I think, therefore I am”

The story goes that Descartes, a 16th century philosopher often recognized for Cartesian Mathematics, found himself in a state of despair when he realized he could not be sure that the world around him, including his own physical body, was real.

He doubted that it could be the work of an evil genius (like in the Matrix) or the result of a dreamlike state (like in the Inception). He concluded that the only thing he could be sure about was that he was experiencing the doubt.

Even if an evil genius placed the doubt in his head, there was an experiencer that was experiencing the doubt. Cue the famous statement, “I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum in Latin),” that laid the foundation for certainty in Western Philosophy.

“I think, therefore I am” (Descartes, 1641).

So maybe it is a dream or a simulation and “there is no spoon.” But there is an ‘I’ that is doing the experiencing.

Derealization — feeling of disconnection from reality

While studying Psychology this past year, I learned that there is a word to describe these transient feelings — derealization, a mental state where you feel detached from your surroundings and may question your reality¹.

Although jarring, especially after you’ve just watched Leo drift through multiple levels of dreaming in the Inception, it’s a surprisingly common experience that sometimes manifests as a symptom of anxiety.

If you find yourself distressed by these thoughts, some ways to ground yourself are to connect to the reality using your five senses (ex. touching a cold object, listening to loud music, tasting something sour) or to simply distract yourself until the feelings pass. It may help to remember that more than half of all people may have this disconnection from reality at least once in their lifetime¹.

Monism and other views

While Descartes’ grounded himself in reality using the dualism of mind and body, i.e., his mind could exist independently of his senses, other Western philosophers like Spinoza argued for substance monism, a view that there is only one substance in the universe.

Monists anchored themselves in reality with the argument that there is no real distinction between them and the world. On the other side of the world, Eastern texts like the Bhagavad Gita had promoted a realization of oneness with the universe in a similarly monist view (Advaita Vedanta) for centuries.

Regardless of the belief, questioning reality has led many philosophers to thought-provoking ideas and has inspired some mind-bending movies. Still others, like Kant, have remained critical of such inquires, arguing that the human mind is incapable of reaching metaphilosophical conclusions in a reliable way (i.e. such questions are impossible because their answers cannot be verified)².

Perhaps the takeaway is that such exploration can lead to valuable insights, while disregarding it can keep things simple. Your personal approach depends on whether you prefer to meditate on the mysteries of the universe or to simply enjoy your commute to work!

Geetika Kapoor is a Psychology postbaccalaureate student and researcher at UC Berkeley and an experienced Product Manager.

Research from worry experts Dr. Brokovec and colleagues reveals that you could be using worry as a coping behavior to avoid feeling intense emotions in uncertain situations.

Mindfulness techniques, such as accepting uncertainty and “sitting with” the much-dreaded emotions of fear and helplessness, show promise in reducing worry.

When my husband ran up the road to the grocery store, I worried that a drunk driver would kill him. I wondered how I would live without him, losing myself in all the minute details of finding a job and a day care center, and cashing in the life insurance policy. Was there a life insurance policy?

Elizabeth Broadbent depicts excessive worrying and its irrationality in her powerful piece on anxiety. Chronic worriers juggle a lineup of anxiety hits, such as health, family, money, and personal safety¹.

Researchers define worry as “a chain of repetitive and uncontrollable thoughts about possible future negative events”².

While occasional worry can be a motivator for proactive behavior, such as preparing for job interviews and scheduling annual health screenings, chronic, excessive worry can interfere with your life and cause headaches, lowered immunity, muscle tension, and digestive problems³.

So why can’t you stop worrying?

Persistent worry may not go away with simply telling yourself, “don’t worry.”

Using worry to cope with negative emotions

Decades of worry research suggests that excessive worrying is a coping behavior to avoid feeling intense negative emotions⁴`⁵ in uncertain situations. Many chronic worriers resist the emotions of fear and helplessness in the face of their most-feared events.

Intolerance to uncertainty

An intolerance to uncertainty⁶ leads chronic worriers to worry instead — shifting their focus from “feeling” to “thinking.” Although this cognitive avoidance via “thinking” reduces negative feelings, it reinforces the value of worrying, forming a vicious cycle of anxiety.

How can you stop worrying?

Mindfulness research shows that being more accepting of your emotions in response to uncertain situations and practicing being fully present can reduce worry⁸.

Psychologist Tchiki Davis, Ph.D., explains that acceptance includes recognizing that difficult emotions are an inescapable part of life.

When these emotions inevitably do arise, there are two ways that we can react: resistance or acceptance.

While resistance is a default reaction for many, trying to resist or avoid certain difficult experiences can cause further psychological harm,” writes Dr. Davis⁹.

So if you’re worrying about an unfortunate event occurring, try to -

1. Accept uncertainty

Accept not knowing what will happen, whether it will happen, and when it will happen. Prove to yourself that you can handle uncertainty. After all, controlling anything beyond your own thoughts and actions is an illusion¹⁰. The more you practice, the more confident you will become in your ability to navigate uncertainty, thereby reducing worry.

2. Practice surfing through negative emotions

“Sit with” and embrace the strong emotions that you are feeling, as they are a part of the human experience. Simply labeling the negative emotion you are feeling (ex. “I‘m feeling anxious.”) is shown to reduce its intensity¹¹.

3. Practice meditation.

Meditation can help you cultivate the habit of staying in the current moment while resisting uncontrollable rumination about the past and worries about the future¹². Check out these free guided meditations by Tara Brach, Ph.D, author of Radical Acceptance.

Also read Stop Worrying in 5 Steps.

Geetika Kapoor is a postbaccalaureate student and researcher at UC Berkeley Department of Psychology.

If you’re struggling with symptoms of an anxiety disorder, don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health professional in your area. This article is intended to be informational only and is not written by a healthcare provider.

I had the incredible opportunity to intern as a PM for the Microsoft 365 Core Engineering Systems team this past summer. My team was responsible for the design and execution of latency tools. Being a PM on an infrastructure team allowed me to understand the technical domain, and have a magnified impact on Microsoft customers.

As part of the internship, I successfully designed, launched, and monitored an onboarding feature (a tutorial-plus-wizard solution) for a latency tool with over 400 users across the company. Here are some important lessons I learned:

1. Strong opinions come from customer obsession and product sense

• PMs have strong opinions guided by deep user, product, and industry knowledge. Starting out, I struggled. I found that if I, as a PM, was not convinced, it was hard for me to believe in my project. This could have led me to the dangerous road of subconsciously distancing myself from it.
• Things became easier as I conducted extensive user research, and trusted my gut feeling. Even if the people in the meeting were all experts, we still had problems. And I could play my part in solving those problems by approaching them from my unique perspective.
• Comparing it to my engineering internships, I realized that as an engineer, your opinion is guided by what’s good architectural design and possible to implement. But as a PM, you base your opinion on what’s good for users. This requires deep knowledge of what the users need (not always ‘want’).

2. Persuasion is the art of the subtle

• Having strong opinions ties into persuading others to see things the way you do. Here’s what I learned. I learned that persuading others is a lot easier if you have immense belief in your opinion and product. You should work from the beginning to feel highly connected to your product.

Your product should be your baby — fight for it, even if your internship ends the next day. And if your data also screams your opinion, you will be hard to ignore.

• That said, persuasion is an art of the subtle things — knowing your audience’s priorities, opinions, and goals, using data as your aide, establishing credibility, persuading a champion with more credibility first, and many other things I am yet to learn.
• Lastly, as my mentor once told me, not all battles are worth fighting.

3. Creating an onboarding experience is tricky business

• The challenge is to convince users that your product is useful to them, and that it is worth their time to learn to use it. The difficulty lies in figuring out how to present the key features of the product to a new user in a simple and effective way. Some questions I repeatedly asked myself during the internship were — what do my users already know, what do they want to know, and how will they learn that quickly?
• Onboarding does not have to be a tutorial — would your users appreciate a wizard to quickly get certain tasks done, or do they actually need to learn how to use your product? Understanding user tasks and usage statistics can provide clues. Onboarding is not a one-time experience, but rather a way to improve the customer’s journey. At what points during this journey will the user need to know or learn something?

Quick side note: Contrary to the popular belief, I found customers who are developers care a lot about the UI, even if is subconsciously. So, invest in a good UI, in addition to providing MVP features.

4. Data is essential, but can be hard to get

• As a product manager, you really need to know your user. But what I learned is that talking to users is not just helpful in making your product fantastic, but also in motivating you and your team. You realize how much even small changes in your product affects users’ experiences (and lives, if they are avid users).
• I gathered all sorts of user data, from personal interviews to usage statistics. I quickly understood that even passionate users of the product didn’t have the time to reply to my emails or fill out surveys. I needed to find other ways. So I started attending internal conferences and events, chatting up in Microsoft shuttles while commuting, at cafes during lunch time, in elevators during short rides…hoping to run into users and collect data. It turned out to be a successful strategy, and I quickly received dozens of anecdotes and feedback.
• My team did not formally gather metrics, but they did have the database infrastructure to track users. Some patience and a few SQL queries later, I hit jackpot. I mean, metrics.

There’s a lot left to learn. I am overjoyed to join Microsoft as a full-time PM after graduating this May. I want to thank Microsoft for the opportunity.

Some people who led me here…

Thank you, Bob, my manager, for always having faith in my abilities and asking me to trust my instinct, and Hersh, my mentor, for nudging me in the right direction, while giving me enough space to make mistakes and learn from them. Thank you, Rohan and Senthil for inspiring me and offering great advice.

I will forever be grateful to Greg, my SWE manager, and Kangrong, my Group SWE manager, for taking the initial bet on me for my developer internship two years ago and helping me find my path to PM.

I’m excited to have found something I am passionate about, and I look forward to the PM journey. Thank you for reading! Please reach out to me at gkapoor6@gatech.edu.