Dealing with anxiety

Dog walks are excellent for wellbeing. I didn’t mention them in my earlier post but they are a necessary part of a daily routine for me. Yes, every movement definitely counts. 

I do dog walks as part of my exercise! - not a gym goer or exercise person but I think every little movement counts

No need to apologise Cinnabar_wing  because you are welcome, just as much as anybody else, to say what’s on your mind and to ask questions. 

I’m sad that things have been getting too much for you, but I’m glad that you have said.

Apart from medication prescribed by the doctor, these three things help me the most.

Going for a long, fast walk and using my senses to focus on what’s around me. Seeing, listening, smelling, feeling (the air temperature, the ground through my feet, bark of a tree etc.) Tasting the water I might be carrying.

If things really unsettle me, it is impossible to sit with my usual way of meditating in silence. This happened recently so in desperation, I resubscribed to Headspace, just to have a voice talk me through some specific meditations for anxiety. It helped better than I had thought.

The other thing that helps is if I set a timer for 4 or 5 minutes and do squats or something else as fast as possible. The idea is to push to the limit so my heart rate is raised and I’m out of breath, then stop. When I’ve caught my breath I do a breathing exercise counting so many breaths in and a longer breath out.  This technique is on Headspace and I found having a voice pushing me to keep going when I’m exercising helped me put in more effort.

I try to do things I enjoy and know will relax me e.g reading, colouring in, jigsaws, meditation (I use headspace app) 

I've also had CBT which gave me techniques to help such as

1) trying to focus on positive not negative

2) trying too let negative thoughts float away in a cloud and only keep the positive ones

3) grounding myself

4) focusing on breathing with deep breathes

5) focus on my sensory needs 

I also did a positive poster which states things I'm good at and the positives in my life for example:

1) I am good enough

2) I can only try my best at things, that is good enough

3) I have a good support network

Hope this helps and you start feeling less anxious

I have recently had anxiety due to health issues. i did some qigong in the mornings which seemed to help somewhat, that is, I was able to cross streets without panicking. That's probably a different kind of anxiousness than you are having, but I have had some of that, too. I had more of it when I was younger. Sometimes people said I don't look anxious, even when I was really nervous. Exposure did help greatly, but it took time. 

I read about mindfulness in the Mindfulness for Health book by Burch & Penman. I knew of it before but not how it applies to pain and anxiety. It seems quite a simple technique, a noticing game. You don't really need those guided meditations if you find them annoying.  I think the goal is to dissociate from thoughts and feelings, let them come and go. This won't dissolve the anxiety but might reduce the 'secondary pain', aka suffering, or the mind's reaction to pain/anxiety. Or so I was reading. I think it's something worth practicing.

All the best. Thought I'd write something since I have been thinking about this.   

I just tried to ignore it and pushed on. Where it was too much I avoided the situation if at all possible. I just thought having a knot in your stomach, sweating and feeling nauseous when you went out was normal. 

Planning ahead, thinking of contingency plans, scripting as much as possible, helped. Trying to breathe normally also helped.

The more times you do something the easier it gets. The first few are the hardest then you learn you can do it and you can cope. The problem is always doing something the first time, even just going to a new shop. It is the fear of the unknown, turned up too high.

You can't really think your way out of it as it is a nervous system response. Only confidence gets rid of it, which is just knowing what to expect (and feeling safe).

Having someone accompany you always helps.

Cinnabar_wing said:

How do people cope with being anxious?

I don't.

I think that anxiety issues often come hand in hand with being autistic, but it’s also the case that struggling with anxiety is a common thing for vast swathes of society. It’s certainly been one of my biggest challenges throughout my life. Many times it’s felt so bad that I’ve had suicidal thoughts because it’s felt so unbearable to live with such consistent and debilitating anxiety. 
So I relate to your situation, and I’m really sorry it’s such a struggle for you too. 
I think the first helpful step is to try to accept that some anxiety is just a part of being human, and to change our attitude towards our anxiety to one that is less about ‘trying to get rid of anxiety because I hate how it feels’. The more we respond to anxiety with ‘fight or flight’ - the worse it gets. 
As humans our anxiety response is there to help us, to keep us safe and to enable us to identify threats and respond to them effectively. So anxiety is not our ‘enemy’, and we don’t need to be ‘afraid of anxiety’ itself. If we hate how our anxiety feels, and fight those sensations and run away from them - we are only adding to the anxiety. Essentially we become ‘anxious about anxiety’ - and get caught in a loop that only makes things worse. 
I’m so tired now as it’s late - but I’ll return to this tomorrow because I have found that there are so many things that can help - that I’m too tired to go into now - I’m virtually falling asleep!