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Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

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Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#21
post #10

Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinki…

The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(

I may have been joking about electroshock. :)

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#23
post #10

Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinki…

The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(

Have you tried things like wearing a rubber band around your wrist, and when you feel a panic attack coming on you can use it to slap your wrist and kind of derail your current train of thought? Like the parent poster, I often would have panic attacks while worrying about whether or not I was about to have a panic attack. Like, if I could make it to to wherever I was trying to go I knew I'd be fine, but getting there was hard because my mind would race while driving there and I'd have an anxiety attack usually. My dad told me to try the rubber band thing and it actually kind of worked. Sort of a placebo effect maybe, but anything is good if it gets you past that moment. I also got into the habit of telling myself that I was going to be alright. I knew panic attacks only lasted a few minutes and I knew I always got through them, so I had to tell myself that I'd get through the current one and be fine in a few minutes - even though it'd feel like hours. It really took me about a full year of giving it 100% effort to get over my anxiety, to a point where I could at least sense an attack coming on and I could kind of prepare myself to calm down. A lot of mine was proper breathing. It sounds really weird, but I think I realized that I would basically slow my breathing down to almost not breathing when I got nervous, and that would make me light headed or something which would trigger a panic attack.

Some other things that helped me a lot were to just tell my friends up front that I felt like I was having a panic attack. You'd be surprised how little amount of other people will judge you for saying it. Most people offer up advice and feel sympathetic, so telling them usually helped me calm down. I also went out and bought a bicycle and a basketball hoop. When I was feeling like I might have an anxiety attack, I'd just go outside and shoot a few hoops (I suck at sports, it was just something to do), or I'd go ride my bike around.

I did try herbs. I never took prescriptions. I don't think herbs every actually did anything, but sometimes it felt good to just be "taking action" and they had a placebo effect in that sense, I guess. That's just me, though.

Also, I take stuff really personal usually, and I'd bottle stuff up. I used to get very frustrated when something I'd been programming on for awhile hits a snag or I can't figure out how to do something, despite weeks of Googling and stuff. It may sound lame, but sometimes it felt really good to just let it all out. Whether it was crying or yelling or whatever. I had one time driving home from work, having a panic attack, that I couldn't handle it and I just started crying for some reason. It felt great after. I had other times where I'd just yell in my car and that'd be enough to kind of derail an anxiety attack.

I don't know man, I don't think there's really a 1 size fits all solution to anxiety. It's just finding something that you can use as a tool to help yourself get through that 1 moment in time. Don't look at solving the whole thing, just look at solving each panic attack, and then use those tools to get you through 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#24

Feel the fear, and do it anyways.

Unfortunately, during a panic attack, that may not seem like an option at the time. And, if you force yourself to do whatever it is you're trying to do at the moment, a panic attack could result in fainting or something, which may not be desirable. Anxiety, and "the fear", are both normal, but an attack is something hard to describe and triggers the flight response usually, for me.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#25

Anxiety is a naturally occurring process that has been essential to human survival. Some individuals have managed to place a completely different judgement on anxiety and we call those people thrill seekers while other individuals feel paralyzed with fear. Where one sees dread the other sees a potential for a state of euphoria. Conquering anxiety is not at all to do with removing it but with managing our perception o…

Perhaps. Although, that is easier said than done.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#26
In some sense anxiety is an inability to one region of the brain to tame activities of the other(s). There could be a whole set of possible causation, but the idea is quite simple - a brain is a muscle, so it could be "changed" via exercises. This is the reason why meditation works is a grossly oversimplified, naive wording. So, yes, the way of out of chronic anxiety and anxiety disorders in general is not in medication or running away, but in contrary, go toward it and getting to know it by knowing oneself. This is how people survive on the war - by conquering extreme fear and anxiety.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#27
post #3

Or you can get high: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hallucinoge... I've found that the best way to handle anxiety to stop talking about it all the time, and just fill your mind with living . When HN gets in a spate of depression/anxiety discussions, it drags my mental health down. It's almost enough to get me in support of the concept of Trigger Warnings.

> I've found that the best way to handle anxiety to stop talking about it all the time, and just fill your mind with living.

Sometimes the solution to your problem is to un-ask the question.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#28
post #12

Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinki…

"The value and necessity of anxiety mean that it will persist until the last breath. It is impossible to extinguish, no matter the level at which it affects you." In contrast to your post, I found it interesting that the author of the article has pretty much reached a hopeless conclusion after many years of wear and tear, basically resigning himself to the conclusion that anxiety is beyond his control... (i.e. learne…

I've had some intense anxiety issues, though not as intense as the thread parent.

I too found that changing my diet and exercising helped.

One of the most effective methods for me is meditation.

Ironically, during meditation, you also accept the anxiety. Or to be precise, you accept the experience of anxiety. The thing is, I also know that all things are transient. That includes anxiety. If you mindfully observe anxiety as it arises, you can literally see it created, come into full force ... and then start fading away.

When the mind starts avoiding the experience of anxiety, it tends to get stronger. Further, the avoidance itself triggers secondary waves of anxiety, so you enter this feedback loop of anxiety.

Ultimately, anxiety is the feeling of avoidance. If you've gained the skill where you direct your awareness at the anxiety itself, you start being able to see things more clearly.

You can learn about this through http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html or participating in a Vipassana retreat.

There is also the method described by this book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict...

There are also carefully conducted entheogen sessions that can help treat this.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#29

Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinki…

> After a lot of self-analysis and experimentation I discovered that about 70% of the problem was the Pepsi I was slugging down every day. For my body, sugar and caffeine together are like crack. I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. I eventually cut the caffeine out altogether.

This, so many times over. When someone comes into /r/adhd and asks "I'm having troubles with anxiety, help!" my first response is "cut out caffeine then come back in a few weeks."

People do not realize, caffeine is a drug, it has side effects. One of those side effects is anxiety.

Re: Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread

#30
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(

Have you tried things like wearing a rubber band around your wrist, and when you feel a panic attack coming on you can use it to slap your wrist and kind of derail your current train of thought? Like the parent poster, I often would have panic attacks while worrying about whether or not I was about to have a panic attack. Like, if I could make it to to wherever I was trying to go I knew I'd be fine, but getting there…

A friend of mine teaching trans-personal psychology told me once that there is a difference between anxiety and panic. When you are panicking, the feeling is so intense that you don't know you are panicking. If you have the presence of mind during the experience to know you are experiencing this feeling, this would be anxiety.

The rubber band thing works because it interrupts the usual pattern of feedback loop where the anxiety builds and feeds on itself.

You mentioned breathing. You are talking about deep, yogic breathing? This is where you engage the diaphragm, ribs, collar bones, breathing smoothly, deeply, and quietly.

In any case, I found that anxiety, like procrastination, is the symptom rather than the cause. Anxiety arises from deeper issues. Those deeper issues are addressable.

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