My Struggles with Anxiety: Coping Mechanisms

**I find writing about this struggle to be very cathartic, and I hope what I share about my experiences will help others.  To keep my thoughts organized, I've divided my posts on anxiety into a couple of categories.  Otherwise, my posts would probably be rambling and go on forever!  If you are just now catching up, you should go back and read my first post about my anxiety story.**

***Also, I'm not a healthcare professional and don't necessarily recommend or endorse any particular method of dealing with anxiety.  My coping mechanisms and medications work for me, but everyone's experience with anxiety is different.  If you are struggling with anxiety, I recommend seeing a licensed mental health professional who can help you find the strategies that work best for you.***

Before I started seeing my counselor regularly, I often googled "dealing with anxiety", and found all kinds of suggestions for dealing with anxiety.  I'm sure all of them have value, but for me, some work better than others.  And really, none of them work unless I believe them.  When I'm in the midst of the panic or the thought loop, it is hard for me to believe that anything but the passing of time will help, and sometimes I have no hope that it will ever end.  But, I have found that the following strategies work well for me.

• Breathing- Belly breathing is the best physical thing I can do to calm myself down when I'm in the midst of the panic or the thought loop.  My office has a "quiet room/spa", and at this point I have spent many minutes there in the past few months laying on a chaise lounge, listening to soothing music, and belly breathing.  Sometimes, it feels like the only way I can relax.

• Spending Time with Friends- I know for some people, spending time with others when they are anxious creates more anxiety.  I'm the opposite.  I think because my anxiety is not social in nature, I'd much rather be around friends or family when I'm feeling anxious.  Laughing with friends, and even having serious conversations with friends is a welcome and helpful distraction for me.  I believe that relationships are one of the most important aspects of life, and I am so very blessed that I have so many good ones.  I think it also helps that I am an external processor.  Sometimes when I express my anxieties out loud to another person, it is easier for me to realize how irrational they are and dismiss them.

• Exercise- Well, after the past 3 months, I think I can no longer call myself the Lazy Runner.  While I haven't logged as many miles as I have in the past, I've exercised practically every day since the beginning of June.  If breathing and other distractions don't calm me down, I hit the treadmill.  I'm lucky that my office has a gym.  Otherwise, I'm not sure how I would have made it through the past couple of months.  For me, strenuous exercise (like running) ends both the thought loop and the physical symptoms of anxiety.  Even if I haven't worked out my thoughts after exercise, my body feels much more relaxed, and my mind is more at ease as well.

• Living life 60 seconds at a time- I am future obsessed.  Always have been, really.  My mind is always looking to the future, looking forward to something, planning, thinking...to the point that I have a really hard time living in the moment.  My husband is the opposite.  He is often late because he is enjoying life and living in the moment.  I'm trying to learn to be more like him in that regard.  My counselor recommended a book called One Minute Mindfulness. It contains a lot of great practical strategies to reduce anxiety by living life in 60 second increments, and being present in the moment.  The author is a former Buddhist monk turned psychotherapist so I find some of his spiritual suggestions a bit "out there" and generic, but it is easy for me to incorporate my own faith into a lot of what he says about meditation, connection, etc.  Things like when you take a shower, enjoy the warmth of the water.  Feel the water on your head.  Enjoy it.  Be present where you are.  Honestly, most mornings in the shower I'm thinking through everything I have to do that day, which can often be stressful.  Zoning out and enjoying the water beating down on my head is nice. :)  Even on my most anxious days, I would think, "Can I make it through 60 more seconds of life? I think so."  And after 5 minutes of thinking in 60 second increments, I felt better.  It reminds me of running a marathon using the run 2 min/walk 1 min method.  At 20 miles, I was pretty sure I couldn't run or walk 6 more miles, but I could run for 2 more minutes.  Really, most things in life are bearable if we know they are temporary and only think about them lasting for a minute or two.

Anyway, these are the 4 practical things I have found to help me cope with anxiety "in the moment".  As I've written in other posts, the most helpful things have been talking through things with my counselor (who recommended most of the above strategies) and medication.