Please see a clinician if you feel that you might have anxiety or panic, getting an adequate physical assessment is essential.
- Anxiety normally starts to peak about half an hour after you get up. Anticipate it by doing some simple breathing exercises.
- Eat little and often – learn to watch and pay attention to what your body is saying. Even fill in a ‘body clock’ to chart mood and physicality.
- Smoking is supposed to calm the nerves, but researchers have found evidence that it might have the opposite effect.
- The body will have a transition at roughly 4:00am and 4:00pm – learn to nurture at those times.
- Remember that most people have panic/anxiety attacks when they are NOT stressed and when the crisis is over.
- Each day stop and breath several times. In breath to the count of five (tensing your whole body gradually - finishing with tensing your shoulders) and then as you exhale to the count of five let your body relax down and outwards towards the tips of the fingers and toes.
- If you think you have a task that is worrisome -- work out the steps beforehand. Then you are “chunking" it into manageable proportions that are not as stressful.
- If you feel like you are going to stress out.... stop, shut everything down, breath and stretch, put your hands behind your head.... then think about what you want to do and go back to it.
- Remember, work at a task in manageable 'bites' of around twenty minutes. Then stop, do something else or look up and away from the task, before returning. This means that you are rolling WITH your attention and learning curve instead of getting stuck on the plateau.
- When your mind wanders to something that provokes anxiety – write it down and then defer dealing with it until a specific time later in the day. Write a short phrase – not a journal! Normally come back to your short list at a time when you are distracted, for example watching television, and can look at the issues without stressing out. Do not try for solutions - let your mind percolate naturally and with a night's rest you will find things easier the next day.
- Don't stress about sleep - rest can be enough. Let your body do the 'talking'.
- Describe your physical sensations both to yourself and to someone who is trying to help. Feeling anxious or panicked is about the body not the mind. So validate the sensations and that means that the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are lessened by treating this as something that will eventually be managed.
- Eat something carbohydrate at 4:00pm with some liquid - even when you are off work
- put hands behind head in a basket to disable chest wall muscles and calm down anxiety - several times a day. Simple chair stretching helps.
- Change task every twenty or thirty minutes - this can mean just stop and look up and straighten your back but preferably do the hands as a basket exercise.
- Try not to drink cold milk after 6:00pm. Warm milk releases tryptophan which is a natural ‘de-compressant’.
- think of " anxiety " as physiological stress not paranoia/ in your head
- at night take a shower and then stretch in the shower
- Clench your body and breathe in to the count of five, then hold for one and breathe out for the count of five relaxing the muscles out towards your finger tips and toes. Do this several times a day.
- SING in the car to music
- Each night have ten minutes quiet time and DOODLE - teach the kids to do this too.... - take a half hour to unwind some time in the evening.
- MINDFULNESS:
Mindfulness is about being in the 'now': being present in this body, at this time, doing this thing. It has a quiet, unassuming and unobtrusive nature. It is also non-judgmental and not characterized by emotional reactions. It is often linked with compassion1.
The simplest form of mindfulness, which can be practiced very easily without anyone noticing, is to focus on the breath for three inhalations and exhalations. Some people do this hourly. It involves taking in a deliberate breath and noticing the quality of the air as it enters the body through the nostrils and making its way to the lungs. Then, when exhaling, you focus on the air as it leaves your body.
It's worth taking a look at the way you breathe. Most people breathe quite shallowly, using only the top part of their lungs. For the purposes of mindfulness breathing, you should use the whole of your capacity. This means inflating the bottom part first, which can be done by allowing your belly to swell (a bit like a balloon). Next, fill the mid-section by expanding your ribs sideways. Finally fill the top part of your lungs.
If you are sitting down, you can augment this by noticing the feel of the chair underneath your buttocks and the ground on your feet.
This practice will bring you back to the present moment and is very grounding.
Another form of meditation is the Walking Meditation. This can be done alone or in company. The walking can also be described as intentional. Walking mindfully entails focussing on the breath (as described above), placing and planting the feet purposefully and intentionally and being conscious of the ground, the surroundings and staying in the present moment.
STRESS SYMPTOMS:
- General - sweating, hot flushes or cold chills.
- Heart- pounding heart, increased heart rate.
- Lungs - difficulty breathing or feeling of choking, chest pain or discomfort, hyperventilation.
- Abdomen - difficulty swallowing, nausea or abdominal distress.
- Arms and legs - numbness or tingling sensations, muscle tension with associated aches and pains.
- Psychological - feeling 'keyed up' or on edge, fatigue, mind going blank, difficulty sleeping.
All of the anxiety disorders have these symptoms in common. As we'll see, however, they can occur under different circumstances.
Types of Anxiety Disorder
The 'purest' anxiety disorder is known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This is characterized by out-of-control stress and worry over many aspects of the individual's life. The anxiety can be 'free-floating', which means that it isn’t connected to any particular situation. It is chronic and low grade, although it can occasionally flare. People with GAD primarily have problems with sleeplessness, fatigue, muscle tension and headaches.
Panic disorder is slightly different in that sometimes, for no apparent reason, the affected individual will have a full-blown panic attack, including many of the symptoms mentioned above. In between attacks, the individual will be anxiety-free, but over time they can (understandably) develop continuing anxiety about when the next attack will occur.
Phobias are anxiety disorders which are brought on by specific, identifiable situations. When in the situation, anxiety will lead to the individual trying to escape it by any means possible.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder consists, as its name suggests, of unpleasant and distressing obsessive thoughts linked to the individual's compelling need to perform particular actions to compensate for them in some way. An example of an obsession might be the recurring thought that something horrible has happened to a loved one, a compensating compulsion might be checking that the oven is off every five minutes. Failing to act on the compulsion results in extreme anxiety of the sort outlined above.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is similar to GAD but occurs after an identifiable stressor (such as war, child abuse, or a traffic accident). The individual can have flashbacks to the event in question, but why some individuals develop this after trauma and others don't is unknown.
Unfortunately, the situation is seldom as clear-cut as the above syndromes suggest. Each disorder can co-exist with any of the others – GAD for instance often co-exists with social phobia and/or other phobias.
