SELF HELP TIPS FOR MANAGING ANXIETY

[AGrace]

Hi Everyone,

Here are some ideas for helping you manage symptoms of anxiety. Feel free to add to the list, or let us know what works for you...

Mindfulness – Grounding exercises: noticing your environment, bodily sensations, and breath

Progressive Muscle Relaxation – Creating a Tension and Release effect with all the muscles in the body

Opposite Actions – By listening to calming music, taking a walk, talking, enjoying sunshine

Safe Place Mental Imagery – Visualising a place where you can go in your mind to feel safe

Calming Affirmations – To help recognise that the moment of panic will pass

Exercise – A valuable way to exhaust excess adrenalin built up in the body

[Moderator's note: this thread is for sharing what has worked for you to manage your anxiety. If you need support to manage your anxiety and would like to discuss this with the community, please start a new thread.

See also:

Anxiety management strategies

Worry worry worry

]

[Guest_4643]

Hi all.

Sometimes walking helps me a bit, but I get very anxious when I see people and cars driving past so that also makes me panic and I've had panic attacks. But I do it because I'm so used to it and my body feels funny if I don't walk. I try to look at the nice nature and birds, because I love nature and animals.

Also, sometimes colouring in a physical colouring book or my colour by numbers app, aswell as a word search game on my iPad, helps.

Music helps, whether it's music videos, interviews, any of that.

Other than that, I still struggle to find coping mechanisms, nothing really works. Depends how I feel though. I have some stress balls & things like that that I use sometimes.

Does anyone have any suggestions please? I have tried Mindfulness, and a Mindspot course but didn't find the Mindspot course helpful because of all the reading, etc.

- Tayla.

[davoid]

Thank you.

[davoid]

Thank you. I will have a look.

[demonblaster]

Hi MB and everyone ☺

It sounds like you're doing well with distraction and coping methods. Good on you ☺

I miss walking due to foot probs.It's lovely looking at nature isn't it and surroundings. Exercise is a great stress release too.

No need to reply if you're uncomfortable to. I feel sorry for you having anxiety and panic attacks when cars go past.

I was wondering do you know why? Is it that you feel people would be looking and judging you? Not at all good feeling that way.

I've found now and hope I can always control anxiety attacks with slow steady deep breathing. Only focus on the task at hand and not thinking further or reacting to thoughts that upset us.

It spreads the oxygen esp with deep breathing. In fear anxiety and pain our bodies tense up.

It also helps to relax by physically being aware of relaxing the muscles. Just soften your body. I work on my neck first.

Our reactions are what bring on the attacks.
Firm no nonsense self talk helps no end. No I'm not going to feel bad etc.
I immediately shut off any more thought to anxiety thoughts.

I believe it's built up stress coming out.
At this stage we haven't yet learnt how to manage our emotions to gain full control over our thoughts and reactions.
It takes time but we are able to get control.

I'm also working at allowing more rational thought to come through and listening to it.

With depression/anxiety we tend to believe the first negative instead of challenging and looking at other options.

Our minds close but we can with further thought open them which allows more varied thought and a chance to have more time to control how we want to feel or how to handle a situation.

I find it encouraging knowing and experiencing that we can handle both depression and anxiety.

Regardless of what depression tells us we do have the strength to overcome and work through the darkness.

Take care everyone there is hope for better times 🕊

🌞

[Azza56]

Hello all

I have only been suffering from attacks for 3 weeks now but I feel like I know everything about it. I have found that going for walks, listening to music, drawing and watching a funny movie can help. I’ve also found that staying away from too much physical activity helps as a lot of anxiety pains seem to be related to muscle tension. Hope this helps some people, just happens to be what has helped me in the past 3 very exhausting and debilitating weeks.

[demonblaster]

Hi there Azza and everyone ☺ welcome to the forums thanks for your constructive helpful post

I hope people are finding ways of coping with anxiety.
It's powerful and affects us physically too which can be temporary short term or for yrs.

Good though along with depression can be managed.
Like anything worthwhile when we learn how and put the yards in which beats feeling how we do now we can start breaking through

An empty mind can be dangerous especially if we suffer from mental health (MH)

Our moods are affected by stress and not enough sleep which increases stress including other causes.

I'd say we all have/had stress.
If our energys low we're mentally/physically weaker which makes it all harder

Problems insecurities suppressed pain can rise to the surface.

Our concentrations scattered.
Awareness of our thoughts lessen.

More time to hear the downs fears, forward negative thinking etc which with low energy we tend to follow first thoughts hence feeling lower

Distraction is a great tool to help manage anxiety.

What we can do to help ourselves get to the cause is focusing our attention to the cause of the anxiety which often has underlying unresolved issues.

I think it's our minds way of clearing stress which we need to be free of to function at peak physically too.

Whether through counselling, thinking it through reading especially places like here research etc.

Bottom line is we're all capable of learning we all have intelligence.

We have the tools it's about learning to use them.

*H*O*P*E* ... gives us a reason.

When we learn emotional control I believe we'll live in more peace and know happiness.

Stress pain anxiety & depression fill our minds with blocking rational healing thought.

It takes time but's absolutely the way to go.

Azza I respect and appreciate what you've said ☺
Excercise for you and I certainly can see what your saying about tightening muscles doesn't seem to help.

I find it's very good for stress release because the deeper breathing involved gets the oxygen around and I feel the harder breathing out is an outlet for stress.

It releases endorphines our feel good chemicals giving a mental lift and creates stimulation and energy that we don't have with anxiety & D.
Also helps with sleep.

When we're doing something our minds are on the job at hand.

Hopes essential for survival. There is hope

🌱 (new beginnings)

[Annie1974]

I suffer from intrusive thoughts, health anxiety and anxiety attacks, PMDD and Hashimotos. I find being alone with my own thoughts incredibly stressful as i cant get out of my own head.
I find being busy with jobs, shopping, kids, family helps me as well as finding online meditation to do that gets me to focus in outside things
Gardening
Cooking
Watching an engaging TV show
Anything that helps distract my mind rather than focus on the thoughts in my head.

[demonblaster]

Hi there Annie ☺ and everyone 🖐

It sounds like you have a lot on to deal with daily poor soul not easy at all is it.

Thanks lovey for posting here. A great deal of us have anxiety which affects our daily lives in a negative way. It's helpful knowing people can find ways of dealing with the rot that goes on.

If you're interested hun or anyone "Marconi Union" is rated the best music to calm anxiety stress Blood pressure heart rate etc.

Called "Weightless" its quite nice and might be able to help you I hope. It's said amongst other things to reduce stress and anxiety by 65%.

You do a lot for distraction which is great. I think meditation is good for us to work towards emotional control. Read today part of a sentence saying there's no bad meditation as in any attempts worthwhile.

Wishing you every success in your journey. You sure have plenty to work through.

Here's a fantastic safe place to learn and ground ourselves.

Take care darl ☺ and everyone.

⚘

[Rivasands]

As someone who has experienced anxiety on and off , along with depression and with bouts of medication where required these are the things I have found useful to 1)keep anxiety at bay and 2) “bring myself down” when having a very anxious episode.

- name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste. This is very grounding when you feel you are losing control.

-observe how other people are behaving - this can help remind you things are ok

- deep focused breaths help regain composure

- a strange one but I find it highly effective, get a cool face washer and wash your face

- put happy music on ! You might not feel like it but it really changes the atmosphere

-the meditation app simple habit is the best , a mixture of meditation and coaching

- just do something different - change the scenario

- push through the fear, the more times you expose yourself to it the less power it has.

it’s still a learning curve for me and all the other tips have been great thanks everyone

[demonblaster]

Rivasands and everyone hi ☺

Welcome Rivasands that was a very impressive first post. Thanks for that I have no doubt it'll help a lot of people as would the many good suggests throughout this thread which is greatly appreciated.

People giving their time advice suggests questions and conversation... it's Gold..is how we together can get on top imo.

I've heard of the 54321 ... it's a good sounding one getting us in touch with 5 of our senses as we pretty much forget about the now in anxiety. We need the grounding.

Hope you don't mind that I'll dot point it in case people might like to refer back making it stand out and some might copy and print.

Rivasands finds helpful amongst other good techniques...

• Name 5 things you can SEE...

• 4 Things You can HEAR...

• 3 Things you can TOUCH...

• 2 Things you can Smell

• 1 thing you can EAT ...

Hope your time here at BB's good for you and everyone for that matter Rivasands and that you're managing more as you said with time and experience we get better at it.

Truth. Practice makes perfect.

Within us we have access to a lot of power from the mind which is what gets us through.

We need reasons to work at it.

We've gotta back ourselves in anything we do ...

If we don't think we can ... we probably can't.
No motivation reason or want.

If we think we can...we probs will.
Our minds open to lateral thought motivation ideas want etc

Giving us hope which helps us push on.

So when depression tells us we can't!

We need to say ... WE CAN!.

According to the experts both anxiety and depression for the most can be managed.

Now that's hope! We need it to fire up those engines... 👋

Vroom 🔥💨 ⛅