anxiety help: Anxiety attack help? - Help.com

No cures, but there are a lot of ways to manage anxiety.

Before I start a list, what have you tried so far? Have you done the basics, like getting rid of caffeine and energy drinks (which seriously worsen anxiety)?

Do you have an exercise routine? I have my own anxiety, and exercise helps like nothing else for me. It reduces the body’s physical responses to stress, which helps calm everything down.

Sleep is also really important. Do you have trouble sleeping all the time, or just once in a while?

You don’t need any equipment. Or, if you prefer, you can use minimal equipment for something like Pilates. I don’t know your living quarters and storage situation, but running and biking are classics. Exercise can have an immediate benefit. It isn’t the getting fit part that helps (although that alleviate some stress about other health problems), it is just the process of getting about 45 minutes of intense activity to reduce the hormones that get dumped into your bloodstream when your body reacts to stress. A gym membership is nice, but anything helps.

Check out this post for other ideas:
http://help.com/post/241034-what-do-y…

What have you tried for your sleep trouble? Exercise helps that too, if it isn’t too close to bedtime, but I have lots of tips for sleeping trouble. I have had some trouble with sleep before and I have some things that can help. I went to a sleep specialist and even had a sleep test where I slept in the lab and they hooked me up to sensors all over my body. Very cool but not very comfortable.

americanjedi7 wrote:
I feel like an idiot for not posting my replies anonymously but, thanks tj,..I’ll check it out.

Don’t worry, nobody ever remembers to reply anonymously. It is clearly a design flaw for the site and not a personal fault. In any case, I still don’t know who you really are so you are just as anonymous to me. The main thing the anonymous posting accomplishes is that it keeps this post from showing up in your profile.

Meditation is also a very good way to center yourself. There has been a lot of research into the effects of Meditation, on all sorts of things. Stress is one of them. Physical Exercise is a very good way of reducing stress, but it is also quite time-consuming.
I’m sure you could find some books on meditation techniques, or alternitevly. There are some tutorials on youtube and video.google.

Getting sufficient good quality sleep helps with anxiety, so I’d focus on that if I were you.

The first thing to learn about is what they call “sleep hygiene”. This basically means good habits for promoting sound sleep, including setting up a bedroom that helps you sleep. Rather than retype everything here I will provide you with some links o reliable resources. You can Google “sleep hygiene” any time and find more information on this. Although some of the suggestions are easy to gloss over, give each of them serious thought because they really do have a significant impact on sleep.

http://www.umm.edu/sleep/sleep_hyg.htm

Do you see anything here that sounds like it might be something you could try? I found a lot of things I could change and they made the situation a little easier for me.

I also have some information about over-the-counter sleep medication, if you are interested in that. I don’t know very much about prescription sleep meds because I never used any. The over the counter stuff is pretty safe as long as you don’t have any specific reasons to avoid it. If you have concerns, talk to your doctor. In general, Tylenol and Aspirin are more dangerous than this stuff.

A generally safe and mild one is diphenhydramine (also sold in the same dosages for allergy relief as Benadryl). If you have ever taken an allergy medication that made you sleepy, or taken Tylenol PM or a similar pain reliever, this is the same stuff. You can buy it as Benadryl, or from the makers of Tylenol as “Tylenol Simply Sleep”, which is just the same as Benadryl and contains no Tylenol, or as a store brand (which is much cheaper and just as good). Try 25 MG (usually one tablet, half of a two-tablet dose) first and see if it helps, and try two tablets if you still aren’t sleeping. I find that it helps only a little with falling asleep, but it helps me stay asleep better. It is not habit forming and doesn;t cause a dependency like some prescription sleeping pills can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphenhy…

Taking pills isn’t fun (or free), but if it helps you sleep it is good for your health. Getting enough sleep regularly is really important for reducing anxiety because it helps get the balance of neurotransmitters right.

If you want to learn more about sleep in general (and dreaming too), there is a great book called “The Mind at Night”. It is short and easy, but has some fabulous information about recent medical research into how and why we sleep and dream. I don’t think it will necessarily help you sleep, but I thought it was a really interesting book.

I hope this isn’t overwhelming information. I don’t really know how to make short replies, I guess!

Good luck!