Coping with restlessness

I'm just wondering if anyone has ideas of what to do when you feel restless.

I'm not hallucinating at the moment, but I just have the general feeling that my brain is, like, just melting out my ear. I can't stop moving and I feel really restless and just… crazy.

Someone mentioned a certain breathing technique to me… I think it was called 4-7-8 breathing, and that works a little bit. I was just wondering what other types of things you might do when you feel like this.

I try to make myself disassociate a little bit. For me I might be extremely restless, but that doesn't mean I have the physical focus and calm (well of course not) to be very productive, and if I try to give into the stimulation, such as by exercising, it just winds me up ever more and then I want to destroy everything.

Most of the time I will pace around outside, smoking cigarettes and talking to myself, trying to get my mind to focus in on something.

Or I might try a mildly stimulating but mostly-mindless activity. I go to that pogo.com website and play bejeweled for hours sometimes at night while listening to music, just trying to 'zone' into it and leave the physical world behind. I'm a fairly simple creature at my core, only my surface layers are super complicated, so the colors and sparkles and making things explode actually entertains that primitive core part of me.

Could it be medication issue! My akathesia felt like a crazy inner restlessness where nothing made it go away.

I struggle with extreme restlessness and agitation so I am curious what tips people have. I am not good at coping with it at all and it always gets the better of me.

I use a range of things as nothing helps for very long. I try mindfulness, breathing exercises, physical exercise, distraction (lots of that), pacing, listening to music (even dancing to it) and if all else fails, medication like Zyprexa. When I am really bad I need the meds to bring me down to be even able to do any of the above. Restlessness is awful. Hope it passes soon.

Whenever I am extremely restless, I tend to sense physical discomfort, such as warm body temperature, giddiness, fatigue, which cause me to be at the verge of sleeping.

So, I take this opportunity to take a short nap, with a standing fan blowing at me, plus a few ice cubes wrapped in facial tower on my forehead.

Works for me, you "could" try it too.