Advice for coping with anxiety

Hi TurtleMan1995 👋

sorry to hear that you are having a hard time with your anxiety. I too suffer with anxiety so I know how it feels to feel overwhelmed from time to time especially when your dealing with heaps. I find that meditation helps. I use an app called Balance and it’s currently free for a year. The guided meditation helps to keep me calm. Let me know if it works for you @TurtleMan1995

Hi @TurtleMan1995

Welcome to the forums. I'm sorry to hear you're struggling with anxiety lately. I have had it bad in the past. I like to go for walks in nature, read poetry, take a long shower, exercise (when I'm angry, I like to run - it's calms me instantly), journal, draw or paint.

Do you have any strategies you have turned to in the past?

Hanami

Hey @TurtleMan1995

welcome to the forums, glad you're here. Here is our factsheet on Anxiety disorder (sane.org) There is some useful resources in there.

A useful forum tip is, press the @ function and a list of names will pop up, select the name/s you wish, and they will be notified.

Hi @TurtleMan1995 ,

I too struggle with anxiety and it creates like a block, so the activities I know help often are so hard to do. I usually have to push through the block to walk in nature, exercise, walk my dog, or meditate. Also talking with like minded or understanding friends and family helps. But the block that anxiety creates makes it hard to do the things that help. I'm a work in progress and I'm still looking for ways to move past the anxious freeze response I have. Any suggestions from people about what to do when anxiety stops you in your tracks, would be warmly received.

Anxiety symptoms and triggers can be extremely varied person to person. If you can identify the thought or situation that is causing it then you could write down your experience and then try to logically work through why it is happening and formulate strategies to counter the effects.

One of my recent triggers is feeling like I should be helping family but knowing I am not capable of doing so at this time. I wil then write down all the things ive done for them in the past and note that I am the one that needs the help now so it is okay for me to let that responsibility go for now and just rest.

i will also write down phrases to reinforce the action like “‘REST now HELP later” they will survive without me for now, i can rest until i feel better then i will be capable of helping,.

also if you are getting digestive stress symptoms there are over the counter vitamins that work really well to help settle that quickly. Not sure if i can mention names but if you ask chemist for vitamins to help Irritable Bowel Syndrome they are worth trying.

Hi @TurtleMan1995

Anxiety is my untamed beast!

I never had any good strategies for anxiety as it always just seemed to have a mind of its own. The rumination or worrying just kept ticking no matter what.

I suppose the only thing that really help is if I can get into the flow of something like gardening or a jigsaw puzzle (but I can't do this if the anxiety is too much) or listening to binaural beats or guided meditation. But then it just returns as soon as I stop...

The best thing that has helped my anxiety is treatments such as psychology, medication or as of recently TMS. I have GAD so hitting it with hard stuff from the professionals seems to be the only thing that works because my BRAIN is silly and thinks that worrying is what it should be doing all the time.