Anxiety Management

Anxiety seems unavoidable.

Here are eight tips for managing it as suggested by some:

• Sleep
• Daily Exercise
• Meditate
• Acceptance
• Drop the coffee
• "This too shall pass"
• Talk to others
• Connect to yourself

This is all fine and good but when you are in the midst of anxiety, one really does not think about having an “out-of-body” experience so that one can examine how best to manage the situation.  

And, when one is not inside the zone of anxiety, one does not typically think about establishing any type of preventive maintenance program so that one will be better prepared when anxiety happens.

So, what does one do?

According to an online dictionary, anxiety can be defined as:

A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome,

OR,

A nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks.

Panic Attacks can be defined as:

A sudden feeling of acute and disabling anxiety.

So, we have come full circle and are back to anxiety.  And, if you are one of those unfortunate souls (like this writer) who has panic attacks, do you really think that any of those 8 tips above are really going to help?

For me, none of them work.  I have had panic attacks in doctor’s offices where I started sweating profusely, started shaking, and felt like I was going to faint…  so, I simply got down on the floor and breathed in and out deeply until it passed.

A friend of mine has panic attacked and informed me that a wet rag on the back of the neck helps it to slow down and eventually disappear.

I’ve had panic attacks while driving in traffic and I just had to concentrate and focus on driving during the sweating and eventually it was over.

Anxiety cannot be prevented and each and every one of us deals with it in different ways and lists of remedies may help some but not everyone and actually seems more like a placebo than anything else.