elisha wiesner wrote: There are a number of things that can help. Therapy, good diet, exercise, sleep, omega 3's, meditation and last, medication. Don't be afraid of any of them and find what works for you. One thing to remember is that panic/anxiety attacks suck but they always get better. Feel free to pm me for more info.This, is very good advice and very true. One thing when it comes to medication...you can have it (even on you), and never use it, but just knowing that you have it if you need it makes the anxiety less frieghtening and decreases the frequency of attacks. Talk therapy helps greatly because it goes to the source of why many people have anxiety -- they do not express their true emotions to anyone for whatever reason (e.g. too macho, too shy, fear of being critisized, etc.)

The shitty thing about it is that it doesn't matter if you have a generally awesome life--you're still prone to do it.You're just prone to worry about essentially nothing, which is worse! It's better if you have something substantial to zone in on!The only new advice I have (everything else here is great) is to try to separate yourself from the anxiety. This isn't really you doing anything. You know the anxiety is bullshit, your body is just letting you down for a bit, no big deal. If you can do that, you may find the length and frequency of the episodes drops dramatically, if they don't go away altogether.And find someone who will listen to your crazy bullshit when you're freaking out and not hold it against you. That is invaluable.

BOOOOOOOM! Anxiety and Depression here too. There are a fair few things that can be done, one of which is therapy to find the cause, and process it. Two, Picamilon, the BEST supplement I have ever taken, beats the shit out of prescribed anti anxiety/depression or other mood stabilising drugs. 3. being open, sounds a bit hippy, but talking about how you feel to people (who care) is a great way to help move on, and talking about how you feel if you are starting to get panicky. Trust me when i say people dont get funny about it, if you keep it to yourself you are more likely to come accross as a little off. The root cause needs to be found though, as otherwise the other things are coping mechanisms and cover ups. The picamilon genuinely helps so much, got me through having panic attacks everyday. Don't get panic or anxiety attacks anymore.

Sometimes I get terrible anxiety, to the extent that I feel paralyzed.It's strange that I can perform in front of large groups of people and feel completely at ease, but then when I'm in these tedious mundane situations (that involve far less skill and specialization) my anxiety becomes something to contend with.Anxiety and depression are two sides of the same coin, and naturally I suffer from depression too.I recommend reading the chapters on neurosis in Ernest Becker's excellent book The Denial of Death. Reading an existentialist take on anxiety is strangely comforting, and the ways that he elaborates on his key points are fascinating.This has already been touched upon here, but the root of anxiety is the fear of death. Man is a problematic being because he's at once creaturely and symbolic. Once you begin to understand this and its implications you can be the master of your own fate. But who am I kidding? It's a day-to-day struggle. Finding one's balance isn't easy. Sometimes it's fucking murder out there and all you can do is brace yourself and be glad you haven't shit your pants yet!Lately I've been spending a lot of time in the lap pool out back. No, it's not as relaxing as an erotic massage, but it is a healthy way to keep the demons at bay. Somehow being submerged in water for at least twenty minutes allows me to decompress. Life originated in the sea so it makes sense that spending time in water would be of elemental import. If you don't have a lap pool, just fill up your bathtub.

jimmy spako wrote:one thing i wanted to say: i'm afraid sometimes i come off as if i've got shit sorted or something. my original post reads like so i had this panic attack, right, but i totally dug my tiger teeth into it & i rode it out & nobody was the wiser, 'cause i'm awesome like that. i'm sorry for that. i'm kind of on my own & so i have to talk to myself that way i guess, i'm all hey buddy, you'll make it seventeen times a second.Welcome to Nutso-city - population you (and several million other people.) I do this a lot. I HAVE TO DO THIS. If I don't look out at the night sky and bask in its beauty, if I don't take greedy gulps of night air and assure myself that everything is as good as it can be and that I am safe, I'd be even more non-functional than I am now (most likely dead.) I couldn't count how many times I've used that mantra from Selenography :You will be safeYou will be asleepSomeone will have their hand running through your hairThe world is full of imagesSome of them will be transparentGhosts that only catch on video framesYou will be cared forYou won't freezeToo many casualties to keep track ofSomeone will keep track of themYou will be safe in the darkYou will be warm at night with the windows openYou will be lovedYou are rememberedI'm prone to obsessive, cyclical impulses. Some of them seem like quirks like avoiding the colour blue (to the point where I asked Kevin for a different colour case lining) and some of them are deeply destructive. I used to have a stack of notebooks about a metre tall that I would daily pump a few thousand words into about all the ways I was failing as a human being. I lugged them around with me for years until they contributed to a immensely satisfying bonfire. Its not completely awful, depends on where you focus that energy. I'm sure Turing or Bukowski had their own array of obsessions and insecurities.I guess that's the positive of having a mental illness. If you're frequently or constantly in a state where you feel imminent impending doom, whether through disaster or some other strange misadventure, the mentally ill person is essentially as free from fear as much as he/she is consumed by it. Why bother? is as applicable to the act as it is to the fear of the act or the end result or whatever. Why bother recording an hour long Sleep-rip-off drone about Werner Von Braun when the world is ending tonight? Why not? As if I have anything better to do with myself.I don't know what I'm trying to say in this post. You're not alone? Do I need to say that? Do you realize this is a fundamental truth? (Do I?) Exercise is good. If you're going to feel exhausted and drained, might as well have a reason for it. I've spent parts of the past two days under a slasher, connecting an extremely heavy blade to the drive. Despite the imminent danger of failing hydraulics and decapitation I've seldom felt more calm in recent times. (My body is scratched and bruised and sore though.)Sorry if this makes no sense at all.

Today, for no apparent reason, I experienced a crippling bout of anxiety and depression. I was more or less paralyzed for the first two hours of it and I'm still feeling pretty crummy, though not as bad as I was earlier. At the height of it there could have eight foxy women doing stripteases in my bedroom, rubbing their vaginas in my face and whatnot, and it wouldn't have made a stick of difference--I still would have felt like I was trapped in my body and on the verge of death. It was a dreadful feeling, easily the worst I've felt in a long time. All I could do was lie down and let the horror wash over me.This weekend I'm meeting with old friends and we have a nice get together planned on Saturday, so there's no good reason why I should have felt so lousy all of a sudden. I'm no stranger to anxiety and depression, but usually it's reasonably manageable. Today, though...I felt powerless and had trouble breathing but there was nothing I could do about it except wait it out. It was like a migraine but without the headache.

mr.arrison wrote:whatever you do, DO NOT take Effexor. Run, eat well, ride a bike, lift weights but don't take pharma shit. No, this is totally horrible advice. People are overprescribed and often a doctors first reaction is to just write a script. This sucks and the things you mention should all be tried first. Clearly it works for you when meds didn't. There are plenty of people, myself included, for whom exercise, diet etc... is not enough and have been greatly helped by a combination of those things and medication.

whatever you do, DO NOT take Effexor. Run, eat well, ride a bike, lift weights but don't take pharma shit.

My sister suffered from a panic disorder for years. For a while she was self-medicating with the ol' Bolivian marching powder, then she went into therapy and replaced it with Paxil. I've never had one of the panic attacks where I'm convinced that I'm going to die or even that I won't be able to function. My anxiety manifests itself as avoidance and procrastination-- lately avoiding anything that involves leaving the apartment, so that it threatens to bloom into full-blown agoraphobia.The best therapy for anxiety is CBT. I need to get back into CBT...