this quote is absolutely spot on

[vonnhelsing]

"An idle mind is the Devil's playground"

This is so spot on. My anxiety is at its worst when my mind is idle. When im alone in my room and im left on my own with my thoughts. It is the devil in my brain making me think about all the things which fuel my anxiety. "You are going to die tonight" "im having a heart attack" "im going crazy" "I will never get better". This is why being distracted is so effective for me. This is why so many of us experience anxiety late at night before bed. Its when our mind is exhausted from the day and is left unattended to start thinking stupid irrational things. I never have anxious thoughts when im around friends.
Feeling anxiety creeping along? Find something to do that requires full concentration. Our mind is capable of so much..

[mykids12]

That is the truth. I'm so terrified right now of this disease I think I have and the more I think about it and analyze my symptoms the more I freak out. I am duh a wreck right now that I think I'm losing it. My chest stars hurting. Its hard to breathe. I hate all this!!

[vonnhelsing]

Am feeling the exact same. I feel like ive got a python wrapped around my chest. Its hard to breathe and theres pain everywhere. And I have this non stop sick feeling in my abdominal area. I know it'll go away but its frightening nonetheless. .

[alankay]

Yep. Keeping busy keeps you distracted and so less time to be introspective and start down the worry road. If you think about it, that's really at the core of it all. What you do to yourself though not by design. Just a part of the puzzle. Alankay

[mykids12]

Yep. Keeping busy keeps you distracted and so less time to be introspective and start down the worry road. If you think about it, that's really at the core of it all. What you do to yourself though not by design. Just a part of the puzzle. Alankay

My problem though is that even when I do things to keep busy my mind always wanders back to what was bothering me.

[Lee Grant Irons]

When I was going through the long long days of my extended health crash, I picked up my hobby and started working at almost fanatically, even though I was in pain. My hobby is genealogy. If you have ever done genealogy, you know how addicting and distracting and time consuming it can be.

Eventually (after the first couple of years of health crash had passed) when I finally decided that I was not dying anytime soon and I got angry enough that my illness was not being figured out or fixed by the docs, I was able to turn that energy towards a drive to solve all of my intractable problems, health, relationship, career, debt, etc. This certainly did not take my mind off my problems. On the contrary, it put my mind on my problems. The difference, however, is that I discovered that I had to learn to untangle my problems from each other and treat them separately and distinctly. I also learned that I had to take the path of least resistance in solving my problems. In other words, I had to write down the most obvious and easiest things I could do first for each problem, and then do those things. Doing those things would then help me learn something, allowing me to figure out new things I could do to solve my problems. This is slightly oversimplified, but this is basically what I did. And it worked. After 5 years, I got a correct diagnosis with correct therapies. My relationship with my wife is much better. My kids health problems have been discovered and almost completely resolved. I was promoted at work and am now indispensible, with nice raises and bonuses. I still have other difficult problems, but I am working on them.