Strategies for coping with anxiety

[roseleaf]

Apologies if there is another thread dealing with this; I did look but couldn't find anything that answered exactly what I needed.

I seem to have been getting really anxious lately. I have been a bit for ages, but it's been manageable. I've been able to go to work and stuff. But I had a panic attack on Monday (first one I've ever had) and I've been incredibly anxious ever since. At least, for me. Constantly tense, feeling light-headed, tingling in my fingers and lips, feeling panicky about everything I do, down to making dinner, even.

But the worst thing is work. I have to be able to go to work. I can't afford to be on sick pay for more than a few days. Today I had to come home because I just couldn't do it. I was crying and shaky... some of the time I could barely even talk. I just can't afford to let that happen again. I need to be able to go to work.

So what I really need is some things I can use to help calm myself and reduce anxiety while I'm at work. I've done a few things... I've bought some Kalms, which my GP suggested if I was having problems before I see her again. Work has a free phone counselling service thingy, which I have called and they gave me a breathing exercise thing to do. I've also had a look at the Living Life to the Full site which there's a link to somewhere on here and they have a relaxation exercise which I'm going to try to do in the evenings and also in the mornings before I go to work.

I'm hoping all of this stuff will help, but if anyone has any other suggestions for coping with anxiety - especially short term strategies just to help me get through the day at work - I would be so, so grateful.

[treasure]

is there something about work that makes it a trigger for anxiety? things like unclear tasks, too much responsibility, very tight deadlines etc, if you can identify some of these issues, maybe you can talk to a boss or someone about finding solutions that cause you less anxiety.

anxiety is caused by hormones and they stick around in your body, so if you don't have enough time to calm down they will continually get higher and the anxiety will get worse again. if there are things like making dinner or doing particular errands or seeing particular people that cause some anxiety it can help to spread them out as much as you can so you have more time to calm down.

breathing deeply can trick your body into calming down, it definitely works to combat anxiety. sometimes you need to schedule time to relax, to make sure you do so regularly and often enough. sometimes it helps to write yourself reminders to breathe, in places you might see it when anxious.

for me, irritating or loud noise makes my anxiety worse, so going somewhere quiet or listening to music are things i do to calm down.
also things that help me:
writing to-do lists so i know what i have to do and then can make a goal for a particular task.
making sure i'm not too hungry or tired as they make it harder to cope and being unable to think or function as i need to adds anxiety.
going home or going on the computer when i can, since i feel more comfortable there and more in control.
telling people i/you are anxious - if people know they will be more understanding and supportive if there's something you feel you can't cope with, and it can also put less pressure on you to be perfect or perform at a high standard, making the anxiety a lot less.
cbt. currently working on this with my t. a lot of my anxiety comes from faulty thinking and beliefs - like feeling like i'm being judged by people when they are likely not thinking of me at all. it can help a lot to figure out which thoughts might be triggering more anxiety.

[roseleaf]

You've made some really helpful suggestions treasure; thank you.

is there something about work that makes it a trigger for anxiety? things like unclear tasks, too much responsibility, very tight deadlines etc, if you can identify some of these issues, maybe you can talk to a boss or someone about finding solutions that cause you less anxiety.

I think at the moment it's just being there that's the problem... I don't have a problem with the job itself; they've taken out pretty much all targets apart from compliance (I work in a call centre). But my job will very shortly be changing so I'll have a new boss and a new team and stuff. Which I'm sure will be fine, but I'm not very good at change so I'm stressing about it a bit. But there's not really a lot I can do about it; my boss is helping out as much as he can.

if there are things like making dinner or doing particular errands or seeing particular people that cause some anxiety it can help to spread them out as much as you can so you have more time to calm down.

This is sensible and something I will try to keep an eye on.

breathing deeply can trick your body into calming down, it definitely works to combat anxiety. sometimes you need to schedule time to relax, to make sure you do so regularly and often enough. sometimes it helps to write yourself reminders to breathe, in places you might see it when anxious.

I have been trying breathing deeply over the last few days, but I'm not sure it's helping much. It does at first and then it stops. Not sure if this because I need to practise more, so I won't give up yet.

for me, irritating or loud noise makes my anxiety worse, so going somewhere quiet or listening to music are things i do to calm down.

This is something I've noticed as well; I'll try to remember about going somewhere quiet - it seems like that's something that could help.

Thanks for this.

[treasure]

glad i could help.

i'm feeling anxious a lot recently because of stress and appts and things like that. i have made a commitment to go to a certain shop today and buy a fridge which is not supposed to be hard but it is. i can't think - anxiety makes my thoughts race and go in circles - but there is probably some illogical thinking making this hard. i feel scared of having to find a certain sales person that we met with last week and to talk to him. i'm scared of doing something stupid like buying the wrong fridge or being too anxious to go in the shop.

i was going to go right now to catch a train but i'd probably miss it so i'll wait half an hr. giving myself a little time to do whatever i want can help me feel stronger, but not if i let my thoughts get away from me.

[roseleaf]

I hope buying the fridge goes okay. I can really sympathise with things being horribly stressful even when you feel like they should be easy. I hope you managed to go to the shop.

I feel like the deep breathing isn't really helping. Maybe I'm doing it wrong... When I'm feeling the physical effects of panic and anxiety I'm concentrating on them, not whatever it is that's making me feel that way. But when I start to calm my body down it's like all the thoughts race in and suddenly I'm not just panicking or whatever, but I KNOW that I can't cope and that the only thing left is to just die. So far I've always managed to get myself out of this but I'm a bit scared a time will come when I can't, or don't.

[treasure]

Feeling like you might die from anxiety or a panic attack is strangely a pretty common part of panic attacks. It has helped me to get a really clinical viewpoint of what anxiety is and kind of label it in my head as being anxiety, of being something I can't prevent but can do something about. Sometimes I swear at 'it' like Anxiety is a person or thing I can get angry at.

[roseleaf]

I like the idea of swearing at anxiety!

I might try researching it as a clinical thing rather than just techniques for making it go away, though. That sounds like something that might be quite helpful. Thanks!

[Just Pomegranates]

I'm sorry you're having so much trouble with anxiety Roseleaf. Anxiety truly is such an awful thing to deal with.

Have you considered maybe trying to make a small, travel friendly distraction box for anxiety that you can take to work with you? I'm found that making/using an anxiety box has been helpful for me in the past. Obviously it's not a perfect fix that will make the anxiety go away entirely but it's definitely helped take the edge off it enough for me in the past to be able to calm down a bit/think a bit clearer. So maybe something to think about perhaps?

There's a thread about it also in Coping section of the forum that has some really good ideas.


Also, have you considered perhaps trying to challenge the anxiety thoughts like the Before/After questions for SI on BUS? Maybe it could be useful to re-write the Before questions to an anxiety theme instead of an SI theme and see if you find that useful or not?

[roseleaf]

Thanks, Saint Jimmy. I like the idea of a distraction box. I had actually read that thread, but for some reason it never occurred to me that it could be useful for distracting me from anxiety . I think I'll try putting something together for the future.

I also hadn't thought of using the before/after questions... I'll have a look and see if I can adapt them to an anxiety theme.

I've been doing some research on anxiety, to see if knowing more about it will help me not to feel the effects so badly. This website I found really helpful; it takes you through the causes and symptoms of anxiety as well as some strategies for coping with it, and also describes some specific anxiety disorders. Too soon to tell, really, but I'm hoping some of this will help.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.