General anxiety disorder

[Caspar]

Does anyone else have this how do you deal with it? How do you keep it under control? How do you keep from being burnt out by the afternoon?

I feel exhausted and drained by the afternoon of everyday due to my anxiety. Yes, I have been seeing a psychiatrist but any advice here is welcomed. Thanks in advance.

 

[NateSean]

Does anyone else have this how do you deal with it? How do you keep it under control? How do you keep from being burnt out by the afternoon?

I feel exhausted and drained by the afternoon of everyday due to my anxiety. Yes, I have been seeing a psychiatrist but any advice here is welcomed. Thanks in advance.

Do you have a blender or can you get one somewhere for real cheap?

I've found that a milkshake made with bananas and ice cream does the trick for both the exhaustion and the anxiety. Bananas are a natural mood stabilizer and taking a couple of them in liquid form always helps me curb any potential anxiety attacks. Plus the ice cream helps release endorphins.

 

[Caspar]

I don't have a blender but I try to eat a banana every morning...at least I try to. Sometimes I would forget. I have no idea how biochemistry works but I notice that I get especially anxious if I don't take a pill of choline and inositol in the morning.

 

[epath13]

Do you have a blender or can you get one somewhere for real cheap?

I've found that a milkshake made with bananas and ice cream does the trick for both the exhaustion and the anxiety. Bananas are a natural mood stabilizer and taking a couple of them in liquid form always helps me curb any potential anxiety attacks. Plus the ice cream helps release endorphins.

Really, that's interesting. I used to make banana milkshakes all the time, maybe I should start making them again.... Will it also help to stop reacting to people pissing me off?

Saw your page btw, didn't have time to watch the videos yet, never heard of blip before

 

[NateSean]

Will it also help to stop reacting to people pissing me off?

Well, let me put it this way. I would drink a shake before going into work a couple of times during the week. Typically customers would make me both anxietal and pissed. After the shake I was still pissed but I was much more focused, which when you think about it actually makes me far more dangerous.

Saw your page btw, didn't have time to watch the videos yet, never heard of blip before

Cool beans. Yeah, I'm hoping to get the videos at least halfway to professional quality before too long.

 

[alien girl]

i also have both noise anxiety and general anxiety.
i dont know it this is going to work, and havent had time to try it myself yet: sit alone somewhere and take deep breaths. tell yourself you're more relaxed with each breath. and loosen the muscles in your body accordingly. you could start with the shoulder blades or whatever.
it's an exercise that you might not be able to relax at first, but you get better at it as you practise. after a few weeks of doing it you might feel a bit better.

 

[kasmanaft08]

Do you have a blender or can you get one somewhere for real cheap?

I've found that a milkshake made with bananas and ice cream does the trick for both the exhaustion and the anxiety. Bananas are a natural mood stabilizer and taking a couple of them in liquid form always helps me curb any potential anxiety attacks. Plus the ice cream helps release endorphins.

Well now that is the most interesting advice I've ever heard.

 

[NeverEnder]

Does anyone else have this how do you deal with it? How do you keep it under control? How do you keep from being burnt out by the afternoon?

I feel exhausted and drained by the afternoon of everyday due to my anxiety. Yes, I have been seeing a psychiatrist but any advice here is welcomed. Thanks in advance.

I cannot reply with advice. I feel the same way you describe.

 

[Loomis]

Anxiety is the core of many of our problems. If we could only ignore all the crap that is tossed at us and not give a rip we would be so much happier. That's the nut, for me. I do care about stuff, all kinds of stuff and it sits in my mind and rolls around and makes me unhappy. So how do we stop this painful and self-destructive process. I don't have the answer but I suspect it may have someting to do with developing the ability to not care what NTs think or do.

 

[Dara]

I've always been prone to anxiety.
When it's not too intense I can use many ways to reduce it, but sometimes nothing will work.

When I'm anxious because I worry about something specific I try to focus on what exactly scares me. Knowing the source of the problem makes it a lot less scary.
Then I try to relax: I sit or lay on bed, close my eyes and take deep breaths focusing on the physical sensations and I remind myself that I'm safe.
If I can I also try to get distracted watching/reading something fun, listening to good music, talking to a friend that can understand me and/or reassure me.
When my I had a cat I played with him and petted him. He was the best therapy.

When I'm around people and feel exhausted/overwhelmed, I try to imagine a bubble around myself, focus on the inside of it and letting everything else fade away. I focus on myself, my feeling, physical perceptions, my thoughts... I take several breaths and try to keep my mind focused on the present moment. It helps me a lot.


The milk shake advice is very interesting, I'll try it!!

 

[wyverary]

I, too, wind up being extremely anxious by the end of the day.

First I try some general meditation/relaxation techniques. Lie down, let your body physically relax, pay attention to your breathing, whatnot.

Hot green tea sometimes helps, especially with a little warm milk.

I snuggle with my dog. If nothing else works, that usually does.

If it's really bad, and nothing else works, I pour myself a big glass of wine. A couple of those and I'm all set.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

my anxiety feeds my depression which feeds my anxiety which feeds my depression ... you get the idea.

If I had an answer I would happily share.

I do find that sometimes I can calm myself down by a visualization technique. Works pretty fast and you can do it anywhere. Colours are strongly associated with mood and pink is typically very calming. So imagine you are breathing in a cloud of pink gas. Imagine it go into your lungs then as you breath out it expands out to every corner of your body. Repeat as many times as necessary and take as long as you need to visualize this. Basically you combine colour therapy with deep breathing and visualization.

Another one for if you very wound up about something toxic like the other night I was replaying an incident that happened a while ago so I tried a variation. I imagined that when I breathed in and out very deeply that the breath in was pushing out the toxic substance and the breath out was carrying more with it. That worked very fast and I imagined it as being black and that each breath was cleansing me of the toxic thoughts. I was pretty much able to fall asleep after that where as I had been chewing on things I couldn't change for about half an hour before hand.

Taichi is supposed to be full of breathing exercises so could be a good way to improve things. Taichi is also the deadliest marshal art so if someone pisses you off good you know you can back it up. I can vouch for taichi kind of as I used to practice kung fu with a mix of some taichi moves and lets just say you were on the ground before you realized it a lot of the time. The breathing techniques they also borrowed from taichi were pretty good but I only learned the basics.

 

[enigma]

Not on the spectrum but diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. It may have its roots in PTSD in my case, not sure.

The worst time I had to get medication and go on that for a year. I've been without meds for a year now.

The general anxiety always seems to start with some single incident in my case. Only I never realise it. My brain goes on hyperactive mode and that wears me out and I can't stop that. I have to go back and do some digging to find out what it actually is that's stressing me. Once I identify that (it may not be easy), it's often something quite insignificant that's grown out of proportion. Then I can let it go or try to improve things. Contacts with people are biggest stressors so I avoid contacts I don't need and only keep the ones I really want.

Keeping myself busy makes me feel better. But sometimes I just don't have the energy for that. Breathing meditation may help me to calm down, but I have real trouble concentrating. Eating vitamin D has helped some. Talking with a professional eases the stress for a while. Going for a lone nice ride with my horse and I can let all 'junk thoughts' go and enjoy the moment. When all else fails I force myself to sit down and read a book and just breathe so I won't freak out, with a glass of something alcoholic. Autumns seem to be most difficult. I don't know if it's the darkness or the memory in the back of my head of what happened one year at exactly this time. From early spring to late summer it's ok.

I'll try some of the methods you've suggested.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

I understand you totally. Switching off my over active brain is my problem too. I found guitar hero helped a lot as weird as that may sound. I loved to play it until the vertigo got too bad because I had about an hour of peace from my brain. I believe it helped because it engaged both halves of the brain which meant I didn't have much space left for thinking about stuff. I also found when I was practicing martial arts this helped because you have to focus very carefully on you body and the movements are actually very delicate and precise. Therefore it became a form of meditation.

Talking about problems I find helps. Usually I find that the problem I was stressing over suddenly becomes small and stupid when I talk to my husband say about it.

I take fish oil and that has helped. A psychiatrist recommended it because the DHA (I think that's it) repairs pathways in the brain. you do need 500mg a day of it minimum. Getting tablets with this amount in is not easy and I have to take 3 huge capsules a day. It has helped to even out my moods but it can't do anything for the major swings. Right now I'm in a major downward swing and I know none of this stuff will do much to help. I find this tends to help more with the instantaneous panic attack rather than that prolonged several weeks attack.

 

[laurahansb]

I totally understand and feel your pain. I have struggled with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for many years. Although I take medication that really seems to help, I have my bad days. At times, my anxiety is so bad that it is debilitating. During these times, I can't leave the house, concentrate, eat or sleep through the night. I just lie on the couch curled up under my afghan, watching TV and wait for the day to end. I alternate between taking naps, lying there, or pacing around the house. At one point my anxiety was pretty bad. But with my doctor's help and a few coping strategies, life has greatly improved. I think the trick is knowing what works for you as far as managing stress. For example, taking walks and listening to music relaxes me, and so does reading. But even more importantly, I've had to learn to recognize that despite all my efforts to handle the anxiety, I will still have bad days sometimes. And that's okay. I try to remember to forgive myself and realize that I am still a good person. I just worry a bit more than most people.