dealing with daily anxiety

A few tips I thought I'd share. Daily anxiety is just plain awful. It drains your energy and causes all kinds of physiological changes in your body. Here's what often helps me:
- Identify the feeling
- Try to figure out what's causing it/making it worse
- Whatever is causing it, try your best to belittle that 'something'.
Most important for me is identifying what's causing it. That helps a lot.

These can also sometimes help in a panic attack, but not always depending on the severity of the attack.

How about other good ideas?

I'm bad... I believe in better living through pharmaceuticals, so I take my Klonopin for my anxiety attacks. I do hate it when I've taken the self imposed and agreed upon limit and I still feel like crap.

If I absolutely cannot feel better, I'll smoke as much as I can off a regular cigarette. Something about the nicotine calms my brain. I rarely do this. The pack of cigarettes in my purse is close to two years old and I've smoked maybe two or three.

Another thing I do more regularly and is better for you, I like the smell of Jasmine essential oil. I will put it on my collar close to my nose so I can breathe it. That seems to help too.

Good luck!

Most times I need to hold something really tight. Like the arm of the chair or steering wheel of the car. (not moving) Then I find something to focus on like noticing the license number of a car and memorizing it or counting shopping carts in parking lot. If home I will stuff an audio book in my ear and watch TV with volume off. Making up the story line to TV program while listening to book will usually work. Doing the two at once keeps my mind off the panic long enough to settle.

I find that my Anxiety is bad enough that I have to take Xanax - which I don't want to have to do - but when I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin, I know its time for medication. I wish this anxiety would subside, but right now its a daily thing that I am trying to work thru. The Xanax calms me down a bit, so I don't feel so jittery and nervous and anxious.

I have a plan I developed during DBT.
1. Focus on by breathing in and out, getting the air into the lower part of my lungs.
2. Count by different numbers (7s, 9s, 13s, ...) forwards and backwards.
3. Meditate, looking at a candle flame.
4. I try to journal to see if I can figure it out, but my brain is usually scrambled.

But I do use xanax if it gets out of hand.

Download a free relaxation/meditation/breathing app from itunes and find a peaceful place to listen and follow the guide. I read recently that breathing breaks the 'fight or flight' response. I downloaded the relaxation/meditation app which helps. I plan to download breathe2relax, which was recently recommended to me.

When it gets too bad I try to get up and move around, go to the fridge and get a drink, wash my hands, comb my hair. Anything to break the moment. If I am really super busy all day, the anxiety can sort of be on the back burner, although I always have the tight jaws and the band around my chest.

Most of the time I can't identify what's causing the anxiety I have. The event that caused it is long over. I can be watching a funny show, Wheel of Fortune, QVC, whatever and all of a sudden have a feeling of panic in addition to the 24/7 anxiety I'm stuck with. That's the odd thing about anxiety. I guess that's why they call it GENERAL-ized Anxiety Disorder! General as opposed to something specific.

I listen to music, generally the same few songs on repeat, and follow the words in my head to get my thoughts off the anxiety, then I write in my journal, or Google random things to read about that just take my mind off it, or I do something easy and unimportant like play candy crush so I'm not thinking about anything bad.