[escobar929]

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

I'll be sitting in a meeting thinking "oh boy... here I go!" and then nothing happens. Repeat. I've taught myself to just snap out of it by distracting myself as I think it replaces the distraction my mind is trying to accomplish with the passing out BS. I'm just starting to get over the most recent bout.

I suffer from exactly this from time to time, it sucks but like you said, the best way to deal w/ it is to think of something else and dont think about freaking out, I try to think happy thoughts, like big boobs

Pot can help but depends on the type, some can make you even worse. I have noticed a lil bit of alcohol can also help, like a couple of sips, not getting white girl wasted

[SyL3nTFoRcE]

I just recently starting dealing with anxiety. It started 3 months ago i got my first panic/anxiety attack while i was driving. felt like i was having a heart attack but it was just my mind over reacting. i notice i put alot of thought into many things especially if i feel pain on my body i just keep thinking it might lead to a heart attack. i never had anxiety before. it could be because i used to work 12-15 hr shifts in the IT field. i would get headaches and then go for a drive and my headaches would clear up but my anxiety would kick in and i would start freaking out a little bit. its hard to sleep at night if my head is full of thoughts. My doctor gave meds but i do not like the effects or even taking anti-depressants at all. i just try to deal with it, i notice out of work im ok not bad unless if im in big crowds, i try to think about other things and it works most of the time sometimes it doesnt.

Exercise helps and drinking a little and relaxing, playing some video games or even cleaning my car, i know i can deal with it but i want to just get rid of it.

i guess it depends on the person also

[Augenbrauezug]

Originally Posted by bumere90

If you want to defeat your anxiety, you have to be engaged in sports, boxing, martial arts..etc

This is far from a be-all end-all, I'm very active and have had problems with it all my life.

[grimlock]

It's like the over-thinking thread, where the 'problem' is proposed as a contradication -how do you NOT overthink?
The cause of both I think is similar, as the cause of all things, all phenomenon, but it is not clearily spelled out because it is complicated and so somewhere along something goes wrong and this 'symptom' appears, and doesn't go away.
What is this 'cause' then? -Nothing more than just life, the way things are (wow, that's helpful) but more specifically it's that we are beings inherently programmed to survive (in a hostile world) alot of which is not apparent immediately because it is mundane and so overlooked, or pretty much automactic, like breathing.
So how does the urge/will/'program' to survive cause anxiety?
Like this. We are anxious for a reason, it is in our genes, we did not have to know to have a coherent thought to feel anxiety -we FEEL it, right?
It's a knawing discomfort that makes our limbs light feeling and we start to sweat etc. -I think animals know this feeling too (without having to have coherent thought like humans) because it is how nature/genes/GOD(or whatever) makes the little animal look out for predators and pre-set to flee on a dime.
Back to how it works in humans. With us it gets complicated, because we have coherent thought, we manipulate concepts in our minds that are the binary equivalent to real objects, we make SENSE of the world so that it appears logical and this helps us survive, hence why it has evolved to such.
[take a break]

[grimlock]

How does the ability for conceptual thought (redundant) get messed up with the feeling (in the pysiological sense of the world, you 'feel' it as opposed to think it, thought has no feeling right? unless you're talking about feeling yourself thinking, which is possible, opps digression)
It is because you don't know what the feeling of anxiety MEANS, or what the hell it is, why it is there, what to do about it.
Imagine yourself getting nervous because there is a lion walking on the pavement across the street, I tell you "Uh, Lion, ..run?" then you run and excape before it sees you, and you are safe. Do you feel nervous anymore? Probably not, at least not about the lion. But probably very soon you'll start feeling nervous about somehting else, esp. if you have this anxiety disease/condition.
So is there a simple, solvable reason like the lion for why you are nervous? I don't know, I don't have this so need your guidance on the intricasies.. but I suppose it's possible.
Whenever I read about anxiety, I get a thought, wouldn't it feel horrible to have this, then I imagine myself getting anxious about getting anxious.. or something like that, and it's truly frightening even though I haven't experienced it fully-fledged, dipping my toes so to speak and it's enough to make me want to stop thinking about it, shiver and thank god I don't have it.
So I don't have a 'cure' so to speak, but I think the resolution lies in asking why you are anxious, but that will make you question everything in your life (no exceptions) and maybe now you should ask if that is the path you want to take.. haha. ?
Oh boy. Good luck.

[Ehwnnc]

Originally Posted by grimlock

How does the ability for conceptual thought (redundant) get messed up with the feeling (in the pysiological sense of the world, you 'feel' it as opposed to think it, thought has no feeling right? unless you're talking about feeling yourself thinking, which is possible, opps digression)
It is because you don't know what the feeling of anxiety MEANS, or what the hell it is, why it is there, what to do about it.
Imagine yourself getting nervous because there is a lion walking on the pavement across the street, I tell you "Uh, Lion, ..run?" then you run and excape before it sees you, and you are safe. Do you feel nervous anymore? Probably not, at least not about the lion. But probably very soon you'll start feeling nervous about somehting else, esp. if you have this anxiety disease/condition.
So is there a simple, solvable reason like the lion for why you are nervous? I don't know, I don't have this so need your guidance on the intricasies.. but I suppose it's possible.
Whenever I read about anxiety, I get a thought, wouldn't it feel horrible to have this, then I imagine myself getting anxious about getting anxious.. or something like that, and it's truly frightening even though I haven't experienced it fully-fledged, dipping my toes so to speak and it's enough to make me want to stop thinking about it, shiver and thank god I don't have it.
So I don't have a 'cure' so to speak, but I think the resolution lies in asking why you are anxious, but that will make you question everything in your life (no exceptions) and maybe now you should ask if that is the path you want to take.. haha. ?
Oh boy. Good luck.

You are right when you speak of getting anxious about being anxious.

Do you have a fear or anything of that sort? Maybe a traumatic experience?

This is where it ties in. If you have ever had a panic attack you will understand. Its always in the back of your mind that it will happen again. The human brain is an amazing thing, you can not control everything going on up there. Some way some how that fear comes up now and again then anxiety builds up which then can turn into a panic attack.

I am a very strong minded person, very out spoken. I do not get nervous very often, i have no problem speaking infront of people nor do i have a problem talking to people yet i suffer from anxiety.

The only root to my anxiety that i can think of is if i cant control the situation it bothers me but i am working on it and will overcome it

[grimlock]

Originally Posted by Ehwnnc

You are right when you speak of getting anxious about being anxious.

Do you have a fear or anything of that sort? Maybe a traumatic experience?

This is where it ties in. If you have ever had a panic attack you will understand. Its always in the back of your mind that it will happen again. The human brain is an amazing thing, you can not control everything going on up there. Some way some how that fear comes up now and again then anxiety builds up which then can turn into a panic attack.

I am a very strong minded person, very out spoken. I do not get nervous very often, i have no problem speaking infront of people nor do i have a problem talking to people yet i suffer from anxiety.

The only root to my anxiety that i can think of is if i cant control the situation it bothers me but i am working on it and will overcome it

I have a gnawing discontent, a dissatisfaction with life that causes me to delve too deeply into philosophy as comfort.
I have a friend who had this, the last time I saw him he was a overly exuberant 14yr old and the next time when we were college, he had completely changed and was riddled, so I always wondered what happened.

It seems related to certain events or places, but what they actually are are not important in the cure, I believe only the structure of the problem matters.
So how does the feeling of anxiety get linked to the 'trigger'? It just does, get bit by a dog, you fear dogs. This is not important.
The 'crux' of the problem, is the feedback mechanism, how do you get stuck in a constant loop from which there is no escape?
Go back to fear, different from anxiety right?. Fear is getting shock, jittery .. anxious is sweating and worrying, right? These are real, gene-produced reactions/bodily functions that are REAL and exists. Do not try to imagine it away, cover it, modify it in any way, it won't work and just makes it messier.
Okay, so what we are trying to do is the create a structure, a delineation of the 'real' psychosomatic, or all things emotional/mental/pysiologicaly..to see if being able to see the problem from far above in its entirety, thus understanding it, allows us to 'solve' it.

So you get anxious, then you try to do something about it. First mistep, this is what creates the 'loop'. The loop that consists of trigger-reaction-unwanted result-repeat.
The goal is to stop your reaction to feeling anxious. It is your fighting it that creates the problem of anxiety/panic attacks. Or the problemafication of it so that it is not 'normal' anxiety, but a PROBLEM, right?
[break]

[grimlock]

But when does it go from 'normal' anxiety to becoming a problem? This is the crucial event, the 'crystallisation' or 'becoming' of the problem. What happens? I think it is when you THINK you have a problem. Or when you realized it's a problem.. but you only think it to be true, but because of the feedback mechanism it's as good as true. So once you thought you had a problem, you now really do have a problem.
How is this? Due to conceptualisation, or the process of thought. What is thought? Believing one thing leads to another (is related to, hence in time 'leads' to).. acquired through your own experience.
You experienced the feelings of anxiety, then panic.. specifically, feeling anxious makes you take action, which you are unaware of, but I am now pointing out to you (kinda of like the experiment showing how nobody saw the gorilla in the room, because the experimenter told them to focus on something else). See that you take evasive action, TRY hard not to panic, which inevitably makes you panic even more. This is the logistics or the bird's eye view of it, what actually you do and in what order you can examine later, but let's get to the crux.
The crux is conceptualisation, the thought. Specifically the moment you had the thought "I have a problem". This happens when you had the bad experience, it shocks you thoroughly, it is new, and it becomes indeliably ingrained in you by ... conceptualisation.
How? You thought "S***, I never want that to happen again." or simply, you don't like it, so you are want to avoid it, but by doing so you are creating the loop that IS the problem.
So you see: 'virgin' experience -> conceptualisation (I want to avoid this) -> (take) action to avoid it -> those you thought remedial actions ONLY make it worse, lead to the supernova of Panic Attack
Okay, so you know all this, are you cured? No.
The cure is working backward through.. you guessed it, conceptualisation.
How? Here is where you take your gear down and start firing. See that it makes no sense to have a panic attack, or specifically that you CAN not have a panic attack.. before you did it wrong by trying to AVOID it, you created it. Here you do not avoid it.. if you feel anxious, tough.. just, do not fight it. Then what happens? It will be over, eventually.. not as bad as last time? This is the correct direction.
It is you BELIEVING that you had a problem, and NOT SEEING you are doing what you wanted to avoid in the first place.
The Concept is the pivot for you to work against, it will never fail. If the force against you is strong, just think of the pivot.. tough it out.. and it's over already. Getting less worse each time? Good that's the correct way.
[break]

[grimlock]

In case it's not clear what the Concept or conceptualisation is, it is the logical irrefutability that it is not logical what you are doing. You believe that your remedial actions to save you from your fear will work, but as time has shown it doesn't.
Okay, this makes sense, is logically sound.. but why doesn't it seem to carry any 'meat'.. it seems hollow and there is nothing to work with.
Here is the fuel. Because you now 'suspect' or partially believe that what you previously believe about this is false.. something else must give. It is everything else you know about the world and you existence, everything. From the moment of your birth and even before, you will discover relevent facts about the people who brought you into the world, because you needed to know it for logicality to balance itself, once you determined that your problem is false.
What I mean by this is, the reason why you were suspectible to false logicality, everyone is, is because everything is conditional, and our experience is shallow and limited, hence we believe a lot of incorrect and absurd things. And for each of us these things vary wildly, but we share these 'myths' with the people who brought us up and surround us.
See the two are mutually exclusive, cannot co-exist. Your parents are good and truthful and you are anxiety riddled, or they are imperfect and don't believe their take on the story and your ship is righted. But ofcourse alot of things will change.. but if you want to correct your problem at the cause, this is the cause.
You start to question everything, everyone.. you build your new set of facts, you feel yourself growing, getting more competent, you know this is the right direction.
Enough for now, I am hungry.

[UncleWede]

Originally Posted by shah269

One word

Yoga!


No only will you feel better but the studio will be filled with attractive long legged, flat bellied, perky boobied amazing assed bendy ladies rocking very tight clothing!

+1. You either get lost in trying to accomplish as much as these ladies (so you at least THINK you have a chance) or else you just relax and enjoy the scenery.

[delman27]

If you find yourself panicking, try these tips:

Wear a rubber band on your wrist and snap it a few times.

Pinch the heck out of the top of your wrist and focus on the pain.

Breathe from your diaphragm. Look up how.

Turn it into a positive- " I am feeling excited, not anxious. These feelings make me stronger, more focused, ready for anything. " This approach works for performance anxiety.

Getting pissed at it helps the most for me. I focus on it and internally say, "I dare you to make my heart beat even faster. F$ck you. Try and make me pass out.". Crack a smile and challenge it. The panic will always lose.

[BMWM3DREAM]

Some very knowledgeable people on this website.

[daninsyd]

Originally Posted by ideliver

cognitive behavioral therapy...read David Burns "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy"

Yep good idea.

A slow process of desensitization works.

[Augenbrauezug]

Originally Posted by grimlock

In case it's not clear what the Concept or conceptualisation is, it is the logical irrefutability that it is not logical what you are doing. You believe that your remedial actions to save you from your fear will work, but as time has shown it doesn't.
Okay, this makes sense, is logically sound.. but why doesn't it seem to carry any 'meat'.. it seems hollow and there is nothing to work with.
Here is the fuel. Because you now 'suspect' or partially believe that what you previously believe about this is false.. something else must give. It is everything else you know about the world and you existence, everything. From the moment of your birth and even before, you will discover relevent facts about the people who brought you into the world, because you needed to know it for logicality to balance itself, once you determined that your problem is false.
What I mean by this is, the reason why you were suspectible to false logicality, everyone is, is because everything is conditional, and our experience is shallow and limited, hence we believe a lot of incorrect and absurd things. And for each of us these things vary wildly, but we share these 'myths' with the people who brought us up and surround us.
See the two are mutually exclusive, cannot co-exist. Your parents are good and truthful and you are anxiety riddled, or they are imperfect and don't believe their take on the story and your ship is righted. But ofcourse alot of things will change.. but if you want to correct your problem at the cause, this is the cause.
You start to question everything, everyone.. you build your new set of facts, you feel yourself growing, getting more competent, you know this is the right direction.
Enough for now, I am hungry.

Your set of posts helped more than any book I've ever read. Thank you.

[Mbbrewer]

You're definitely not alone. My wife suffers from the same fear. We've been together 10 years and to this day I've never seen her vomit. I am not allowed to talk about it, pretend to do it, if its on TV she has to mute it or change it, and if the kids are vomiting everywhere, I'm on my on with the mess. She refrains from drinking too much mostly out of fear of getting wasted and well...you know.

Originally Posted by Ehwnnc

Sorry i havent been able to post on this. Ive been super busy with work.

Certain situations call for certain ways of dealing with it.

Most of the time it is when i am really tired or have to do things i dont want to do. If i have things planned that im really dreading i try to stay postitive but in the situation i get anxious.

If im at work and it comes on i just keep myself busy. I find anything to keep my mind occupied such as cleaning and so on.

As bad as it sounds a lot of the time, if the oppurtunity is there, I grab a beer.

Majority of the time mine is brought on by, I KNOW THIS IS WIERD AS HELL, fear of vomiting. I dont know why but for some reason i have a fear of it and turns out im not as weird as i seem because many people have the same fear.

[blender]

Any formulation is only as good as the manufacturer ( fake meds from Mexico ring a bell?) Anyway, the label shows 840mg active ingredients per 2 caps, including Kava Kava root. Wikipedia states "The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative and anesthetic properties."

Sounds reasonably active to me....and experientially, it works...
Logically, what have you got to lose? (Except the anxiety) - worst case is simply no improvement, and you're there now. Would a 10% improvement be worth the effort of a test? your call....

-------

Originally Posted by carve

You DO realize that homeopathic remedies have exactly zero active ingredients, right?

I was pretty anxious in my one-sided relationship (she lived a life of leisure, I had to do and worry about everything). Considered divorce and got super-anxious. Got separated and anxiety was dramatically reduced- felt more control and opportunity in my life. In the mean time, when things get tough dealing with the divorce, an occasional attivan works wonders. I'm as relaxed as I am after a couple drinks, except I'm not drunk, of course. Totally aware, coordinated and sharp, although a bit unfiltered. Intense exercise gives me the same effect, but I can't be working out all the time.

[Ehwnnc]

I hate taking any kinds of meds. I dont even take them when im sick. I just let it run its course and i get over it. I feel the same way about anxiety. Why depend on a pill? I have wayyy to much pride for that. Id rather fight it off myself

[grimlock]

Okay, I got a few more thoughts I'd like to share.

(btw, I found this trove of information, not for faint of heart)
http://www.reddit.com/search?q=anxiety

Some of my own thoughts:
Q: What causes anxiety, or any other mental/emotional 'disease'/condition/phenomenon? (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders )

A: The interaction of stimuli (basically everything that happens to you) with your physical (+emotional etc.) self = ie. basicaly 'life'.
It happens because humans are conceptual, have the ability to form thoughts and make sense of the world purely in words/concepts/thoughts. Thus spiders do not get mental/emotional problems, but you could stress it out physicall with bright lights/ noise and it would just die from 'stress', without having formed a thought (or at least not that we can surmise.)

So it is unique to humans.. well chimps, and dogs and pets get some lower-level disorders from stress, but more complicated than a spider, which is which you get birds doing repetitive backflips in their cages or dogs get depressed or cats lick themselves repetitively in a disturbing manner.

These disorders are present because we do not follow understand how the human (or animal) machine works as a whole, software+hardware, the emotional+conceptual .. it is a very complicated machine.

A disorder arises at a certain age, not as a baby, because the faculties required to 'make' the problem are not yet present. I like to blame the parents, but even if nobody had parents, the misunderstandings or incorrect beliefs of localised society or even general society can create the problems.
Witness wartime PTSD. These individuals pressumably don't have a problem before they went to war, but because the event of fighting was so traumatic that a previously non-problem person developed a problem. So everybody is suspect, just if you are lucky or not enough to encounter a traumatic stress. Or if your conceptual framework is very muddled, it only takes a small stressful event to trigger a full blown problem.

Ok so what is this conceptual framework that is the thing suspectible to mental/emotional disease?
It is how you understand the world, how you put all the pieces together, which make you 'logical' and not just random or a purely physical animal that does not think.
Granted, some people are not 'logical' or is limited .. and it is ironic that these people are most resistant to disease. Their thinking does not extend to make the 'logical' connections required to give the incorrect outcome.. they can't think about it, so they have no idea what you are so worried/concerned about.
So thinking can get you in knots, like a long math problem.. but if you have already started the problem you need to correct the wrong figures and get the correct answer or you will be stuck with the wrong answer which will tax you forever unlick the guy who never started the problem in the first place (it's no a matter of choice, so it doesn't matter).

[grimlock]

So a problem manisfests or comes into being, into 'conception' (a pun, get it?) when the brain seeks to make sense of what is happening in life.
This is very broad, so an example.

Monkey in zoo is presented banans through two doors, left and right, the right door banana is rigged with an electric shock (yes, it is that perverse) that is not worth the banana. So after a few repeats, the monkey will never touch the banana in the right door, but doesn't hesitate (or perhaps mildly, if it associates doors or bananas with shocks, that depends on the level of conceptuality of the creature) to get the left banana.
After time, this becomes ingrained, and presented with the same situation (banana in a door, two choices) the action of the monkey is predictable.
What happens if there is only one door? What does the monkey do? No idea, but don't you think it would stop for a moment and think? ..It would be unlikely to immediately reach for it without hesitation as if presented with two doors? Why is this? Because animals have an inherent FEAR or danger mechanism. It KNOWS two doors. left is danger, right is safe - but one door? It will have to investigate and if/when it is brave or hungry enough, it will try.
While this is a stupid and simple example, we work in the exact same way, with everything we do, even though we would like to think of ourselves as a bit more sophisticated or intelligent. We cannot, because we FAIL TO SEE where conceptuality links in with behaviours, which is in fact quite simple but is overlooked or hidden.

Back to humans; when do you get anxious? It starts with a thing, the 'trigger'.. can be anything, in PTSD it can be gunfire sound.
So what happens, gunfire - you tense up immediately, you sense this, then you start to roll down the irrevocatable path of panic, as you sense you are starting to react and it snowballs from there.
So why does it operate on autopilot, out of your control? Because you 'see' what is happening, but you don't understand what is happening.
The first step, BANG triggers the FEAR mechanism - all animals even little cockroaches have this, though in their case they may not feel fear in the same way you do, but they react nonetheless and run like hell. Now what happens if you just run like hell as soon as you here the loud noise that freaks you? You would probably stop after you have traveled a while, you body is pumping with action, but what happened to the fear - it would probably be reduced. Why is that? I have no idea, maybe it's some ancient primodial FEAR-RUN hookup that exists in all living beings that have evolved with the need to preserve their lives.
But anyway, let us prepose a conceptual 'bridge', or structure over this FEAR-action link, and see if it fits, sense we will never figure out exactly the small details of how nature has created this in the physiological sense.

[grimlock]

If I propose that the feeling of FEAR is response produced by the body, to let the concious mind, that is the YOU that decides to run or keep doing whatever you were doing, that a threat is detected by your senses, your ears eyes, nose touch. Is this believable? What happens if you try to ignore it, override it, cast it off as a false warning? Does it stay, increase or go away? Long ago the brain evolved to be able to work with threats pretty efficiently for your ancestors to have stayed alive and evolved to the present you.
But the crux is that this is the INTENDED or primary /only function of the fear-run mechanism - it did not evolve for social situations, for scary movies or gory disease descriptions.
In other words, you are mis-apply, or mis-using, or have misunderstood what FEAR is for, or basically what it is. It came into being to get your prarie-roaming ancestors away from large carnivors .. THAT IS ALL.
Then why do you feel fear when there is something you want to avoid, and it is not a animal with sharp teeth? No idea, maybe by simply wanting to avoid it, this is the same 'code' as the primal FEAR code, which is see threat->run, the brain inevitably uses this time-honored method. (Actually this is interesting, never thought of it before now)
Anyway, to find out if this speculation is correct or not, try to disprove it, and if it works, then its good as true (which is the same as your problem, even though it is imaginary, is as good as true)

[carve]

Originally Posted by rclem05

Any formulation is only as good as the manufacturer ( fake meds from Mexico ring a bell?) Anyway, the label shows 840mg active ingredients per 2 caps, including Kava Kava root. Wikipedia states "The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative and anesthetic properties."

Sounds reasonably active to me....and experientially, it works...
Logically, what have you got to lose? (Except the anxiety) - worst case is simply no improvement, and you're there now. Would a 10% improvement be worth the effort of a test? your call....

-------

Read up on homeopathy. If it has measurable amounts of active ingredients, then it isn't homeopathic (unless they're just calling the dilutant itself the active ingredient, which is probably what they're doing). That's actually a good thing, because the substance the dilutions are based on are things that are known to actually make the problems WORSE. For instance, a homeopathic sleeping pill might be a dillution of caffeine, and by dilute, I mean you'd have to take an entire planet's worth of homeopathic sleeping pills to hope to get even one molecule of caffeine.