Dealing with anxiety

Find a hobby. An activity you can fully focus on for brief (or longer) periods of time so that you can at least briefly forget about your anxiety and relax. I have had some pretty bad anxiety over the years and that helped me a lot.
 
mlawson71 said:
Find a hobby. An activity you can fully focus on for brief (or longer) periods of time so that you can at least briefly forget about your anxiety and relax. I have had some pretty bad anxiety over the years and that helped me a lot.
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I already do - rock climbing is my thing, but the relief is pretty short.
 
sle said:
I already do - rock climbing is my thing, but the relief is pretty short.
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Our body is all about enzymes. Any unbalance in our enzymes will cause us problems. Therefore, I suggest that you watch what you eat for a while by keeping a journal of the food and drinks that you consume. When your anxiety reoccurs. Review what you have consumed that week, stay away from it for a while, and see how things evolve from there.

Trust me, it is all about what we eat or drink and sometimes do. So use the process of elimination to arrive to the cause of your panic attacks.

Wish you the best!
 
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sle said:
Let's see.. I am 45, male, in decent athletic shape. I don't smoke or use drugs and have a sip of whiskey once a month or so. Career is stable, well, as stable as it can be in this business. Had some traumatic events last year but not recently. Sleep-wise I could probably use more but it's not like I am sleeping 3-4 hours. Normal adult life. The doctor went through all of this plus family history (that can of worms is best unopened).
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Unfortunately what's happened here is that your brain has learned something that puts you into "protect mode" given the right circumstances; the SNS fires up and basically puts the body into fight or flight mode but without conscious awareness of what's happening - which is where the anxiety part happens. You start feeling various physical issues (SNS is triggering those) because there's a disconnect between what your rational mind knows vs what the amygdala thinks it knows, hence seemingly uncontrollable fear, panic, and dread looming over you. It's a completely fucked situation but there's only one way to handle it and that's through extinguishing the fear by confronting it. If you try to run away from this anxiety or otherwise do whatever it takes to make it go away (rather than "sit in it") it will just further reinforce to the brain that it's something to fear. The end-goal here is to retrain the mind to stop freaking out over things that aren't rationally worth freaking out about. Like a person with a huge fear of dogs spending more and more time around dogs; eventually the immersion pays off and they no longer irrationally fear dogs. I highly recommend you avoid medication of any sort, it's moving the opposite direction from where you want to be, and they're mostly all benzo's which means there's an underlying physical and mental addiction component present at some point; not to mention they're really just masking the issue.

By and large you have to do what most people typically recommend: When the anxiety shows up and starts all the body/physical crap (which sucks), you need to exercise controlled breathing to help nudge the SNS/brain back into a calm state. It also helps to be 100% consciously aware of what's going on and know that it's anxiety and nothing else (because trust me, everything will be trying to trick you into thinking it's something more serious than it actually is). You also need to look deep down into where you think the anxiety might be originating from (age? existential crisis? future? it's clearly some kind of fear) and try and figure out what the connection is that triggers this. PTSD sufferers are basically dealing with the same thing.

Oh, and I recommend chamomile when you start feeling the edge. It's a very simple but usually effective non-medication based avenue to just chill you out a bit.

What's your caffeine habit like? This can be a very under-looked avenue but it's not rare whatsoever for people who've been regular coffee drinkers to just have something snap at some point where caffeine itself makes everything worse. If you drink coffee, start thinking about decaf or half-decaf.
 
i960 said:
Unfortunately what's happened here is that your brain has learned something that puts you into "protect mode" given the right circumstances; the SNS fires up and basically puts the body into fight or flight mode but without conscious awareness of what's happening - which is where the anxiety part happens. You start feeling various physical issues (SNS is triggering those) because there's a disconnect between what your rational mind knows vs what the amygdala thinks it knows, hence seemingly uncontrollable fear, panic, and dread looming over you. It's a completely fucked situation but there's only one way to handle it and that's through extinguishing the fear by confronting it. If you try to run away from this anxiety or otherwise do whatever it takes to make it go away (rather than "sit in it") it will just further reinforce to the brain that it's something to fear. The end-goal here is to retrain the mind to stop freaking out over things that aren't rationally worth freaking out about. Like a person with a huge fear of dogs spending more and more time around dogs; eventually the immersion pays off and they no longer irrationally fear dogs. I highly recommend you avoid medication of any sort, it's moving the opposite direction from where you want to be, and they're mostly all benzo's which means there's an underlying physical and mental addiction component present at some point; not to mention they're really just masking the issue.

By and large you have to do what most people typically recommend: When the anxiety shows up and starts all the body/physical crap (which sucks), you need to exercise controlled breathing to help nudge the SNS/brain back into a calm state. It also helps to be 100% consciously aware of what's going on and know that it's anxiety and nothing else (because trust me, everything will be trying to trick you into thinking it's something more serious than it actually is). You also need to look deep down into where you think the anxiety might be originating from (age? existential crisis? future? it's clearly some kind of fear) and try and figure out what the connection is that triggers this. PTSD sufferers are basically dealing with the same thing.

Oh, and I recommend chamomile when you start feeling the edge. It's a very simple but usually effective non-medication based avenue to just chill you out a bit.

What's your caffeine habit like? This can be a very under-looked avenue but it's not rare whatsoever for people who've been regular coffee drinkers to just have something snap at some point where caffeine itself makes everything worse. If you drink coffee, start thinking about decaf or half-decaf.
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Continuously surrendering instead of suppressing. Re-read the above 1000 times Sle' and get the book. Good luck.
 
Sle, you received some pretty good advice here and some not-so-good advice. You'll decide for yourself where you will take it.

Here's something you may wish to give a try. It is a guided mindfulness meditation that lasts about 19 minutes. It includes, but is not limited to, recognizing and labeling emotions, and allowing them to course through your body, pinpointing where exactly they manifest until they pass.

Choose the Complete Meditation Instructions link in the following web site:

http://marc.ucla.edu/mindful-meditations

Good luck.
 
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