I have social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and low self esteem.
A good question is to figure what kind of anxiety do you have and what triggers your panic attacks.
For me, it was being wrong (thanks school for building self esteem around "giftedness" and "intelligence" :dry, confrontation, appearance, and certain things that had to do with rape culture.
What I did:
Social anxiety: Over the past six months, I've tried talking more in class, small talking (ugh, I know), and being more open to my friends. I used to get panic attacks all the time in class, to the point where I stopped talking, which just made it worse. I had no idea these were panic attacks until half a year ago.
I also decided to get over some bad memories that I had by talking to my friends, and they haven't bothered me since.
Generalized anxiety and low self esteem: Mostly journalling about my emotions and writing things down that I thought were good about myself. I did this for a month at least before I stopped. (kind of embarrassing, but...) As a rule, I wrote down 10 things about myself that were positive, with one new thing each time. I only followed the latter part of the rule some of the time, but it still helped me build myself up again.
^the truest form of INTP apology. "It may sound like we care. But actually screw you."Sorry for my spam of threads lately, but meh I'm really not.
I've dealt with anxiety since I was in my early teens. I think some people have an innate tendency to worry. For example, if there is nothing particular to think about, worry will normally result. And when you combine this worry with excessive thinking (which most of us do) it is a real recipe to create anxiety.
With me, it's as if I have to have something to be anxious about. That might sound as if I want it, but that's not so.
No matter what form it is, how it came about, or how you have felt, feel, or will feel about your anxiety, the most affective method to reduce it is to give it less time. The less time you give it the less energy it has to survive. This is not always easy, often not even possible, but if you work at moving on - engaging with others, getting out there, ignoring and ultimately forgetting physiological symptoms.
Your anxiety survives on the amount of attention you give it. Any amount of rumination (and we don't even notice the rumination we do, as it's almost second nature. That's why it's important to lose yourself in things, to break the rumination cycle) will stir up anxiety, and make it more difficult to navigate.
I'm not so sure that reading about it, or researching it, will result in a cure for anxiety. It might help understanding, but once that understanding is understood, then get out there, don't care what people think, don't care how you appear, don't care at all, just lose yourself in what's happening, pay no heed whatsoever to physiological symptoms, be spontaneous.
Anxiety gives us a feeling like it will never leave. But it is a strange creature, because some time later you will find it gone, and realize how weak a thing is was, in the face of your own self-propulsion. But if it comes back, in one form or another, always remember that it will stay alive for as long as you feed it with attention. Refocus your attention on other things in your life. Then the anxiety (maybe not straight away, but soon enough afterwards) will die.
I've had rather bad anxiety before, but it's usually been caused by health issues. Now that I have my body in a state of orderliness(or at least for the most part) I'm finding that I'm not anxious at all hardly, except at regular times(starting a new job for instance, or talking to a cute girl).
Another cause for my lack of anxiety could be my increased levels of not giving a fuck. I honestly don't care enough most of the time to be anxious, if something happens then it happens. I'm a fat-ass, but I'm not anxious about it cause I really don't care about what other people think of me, and it's not affecting my health so I don't care(I don't over-eat, but my metabolism is really slow).
I know it's easier said than done, but perhaps you should try to practice not giving a shit more so that you can cultivate it as a personality trait. People will try to tell you that it's not a good trait to have, but they're just jealous. :kitteh:
l think the most annoying person l know with anxiety is an ESFP, she's incredibly difficult to be around and on a buttload of medication that only makes her dysfunctional and still annoying as *** >_>
Then, an ISTJ. She makes life hard for everyone else because her anxiety makes her so rigid that she projects it outward.
l guess l think mine is just more internal.
Medicating mental disorders is honestly one of the scariest things that our society does right now in my opinion.
My ISTJ mother does the same thing when she's stressed. It's possibly the most annoying thing I've encountered so far because she plans things inside her head and expects us to know them, ugh.
I tend to beat myself up when I have anxiety, which is probably the worse part of it. Not anyone else, just me. I think that projecting some of my worries more outward was what helped to get rid of them. Just talking to someone about them would relieve them a little.