How to cope with my anxiety?

[Sezza94]

I'm new to this forum type thing but thought I'd give it a try. I suffer from severe anxiety which causes me to be depressed. I have anxiety attacks all the time which causes me to miss work and other commitments. I find it hard to breathe, get really hot and most of the time throw up as a result. I see a psychologist and am on medication but I'm just having trouble finding suitable coping strategies for when I have an attack. I was hoping someone might be able to make some suggestions. Thank you.

[Kitty_Kat]

Hi Sezza94, welcome to beyond blue!!

 Well to start off, it's a real shame to hear about your anxiety, but all things can be overcome! I'm sure a lot of advice I'll say is all things you've heard from your psychologist, so if none of this is new then I'd suggest looking at some other forums and reading other stories similar to yours to get some inspiration.

So, when you have an anxiety attack, I know one of the main components is that you struggle to breathe. If you find yourself in the situation of an anxiety attack or can feel one coming, you should start by taking deep breathes in and out, slow and deep. The earlier you start breathing exercises the sooner your attack will end. I am no expert but, breathing is going to be your best friend with this kind of stuff.

If you get hot, take a step outside and inhale the natural and fresh air. No matter where you are, you should be allowed to because your mental is more important than anything.

I hope this helped in some way, take care!

Love Kitty xxx

[BenD]

Hi Sezza,

I get those symptoms too, but they have been reduced greatly over the past few years by learning about anxiety and how to treat it. Like Kitty Kat says, a psychologist will be able to show you the path better than we can but some things that work for me are:

Listening to slow music (classical, deep house, whatever you are into) in my down time. Whenever I feel an anxious attack coming whilst I'm out and about I just play a song in my head that I've listened to recently and it helps slow my heart rate and breathing down.

Exercising regularly. Burns off excess energy that could otherwise be funnelled into anxiety.

Cut myself some slack. It's hard enough dealing with anxious symptoms, let alone feeling anxious about feeling anxious! So sometimes I just say to myself that its okay, I'm only human and that no one is perfect.

All the best 🙂

Ben

[Taash33]

Hey sezza94,

im nearly 21 and I've suffered from severe separation anxiety for 16 years now and have tried and learnt lost of different methods to control my anxiety.

im now on day 6 of starting anti depressants but here's some methods or help I got.

i read more and more about anxiety to understand it which helped.

breathing techniques, controlling your breathing so if you feel a panic attack coming on stop, gather yourself, and blank everything out of your mind and just deep breath and focus on just your breathing.

try not to think to far ahead, for example, instead of thinking about what your doing in an hour just think what your doing in 10 minutes time.

your anxiety is negative thinking basically, which comes from the depression. So turning your negative thoughts into postive thoughts makes a big impact. So what I learnt was to go buy a small diary or notebook and everyday write down 3 things that was positive and made you feel good that day, for example. The weather was nice today or you meet someone new today ect.

yoga and meditation is great to teach your body to relax.

support from family and friends, make sure your open and talk about how you feel.

when or if you overcome your anxiety from a task your doing, prase yourself, so have like a chocolate bar or something lol

but the main thing is, you need to tell yourself in your head even if you say it out loud, FIGHT OR FLIGHT! Tell the anxiety that your not going to let it get the better of you, tell it to bugger off and not let it get in your head and get the better of you. 

These are a few things that really helped me. I was 6 when I got anxiety and at that age I didn't know what anxiety was and didn't understand what was happening to me, but since then I have had moments with my anxiety where I have really kicked it in the butt and shown it that I'm better then it and I was very proud of myself.

i hope this helps, some of them sound silly to do but trust me it really did help me!! 

Goodluck, let me know how you go, and if you need and more support dealing with it, I'm always here to talk  🙂 xx

[PatT]

Hi Sezza,

When we have a panic attack our body is responding to a misperceived threat. We release a bunch of adrenaline so that we can either fight or flee the situation. When we deal with chronic anxiety our body is more sensitive to things and we become kind of conditioned to being in a state of hyper-arousal. Most of what happens during a panic attack is involuntary, in that we do not have control over how it affects us. It's pretty hard to tell yourself to calm down because your thoughts tend to spiral out of control pretty quickly. 

One thing you can do however is to learn how to breathe to calm yourself down. One of the first things that happens to me during a panic attack is I feel like I can't catch my breath which is always a pretty big trip out. What I do is find somewhere to lie down that's quiet and practice belly breathing.

Put one hand on your belly above your waist, keep your mouth closed and inhale slowly through your nose by pushing your stomach out. Let your hand be your guide to make sure you're breathing into your stomach. Once you've filled your lungs, pause for a second, then exhale slowly through your mouth, pause and repeat the process. This is a technique that has always helped me greatly, even though it can seem like a pretty daunting thing to do when you're in the grips of a panic attack.

Hope this helps,

Pat.

[smoothdog]

Hey Sezza 🙂

Firstly, just wanted to send you an internet high-five for sharing. For something so seamlessly simple, it's not an easy thing to do! I hope these answers reward your strength with the answers you seek.

I think I may be a little late to this thread because most of my suggestions have already been covered brilliantly 😛 Breathing exercises, meditation. regular exercise, acknowledgement of the biological cause of anxiety, listening to calming music are all fantastic suggestions. Interestingly many of these exercises fall under a concept called mindfulness which is something I practice every day. In short, mindfulness means living in the moment and taking each moment as it comes. Not the best description, I know (sorry about that!) so here's an analogy of my understanding of mindfulness: imagine you are a lake that is fed by multiple rivers. Unfortunately you cannot control Mother Nature and sometimes the amount of water from these incoming rivers can be unpredictable and overwhelming! BUT you can control how much of this affects you, in the form of a well-constructed dam i.e. mindfulness. The water will still flow into you but ONLY as you allow it to. You control what happens to you, and as a result life as a lake just becomes that much better 🙂      

To get some info that explains mindfulness about x100 better than I did, along with some other exercises to help strengthen your dam walls, check out livingwell.org.

If you want to hear anymore lame analogies, I'm always up for a chat!  

[Narniakid]

Hi Sezza94 and welcome to BB!

I've been an anxiety sufferer for about 5 years now and, unfortunately, as many of the other users have said, anxiety attacks are pretty uncontrollable. 

However, the first thing you can do to minimise your attacks is recognise the triggers - for example, I'm currently a radio student, and I was originally studying to be a radio presenter, however being behind the microphone makes me anxious to the point I just won't be able to make it a stable career, so I have now changed to study to be a content producer - it's still in the same industry doing what I love - brainstorming relevant and relatable topics - however I have removed the trigger for my anxiety. 

Recognise the certain activities or people or aspects of your life that cause you such traumatic anxiety, and either remove them, or find a way to work around them.

I also highly recommend practicing some breathing techniques for when you feel the anxiety welling up - deep long breaths are proven to relax the emotional part of our brains. 

I hope I have been of some help to you, and keep it up with the professional help as well as a good supportive network of friends and family. You can get through this!

Crystal

[Lori]

Hi Sezza94,

Welcome to the forum, and good work for reaching out. I'm sorry to hear that you are suffering from these horrible illnesses, but its great to hear that you are getting help by seeing a Psychologist and your talking on here.

Everyone reacts differently and alot of people deal with there anxiety differently. Taking 10 deep breaths every day whether its first thing when you wake up or before you go to bed etc. Could possibly help you when your suffering from an anxiety attack. Deep breathing is important to remember.

Also other small tricks you can try to calm your self down and bring oxygen to the brain is to tighten you fists as much as you can and take 3 deep breaths, tense your belly while taking 3 deep breaths. Also exercising is really important whether its just having a 30 minute walk each day can help increase your anxiety.

I myself have my own type of relaxation skills i do to calm myself down including the ones i just told you about and i also love walking to clear my mind and i do yoga. 

Give it a try, it may not work for you but its always good to try new things:) 

Good luck, and well done. Stay strong!

- Lori

[SeanM92]

Hey there Sezza,
Welcome to the forums 🙂

From reading what you posted, its obvious that your anxiety is affecting you greatly and you find it hard to live with it, which is completely understandable and relate-able. As a first step to overcoming your anxiety its important to know exactly what sets it off, if its a fear of open spaces, social situations etc, as this is the key to beating it. Now, im going to go against what some of my peers think and tell you that anxiety IS actually controllable to a degree. Once we can identify what sets off our anxietys its easier to find a work around. For example, if you suffer from social anxiety or fear or public spaces then you could take some headphones and listen to music while your out and about, this distracts the mind from slipping into fear because its too busy listening to the direct source of sound coming from your headphones, well that and you like the music that you would be listening too so its a little touch of home comfort. Another fix for fear of public spaces is regular trips to near by places, for example you could start just going for a walk around the block once a week until you feel more comfortable and then you can extend the distance, doing this in a routine is critical though or you may slip back and have to start from square one. Anxiety in a crowded mall can be helped with going to a store you like or just a nice quiet area in a larger store like big w, stores you like work as a distraction from your fear with something you enjoy, kinda like the headphones trick. 

also remember common techniques like deep breaths and trying to step out of the situation and look at it from a 3rd person perspective helps. 

identify your anxiety ticks and baby step into making them disappear, 
Your not alone, anxiety is a common thing and you can always ask other people for help

You have the power to make it better, 

Good luck and well wishes.

[morgs29]

Hi Sezza,

Welcome to the forum and you are very courageous for reaching out. It's not always an easy thing to do, especially when anxiety is thrown into the mix!

I have been dealing with depression and anxiety since I was 15 years old (I'm 27 now) and it has taken a long time for me to find out exactly what I need. My illnesses also affect my work at times, particularly my study, and it's easy to get down about this. Just remember how strong you are, how far you have come and that it really is okay to have bad days! I know personally that the amount of time I used to spend beating myself up about my anxiety could have been better spent with me doing things that actually made me feel better.

The strategies I have found that help me the most are: 

* When I feel anxiety coming on, making sure I get to a quiet space and starting my deep breathing (inhale deeply through the nose, and out through the mouth). Do this as many times as you need to, it will help slow down your heart rate and decrease the sweating.

* Talk it out - text / call / find someone I love and trust and tell them what I'm feeling. Sometimes talking about what you are experiencing or even talking about something completely separate can help to calm your anxiety.

* Do things I love - hug my cat, light a candle and lay down if I'm at home, take a shower, style my hair, write poetry. Find the things that help calm you down and make sure you know you have this as an 'anxiety toolkit.' You then know that if it starts, you have lots of things in your toolkit to take out and play with until you find what works.

* Exercise - If you feel up to it, go for a walk. Yoga has helped me a lot! I also do boxing at home with my partner (just went and bought some gloves and pads from Rebel Sport). It doesn't have to be a big thing, just something that helps you.

I hope some of the strategies we have all written on this thread help you. I'm so sorry to hear you deal with such intense episodes of anxiety, but just remember you are not alone. We are all here to support you.

Take care,

Morgan