Tips for dealing with anxiety.

[Doclector]

Alrighty then. Back to this shit.

Yeah, I'm self-medicating/treating/bitching/whatever you'd call it. This time, it may be a little more permanent.

Ah, who am I kidding. I'll be back here next week.

Anyway, recently I've been worse than usual. Especially for worrying. Barely a day, barely even an hour goes past where I'm not worried, panicked, or downright scared.

It was only when it got this bad that I realised that I can't remember not feeling like that. Not before I left uni for the holidays. Not this year. Not last year or the year before that. This is the worst it's been, but it's always been there.

I struggle to think of a time when I was calm, when I truly believed everything was going to be alright. If there's a problem, I'll think of a way it could get worse, or might not be solved. If there isn't a problem, I'll make one up. Nothing seems to work, no matter what logical reasoning I put behind it, no matter what I do to try and make things more "safe", I worry.

I've finally realised I can't deal with this shit alone. That, like people have said many times, I need help.

However, I've got a little while yet before I return to uni. That would be the best place to aquire said help, as the uni provides some support services, and, well, if I started the process of getting help here, it wouldn't be long until I had to start said process again at uni.

In the meantime, I'm not doing so well. Like I said, I barely go an hour at the moment without having some kind of worry. I'm aching all over, despite not having much physical activity (nothing to do in this shitty town except walk around for a while, something I do as much as I can without it becoming boring, which is only about twice a week). I find it hard to sleep or sometimes, even eat, and trust me, I'm usually pretty fond on eating. The only respite comes in my own strange, but not entirely unwelcome, manic episodes where I find myself laughing at virtually nothing.

I need some tips for dealing with this anxiety until I can get some help. Before someone suggests, I already set up a venting blog, and simply getting out more, as nice as that would be, isn't an option in this crappy town. Thanks, and if you got through all that shit, I owe you five decent jokes.

 

[Noetherian]

The best advice I can give is to be aware of what you're doing and try to remove yourself from it a bit. When you start to worry, remind yourself that you're just being anxious and it's actually not important to think about that right now. Don't engage your worries by trying to debate them away: take the upper hand by realizing that, if you're worrying no matter what, those worries don't actually mean anything. Whether your situation really is that bad or not, worrying about it isn't helping you, so the best way to counter your worries is to remind yourself they're not worth your time.

Another big help is to find yourself a project: buy a model kit, knit a scarf, do some origami, find a challenging puzzle game to work through -- anything to occupy your attention. If that's not enough, put a movie or some music on in the background too. It's important to find something else you can focus your thoughts and energy on. If crafts aren't your style, you might want to expand on that blog idea: don't just post when you need to vent, but write about politics or philosophy, anything you feel strongly about and can talk about for hours. Not only will that keep you occupied, it'll also help you refine your arguments. You could also do some research on a topic of interest to you and compile a blog post on that. (The internet is full of information, ridiculous and otherwise.)