Anxiety issues tend not to really go away for many people. It may for some, but its usually managed appropriately in those cases.
Anxiety management might take years of practice. For others, just slowing down and taking a few breaths works.
For me personally, a start was to completely quit alcohol. One of my triggers for anxiety was thinking about all the stupid shit I did when I was drunk. That has mostly gone away as I seemed to have stopped doing stupid shit as much. Also, hangovers and alcohol dependency contribute to anxiety which triggers more drinking… etc…
To break the cycle of negative thoughts during anxiety attacks, I have to basically meditate and take time let go of my thoughts. It’s not easy in some cases.
For me, anxiety is an extremely cyclical train of thought that mostly follows a pattern: If A happens, then B will happen. After issue B comes C, which causes A again. Repeat a million more times.
That is kind of a stupid explanation because it’s much more complex than that.
Exercise helps, but that is hard during the winters here, even more so because I sit on my ass all day for work and my hobbies. It’s absolutely something I need to work on because of my age, for sure.
There are a million-and-one reasons for anxiety and managing it takes a ton of self-awareness. That takes practice.
Also, if you have unresolved conflict, do what you can to resolve it. Seek counseling if needed as that can really help resolve those kinds of things. Having a past that haunts you is not healthy.
So many people could benefit from your A, B, C self awareness for like, almost every human issue. Very powerful.
Like for dieting: “if I switch my diet all at once to eat like a bodybuilding monk, I will eventually cheat, binge, and have to start all over. Probably from a higher weight than the first time”
For me it was going to the psychiatrist two years ago and getting prescribed medication for a month that broke my anxiety cycle. The first time I took the medication I almost cried from having the feeling go away and feeling completely relaxed. I have no idea why but I haven’t needed it since.
It sounds silly but breaking that cycle can help a lot
When I used to have panic attacks a lot I’d feel like I was balancing on a knifes edge for days afterwards
the medication
What medication?
I think it was a generic anxiolytic called alprazolam
Mindfulness.
It’s surprising at first that simply trying to suppress one’s own internal dialog and thus staying in the moment for increasingly long periods reduces anxiety but it makes sens if you think that what feed anxiety is the constant relentless thinling about unpleasant past events or feared future ones.
Stop talking to yourself all the time about those things and that crippling fear emotion goes away or at least abates and becomes controllable.
Another thing that’s helps me is positive affirmations. Twenty minutes or a half hour in the morning, changing your thinking for hours afterwards. You will feel your brain resolving your inner thoughts positively instead of negatively. And the more you do it the easier it gets, until it becomes just how you think. The more time we can spend thinking positively the more everything just sort of falls into place, or at least our reactions to things.
Good question and maybe kind of brave to ask. Regardless, props for asking a very human, deeper question.
I don’t have this figured out, but below are some of the things that help me. Many are free, or close.
Meditations. I used guided for a while and now if I know I need to slow down, I’ll pause and meditate for a minute or so. It took a while to build the quicker slowdown, but it’s often available to me.
Stoic philosophy. This isn’t stoicism in the classic sense. It’s about learning what matters, what you can control, and learning that that’s just about all you can do. Extrernal validations are nice, but can’t be expected or relied upon. Sometimes life sucks, but we can change our internal climate (with practice).
Within philosophical stoicism, I think The Subtle Art of not giving a Fuck helped. It may not be seen as stoic philosophy, but it’s a layman’s guy to that very idea. Helpful.
YouTube channels : Mark Manson & Daily Stoic
Other meditations that helped were things like Tara Brach. Kinda woo at times, but her voice and tone slow things down for me and the messages are often relatable. I’m not into manifestations or all that, but an easy, slow, modulated voice gets me. Especially if the message is about self forgiveness.
My wife. So much that. She’s mine and I’m not sharing. But the idea remains. If you have someone supportive, who you also support, it helps.
Strangely, reading the Nauceous Nocturne within the Essential Calvin and Hobbies. I kid you not. Calvin’s in the dark and all these monsters, events and catastrophes emerge in horrible, amusing, cartoonish form. Then? By simply existing and being noticed by a monster, Hobbes scares away the fears. Find a Hobbes. Be a Hobbes. The monsters are often in our head.
Support others. It gets us out of our circles and we see other (sometime worse) life events and we see people endure. Help them endure. Be kind.
Nest egg. If possible, having some amount of back up money in the bank that is there for major life events, even if it’s not enough… It helps. Financial exposure and concern was one of my biggest - no, Is one of my biggest triggers.
Therapy. Did that for a while, got to a better place with CBT and such. Then if I see erosion, I do the above things and if I think I’m losing ground, or that it’s time to gain more, I go back to my therapist for a few months of every other week sessions.
Journaling. I don’t do it often, but it can help slow thoughts, reveal them, and upon rereading show us where we can or could turn the conversation we’re having with oursleves. I see some of my anxiety as self abuse, so I’m trying to learn to be kinder with myself. I’m already, usually, kind (but firm) with others. I just hold myself to these standards that… They’re lofty. I’m a person, too, so I have to give myself permission to be less than perfect.
I’m still learning. I think we all are. Hopefully something in here helps. Am open to dialogue here or otherwise. Regardless, anxiety sucks and I hope you find what works for you, chips away at it, and find a steadier emotional life. That roller coaster isn’t fun.
Edit: Walks also help. More so if nature is involved.
Get good at something, then keep doing that.
When you’re the best in the room at something, the anxiety goes away.
It’s not necessarily helpful to be the best in the room at solving Rubik’s cubes, but it’s still a good start. Maybe find something like cooking, climbing, coding, etc.
Stopping smoking weed was a big one. And then after that it was a lot of exposure therapy. Chewing gum also helps, if I start to feel anxious.
If you don’t mind me asking, how often was your weed habit?
Daily, from 18 to 25 y/o.
I’m starting to slowly accept that weed might be the main culpript in my case aswell. While I do have legitimate things to be anxious about too I still feel like weed just increases the stress even further. On top of that I’m hardly even getting anything out of it anymore and the main reason I keep doing it is the habit. Gotta smoke a bowl each evening only to realize that I’m not having any more “fun” than I did before but now all the axiety inducing thought start flowing into my mind again along with the worry that my phone might ring and I absolutely HATE talking to “outsiders” when I’m high.
It’s quite weird how I used to hang around people high and be perfectly fine with it. It was quite fun to be honest. Then at some point something just flipped and that turned into absolute terror.
What helped me a lot was dealing with a lot of the root causes of my anxiety
Which for me was getting diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD and addressing that
It caused such a massive boost in my quality of life and was such a boon to my mental health as a result that my anxiety levels went way down
I literally haven’t had a panic attack in almost a year and that one was caused by my what I’d say was a perfect shit show of a day
Edit: Not to mention of course that dealing with the ADHD gave me additional skills for dealing with my PTSD but that’s a whole other can of worms.
I still have anxiety issues. I just have more courage now so I don’t get frozen by my anxiety. I developed the courage by being homeless, and realizing that inaction is far more dangerous than action.
Getting an anti-anxiety medication that worked for me, getting therapy for PTSD, and learning how to accommodate my sensory needs didn’t cure me of anything, but it has gotten me a LOT farther than anything else.
PTSD sucks, hope your doing alright
A lot better than I used to be doing for sure! Hope you’re doing OK as well.
My anxiety is from the war and I don’t think it’ll ever go away since it hasn’t diminished in 20 years.
have you tried ketamine therapy?
A complete and utter mental break down which culminated with me bursting into tears in my supervisor’s office. He’s a cool guy though, so that was just very awkward for him.
Overall, not an approach I would recommend, but it did put things into perspective for me. I did seek professional help after that, but I had already broken through a lot of the tough stuff. Also, it took 2-1/2 months to see a psychiatrist.
As for anxiety overall, it never really goes away. You can learn to recognize it and develop habits to break that feedback loop. Sometimes I have to say to myself, “It’s time to stop this,” then mean it and actually deal with what’s put me in a higher state of anxiety.
Lists and prep.
To be fair, my issues were not clinical, but having plans for dealing with whatever was the trigger for my anxious thoughts and feelings always left me with the feeling of “oh, this is manageable” or “this is too out of my control to worry about” and both thoughts bring relief.
I think I had PTSD from a few interactions with violent people. I realized I was afraid of being close to people, afraid to touch people, so I took Jiu-Jitsu classes for a few months. It felt good to get some new positive experiences with people and to push myself, I realized I’m not so fragile and vulnerable. I stopped practicing when COVID hit and I had an unrelated inquiry, but I feel like the benefits really stayed with me.
See both a psychiatrist and a therapist. Therapy like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can give you some strategies that will help you recognize how you are feeling and give you some distance from your thoughts. For a rough example: Instead of just feeling like you’re failing, you might say, “I am having the thought that I am failing,” and that little bit of distance gives you the space to ask where the thought is coming from. You may then be able to refute it or accept it as the way you feel right now, but not necessarily who you are.
Psychiatry can help you identify if a medication may be a good option for you and what route to take with it. This will likely be a few months of trying different doses and different medications while you may journal to track the quality of your days.
If you find yourself having even brief, passive, non-planning suicidal or violent thoughts, get with a professional. They’re good at that stuff.
Once the major stuff is taken care of, it’s much easier to work on the normal things like daily exercise, nutrition, and social connections.
I’ll second CBT, it helped me a lot. My therapist started with identifying my “core beliefs” like “worrying* helps me avoid bad things” and “worrying makes me better at my job” and then through some structured routines helped me change or event disregard them. I’m very analytical and she really helped show the illogical nature of all the time I spent worrying.
That said I first needed a low dose zoloft prescription to even be willing to book the therapy, but I’ve since weened off it.
*specifically hypothetical worries, i.e. “what if”
Several things, in no particular order:
- medication: immediate relief
- quit toxic workplace: still took years to shed that baggage, still have some baggage
- catastrophising: “what’s the worst that could happen, really?” Followed by “is that actually a problem?”
I think the last one was the most useful as it’s a fundamental mindset change.
One thing that really aggravates my anxiety is/was travelling anywhere.
Working out that being late travelling to the in-laws (a 4-5 hour car journey), which would annoy the shit out of them, really didn’t matter was amazing.
