I realized a little while ago (after struggling with mental illness for almost 30 years) that my approach needs to be positive, not negative.
I don’t mean positive thinking or any of that shit. I mean, if you’re mentally ill, you often frame management as “an absence of symptoms.” Which is great, if you’re talking about acne or a torn ACL or chicken pox. But if your mental illness is as pervasive as mine (anxiety with obsessional features), striving to eliminate every single symptom so that you can be “normal” is a fool’s errand. And I used to get worked up about it. One of my future in-laws likes to comment on my knee bouncing, and it wrecked my self-confidence whenever we were over at their house. “Nervous tic?” she’d ask, in front of everyone.
My current therapist is great. When I talk to her about eliminating a certain habit or tic that I have, she asks me if that tic is interfering with me living the life I want. If the answer is “yes,” then we work on eliminating it. If the answer is “no,” then we leave it be. My anxiety makes it impossible for me to go to Disneyworld. But I don’t want to go to Disneyworld, so there’s no reason for me to worry about it. I could spend all of my time trying to control all of my rituals and tics. I could exert all of my energy into social situations and “pushing my limits,” but all that is going to do is make me miserable.
Let’s reframe health as “capable of living the best life you can.”
Note: I haven’t created or extensively reviewed any of these resources, they’re just things I’ve found online that look like they’d be useful and to my best knowledge do not cost anything. These are self help resources intended to be used in addition to and not as a substitute for medical treatment- please contact a professional if you are feeling unsafe. 🙂
A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.
This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.
THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.
You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind.
People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.
In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture.
Therefore, I present to you:
THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS
–Go on a walk
–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.
–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching
–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind
–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift
–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:
–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.
–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see.
–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in.
–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.)
–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety.
–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel.
–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless.
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:
–List the capitals of all the U.S. states
–List the capitals of all the European countries
–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors.
–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.
–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.
Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself. I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too.
(Now this shouldn’t have to be said but if the “do nots” work for you then by all means do them. They’ve just never worked for me.)
This would’ve been great an hour ago
If your anxiety includes rapid heartbeat for no reason then it may help to exercise! It helps for me because I’m focused on whatever moves I’m doing and breathing, and it gives my heart rate a reason to be that high so that I can start the slow cooking down process and (hopefully) bring that heart rate down with it. Look up a quick cardio workout on YouTube or something and just do it in your room!
This is so, SO true.
All ‘doing something relaxing’ ever did for me was give my brain MORE free time to FREAK THE FUCK OUT.
I like how this boil down to grabbing something then tell the brains weasels to GO FETCH YOU PIECES OF SHIT
I mean.
That’s basically it tho.
YES THIS. When I was home on maternity leave with ptsd and postpartum anxiety ripping through me I made myself a list of things to do to keep myself active and busy instead of just dwelling on the awful.
Having an anxiety disorder is exhausting. It’s as if our mind is running a race it can’t win. Although, anxiety is life consuming we can learn valuable lessons from it. Through my journey to recover my mental health I have learned many things. Here are my top 10+ lessons:
Casual reminder that disabilities are often based on the day or the unique challenges of the situation. People who need a wheelchair on most days might not on one particular day. People who use an emotional support animal may not need it 24/7. People who rely on canes may only need it when they’re having bad days. It doesn’t mean they’re faking of their disability isn’t valid. Energy levels and pain fluctuate and that’s okay.
So, if you’re willing to help a friend out, I’ve realised something. When I am at max capacity, and I cannot continue functioning at the current level of ability, I can do one of two things:
I can fall into a nonepileptic seizure or I can shut one or more functions down, to conserve energy
The easiest ‘function’ for me to shut down is speaking. I’ve been doing it for years, and it’s quite helpful in surviving overwhelming situations. Most recently it helped me finish grocery shopping without having a panic attack, which was super useful.
BUT
If I do this, it then leaves room for an unintended but unfortunate consequence: Nobody can converse with me. So, my husband and I picked up small, key phrases in American Sign Language so that I can still communicate back, but I don’t have to speak. It’s quicker than typing something on a screen, and I can still portray emotion fluidly and get my point across effectively as long as I’m understood.
So if you’re a friend, and you’re local, consider watching some videos on ASL. You don’t necessarily have to practice the gesticulations, but if you know the words I’m going to be using with my hands and body, it’ll help us all carry on a conversation when my voice needs a break.
I feel like the line between “fluffy uwu self care” and “get your shit together self care” is thinner than people seem to think. Like, sitting in a quiet space with a book and maybe some twinkly fairy lights gives me the spoons to go call my damn doctor like I’ve been meaning to. Bath bombs or shower steamers make me feel content and/or sparkly, which gives me confidence to go out in public. (Plus, I bathed.) I dye my hair funky colors so if I feel like people are staring at me I can say it’s at that instead of whatever my anxiety wants it to be.
The two are not mutually exclusive, is what I’m getting at, and I never see that mentioned, just either “self care is being nice to yourself” or “self care is kicking yourself in the ass to function for a few hours”. Kick yourself in the ass with niceness.
Gotta get your emotion-focused coping before you do your problem-focused coping.
Holding the Bowl 