Just curious, if you suffer from anxiety, how do you cope? trying to understand it a bit more

not very well.

Drugs.

I try to keep life as simple as possible

too many things going on is sure to get me getting a bit anxious

obviously you can’t do it all the time but it helps to aim in that direction

cbt worked for me.

see your gp or if you want to self medicate, go to livelifetothefull.com.

best to see your gp first though.

Dont watch the news.

Ever.

Drugs, Avoidance, CBT, Not very well

racefaceec90 – Member

not very well.

Yea, that. 😐
(and occasionally hitting the bottle)

I suffer from anxiety/paranoia, Citalopram and Temazepam, tried counselling but it was a load of bollox. Gonna have a CBT session at some point but it was kinda dependent on me first completing the counselling. In terms of how do I cope, the citalopram has taken the edge off things but it can still get bad, I just avoid situations that I think will make me anxious, if things flare up it can take a couple of days to feel settled again.

It doesn’t control/ruin my quality of life dramatically, but I do wish is wasn’t an issue…

It depends distraction techniques can work for me, but anxiety is just such a part of my day to day life I tend to just to accept it knowing that tomorrow or the day after I will feel different.

Sometimes, if I am really really bad, I will take some Valium, or a sleeping pill or a sedating anti-depressant or an even an anti-psychotic, but never all at the same time 😆

I know I shouldn’t self medicate on prescription drugs but if the docs keep on giving me them then I may as well use them.

But seriously, you should probably start with self help techniques.

Accept it.

I get irrationally anxious about some things, rationally anxious about somethings, and manage to be calm, cool and collected when some others are going apeshit.

Essentially it’s just a feeling, and therefore, with effort, can be controlled. That sounds like an easy thing to say but it takes a huge amount of effort on occasion.

The manifestations in a physical sense are easy enough to identify; heart rate up, blood pressure up, sweating, and so on. You just have to learn to be the boss, regardless of what is going on inside.

Anxiety can be useful; in sporting terms its all about arousal, about getting up for it, getting your race face on. Learn when to use it, and when to hide it and damp it down.

Mmm, lots of good stuff here.

Drugs. It’s a start.

CBT. Amazing what this can do (if you get the right counsellor).

Accept it. Talk about it. Learn to live with it.

Don’t watch the news (i.e. stress avoidance)

Work,money,ex drug user.all causes it for me.

**** all helps..

that is all

i make sure i eat lots in the morning rather than leave it until late in the day.
try it, it works for me.

Ignore any suggestion of MTFU.

Avoid self medication like the plague, including drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Allow yourself to accept help, start with your GP. IF that doesn’t work, and it doesn’t always, get a second opinion if that doesn’t work a third and so on.

Generally speaking the process will be to stabilise the condition with drug therapy. Once that is done CBT.

Relax into accepting that there is something genuinely wrong which cannot be healed without external assistance. (thus the advice re MTFU)

Be honest about it, you’ll be amazed how many times you hear “Yeah I know, same for me”.

Don’t search for a status of being that could only be achieved by a sociopath.

We are bombarded with images of uber confident people who can deal with everything that life throws at them, but its all false.

Citalopram, Mirtazapine and Fluoxetine all had rather bad effects on me.

In my case they turned mild depression into frequent suicidal thoughts. I followed GP’s directions on shifting from one to the other very slowly. Was on the first for seven months, the second for four, and I will admit I didn’t give the last of them long before I decided that the medication wasn’t working in my case.

I came off them in February this year and have been getting better month by month since. I am absolutely sure that the medication is great for some people, but am equally sure that it just put me in a suspended state that stopped me from dealing with life directly.

I try to avoid stressful situations around too many people. I don’t go to the pub anymore very often, but luckily don’t feel the need to (twice a months is usually more than enough for me). I try to control finances carefully with very simple spreadsheets, which might sound like a pain in the a**e itself, but it justs means I know I have not forgotten anything and therefore don’t have to worry. I do the same for some other necessary tasks such as taking care of my fish tanks.

News of bad things in the world doesn’t really bother me. I actually have the radio on nearly constantly when at home and find it rather comforting in the background. It’s a nice easy constant to have there and switch on with a flick of a switch… same voices… same things at the same times.

I am very careful to NEVER promise I will be somewhere socially. I am getting much better at making it these last few months, but make sure I explain that I will do my best but NEVER promise.

I also began to keep Quail in the garden which I raised from eggs. It’s very hard to concentrate on your own concerns about life when a little fluffy thing that thinks you are it’s mum is cheaping it’s a**e off pretending it’s a big scary Rooster and demanding food! 🙂

I just take life easy 🙂

Another mental trick is to be someone else when it gets too bad; choose a calm and collected person and try to act as you would think they do in a difficult situation.

The airline industry, and pilots in particular, get taught about ‘situational awareness’, which is the idea that in any crisis, someone should be able to stand back, to disassociate themselves from what is going on and be able to see the whole situation. You can use this to get a metaphorical ‘grip’ on what is going on, to be able to stand back and assess things from a slightly more neutral point of view and therefore come to some kind of calmer understanding of the things that are going on.

Ultimately these are all tricks, ways of fooling yourself into thinking more rationally about situations that you encounter.

Gave up a smoking, naughty chalk and alcohol (for a period). Oh, and had a blood test and discovered I had a thyroid issue, on Levothyroxin for life now, which now means all prescriptions are free (crazy), all good. Cycling more has helped too.

Drinking heavily and pretending everything is okay 😐

I don’t cope very well with it. A combination of medication, CBT, hypnotism, diet, no caffeine and alcohol have returned me to something of a normal life.

I would do/try anything to get rid of panic attacks.

i just don’t worry about it, and go for a ride. or play with the dog. or hug my girlfriend. not necessarily in that order

For proper full on panic attacks, Lorazapam.

Anything that comes under the heading ‘just don’t worry about it, go for a ride’ isn’t hardcore anxiety which I think is what this is about. But like everything there are varying degrees of severity.

I keep a diary of every time I need to take lorazapam, it is a drug of last resort (highly addictive), and I use that to develop avoidance strategies.

Inexplicable total panic is really quite horrible 🙁

i itch my leg 😀

Bottle it up inside, tell no-one and pretend everything is alright. 🙄

i have panic attacks with really bad palpatations and quite often am asleep and they wake me up. they are horrible and i find that distracting my mind by watching tv or going online for a while helps it to pass.
wish i could find a proper cure though.
my anxiety just appears , nothing in particular causes it. then it goes just as quickly until next time.
the only thing i notice makes it a lot worse is tiredness.

cycling, boxing and exposure therapy (Facing fears etc). generally speaking I’ve always found throwing myself into situations that make me anxious for no reason, and knowing that I can’t get out I cope ok. Its a bit balls on the line, but it beats sitting at home!

It’s a good question and the answer depends on what you’re actually anxious about. I think the older you get, the more anxiety canrule your life, so try and change your focus.

Rather than think about what is going wrong or what may go wrong, think about what has gone right and what you are good at.

****, exercise and heavy drinking, not usually at the same time though

As an Olympic level worrier I’m probably not the best person to dish out mantras for peaceful living.

That said, I’m calmest when I meet problems – imaginary or real – head on. Worry tends to make me freeze, so I can’t deal with the things that worry me. Worries mount up and the feeling gets worse. Doing something about them does alleviate the symptoms.

Other than that, I’d go for djglover’s ****, exercise and heavy drinking option. But I’d do it simultaneously.

Is it ok if I ask any of the people who say they suffer with it to describe how it is please? I don’t suffer myself, thankfully, but interested in others’ perspective. What does CBT do to help? When does CBT stop and drugs start?

Just interested to know. I’m not a MTFUer.

Feel free to go into as much detail as you want.

I don’t suffer anxiety, however Yoga has a few tricks to teach you.

DD – you know that feeling when someone leaps out from behind a door unexpectedly and makes you jump..?
That sudden constriction that you feel in your gut and chest just for a split second..?

It’s that.. but longer… waaaay longer.. all day sometimes..
not nice..
It drove me quite literally round the twist and barking mad in my early twenties..
it’s not so bad these days thankfully..

I find obsessive forum browsing helps relieve anxiety to a large degree

Rockape63 – Member
Rather than think about what is going wrong or what may go wrong, think about what has gone right and what you are good at.

I think this makes a lot of sense.

Not sure where the line is between anxiety/depression/stress/neurosis but I get really worked up (‘what if’, worst case scenarios, feels like a descent into manicness, unable to sleep, concentrate or look people in the eye) when my and my family’s security or wellbeing is threatened i.e. redundancy, threat of illness. Not sure where it came from, but until my Mum died traumatically 3 years ago I was really quite happy-go-lucky. Think I may have answered myself there…

The decent into anxiety can be paralysing, making it impossible to think of a logical solution. So you get even more panicky.

at the moment, i do all the wrong things through pure habit – smoking, eating bad, shying away from exercise.

At the moment i’m wound tighter than a magnets coil (5 points if you can name the song and band) Illness saw me booted out of my half decent paid job, had to sell my car, work part time in a call centre to make ends meet (nothing wrong wit that and grateful of the job), A year later and about 3 weeks from not being able to meet the mortgage I got a full time job (but for less money than I could live on, but times is tough innit)

15 months later and I’m nervously waiting for my first pay rise (had the review 3 weeks ago and have had nothing but my praises sung and promise of my wages being raised) living outside my means and my debt keeps rising so everything’s crossed.

Had a panic attack today, drink 2 pints of water and walked away from my keyboard. My wife’s best advice seems to work in the meantime for short bursts but there’s been some good advice on this thread – And i have to get some help or my marriage will be next to crumble around my ears.

“Is it ok if I ask any of the people who say they suffer with it to describe how it is please? I don’t suffer myself, thankfully, but interested in others’ perspective. What does CBT do to help? When does CBT stop and drugs start?”

CBT was really no help for me. But then I am limited to the experience of the local small clinic to which I was referred. I found more in depth help of the same kind on various websites recommended by my GP at the time, who was brilliant when I first began to realise that I wasn’t just a bit stressed and had a situation that needed some help to sort out.

I saw a very good counselor paid for by work and that helped a great deal. Work only covered six sessions… but I would probably still be waiting for the same kind of help from the NHS. It seems that they have easier access (or maybe cheaper, but I can only guess) to CBT therapists than ‘Psychotheraputic Counselors’, so they offter you CBT quite quickly… and in my case at least, openly admit that it will take a lot longer to arrange anything else.

I am the kind to ramble when given the chance, but it isn’t a very easy situation to talk about. I will tell you that if not for a (I think) Mexican guy calling himself Nay online who spent time talking to me through the evening of the last Christmas day then I would at least be less healthy than I am today! 🙂

When you are genuinely past being able to pick up a phone and call someone and tell them you need help… there isn’t much out there for you.

When I get myself together fully I would consider if a very valuable achievement if I can do any little thing at all to change that! 🙂

So when someone says “Worrying never helps”, how does that make the sufferer feel? Does he/she realise that it doesn’t help, but has no control over the feelings of anxiety? Sorry if these questions are infuriating.

“Worrying never helps”

Completely aware of it all the time. Logic almost never left (possibly just in one or two moments).

Would often remind myself that mothers in warzones just lost their children and that there are people without eyes, limbs and vital organs all over the world.

It didn’t seem to help… but I am sure a pretty strong liking for the logical side of things stopped me from feeling worse than I did once or twice.

I find lying awake from 2-5am sweating, heart racing and thinking about finishing is enormously unhelpful. Obviously 8am is usually better, but doing it the next night and the next night tends to take it’s toll. Mostly I get over it after 4 or 5 nights but it does make getting through the next few days quite hard. For those that are really affected I can’t really offer any advice.