Hello everyone! A few problems I need a little help with..

[jazzlee]

Hello everyone I'm new to this forum, and I suffer with Anxiety, I have not been to the doctors as I fear they will want to give me medication and I would rather sort this out in my own time. I have been having racing heartbeats for the past few days, It usually starts about 5pm in the evening when I'm mainly chilling out and over thinking, Searching everything up on the internet and getting frightening answers which makes it worse as I think I'm going to die or something, Anyway tonight it got super bad as too why I don't know I was really concentrating on my beats and could hear and do nothing else and as I was winding myself up even more it got even worse. Eventually I blurted out to my mum 'my hearts beating too fast.' and she said 'your having an anxiety attack' and it got worse she came over to me a kept me really calm. She also gave me a brown paper bag to breath into which helped me loads and eventually i stopped feeling my heart beats. I also have problems when I see certain people from a bad night i usually get an attack if I am in close proximity with them e.g on a bus or train and I have to get off immediately. I get hot, sweaty, My heart race increases and I feel the need to fan myself with my hands? does anyone else do this? I don't know anybody with anxiety like mine and I would love to know If anyone gets symptoms the same as me, I also am slightly OCD I panic if I have less then £100 in my bank and if i know I do its all I think about for days un-till I get more money and It goes back up! I'm sure what to do to be honest? Like what are some relaxing things to stop the attacks? and how can I control them?

[jessed03]

Reading your post, two things stood at at me. The first one, is about working oneself into a panic. As anxiety sufferers, we could get a phD in it, we're so good. We know just how to make ourselves tick. I can understand you not wanting to try med's, and it's worth a shot going it alone if you have the energy. The whole goal, everything we do, every technique, serves just one purpose. To reduce anxiety, to gain control over it. To ease the nervous system. Natural methods do this, things like cbt and meditation. Med's are simply an aggressive way of bring it back under control.

To get over the first hurdle, it involves stop causing unnecessary anxiety. This mainly entails reading, or Google. Many people, even myself, found that things like horror movies, the news, political discussion etc would all cause that unnecassary anxiety. An unnesasary anxiety, is any anxiety that isn't allowing us to grow. If you're nervous about stepping outside when overcoming agorophobia, it isn't an unnecassary one, but one that needs to be worked through. This is suprisingly easy to do. You just have to resist the temptation. Once you've stopped adding extra anxiety to yourself, you can see what makes it tick, a little clearer. The same way you wouldn't add extra belongings onto a wobbling cart, it's unwise to add extra stress to a wobbling nervous system. I think the symptoms themselves aren't important, it's the anxiety that's important. I've had the most bizarre, ridiculous, unbelievable symptoms, which all faded on their own pretty much, once that underlying anxiety was reduced.

The other thing that stood out to me, is distraction. Distraction is a really important part of anxiety-recovery, to begin with. More-so when it comes to panic attacks. I hate that word, it just makes you wanna have one looking at it :) I'll call it moments of over-stimulation! Without knowing sometimes, when we have symptoms, we become so focused on our body, and so focused in our mind (on our thoughts). It allows that snowball effect to keep happening. By using diversion, you aren't 'running scared', you're simply allowing your body to focus on whats outside, the real world, the way it is meant to do. As you've managed to pinpoint rough times, it might be helpful in creating diversion for those times. Something physical. I would walk through the park, wrestle with my young nephew, play with my pets. Something that really took a lot of focus. Take a walk and play loud music. If I was tired, or it was late, I'd count down from 300 really fast. Over and over. Or do times tables. I'll copy some recommended in The Linden Method

All the best :)

1. Splash face with cold water – this produces the dive reflex and causes
your brain to send messages to your body to slow your heart down. This
will have the knock on affect of overriding the panic response.
2. Distraction – Count down from 100 as fast as you can, repeat over and
over. Do maths problems or anything else that occupies your mind.
3. Listen to your favourite music loudly and sing along to it.
4. Say to yourself “this has never hurt me, it has never hurt anyone else
and it never will. I know what it is and it means nothing” disempower
the attack.
5. Tell yourself that what you are feeling are sensations; nothing more and
that sensations never hurt anyone.
6. Watch a funny video on TV, laugh out loud.
7. Don’t look at yourself in the mirror, look out to the world, don’t become
introspective (examine your own physical and mental self).
8. Keep some apples in the fridge. Eat one, then another if you wish.
9. Gently slap your cheeks and dance around- confuse your thoughts and
nerve impulses to distract them.
10. In the night, get out of bed, turn on the TV, get a drink, eat an apple and
distract yourself.
11. Talk to someone or phone someone – don’t discuss your anxiety.
12. Do something physical if you can. (Not too physical though)
13. DO NOT SIT DOWN! Keep moving.
Do any amount of these diversion tactics SIMULTANEOUSLY if possible

[vonnhelsing]

Distractions definitely work the best!! If you just sit down and allow yourself to feel the panic attack you'll just keep getting more and more panicky by the physical effects of it (difficulty breathing, heart palpitations etc.) I tend to start moving around very fast and talking to anyone about anything, or i play guitar and sing loudly. Singing will help your breathing go back to normal since you're breathing through your stomach and breathing won't be too deep. you should never take deep breaths from the lungs, it'll make it worse. take quite shallow breaths through your stomach. i agree with everything on that list! i've tried all already except the eating apples one and the counting down from 100. will try it if i get a panic attack again.