Tips for anxiety/panic
 

Anyone have some good tips for anxiety or panic or both??

Exercise has been my best cure. Stay busy! The worst thing you can do is sit around the house bored. The other is meditation... This sounds crazy but I have a counselor that taught me some breathing techniques that really help. Good luck!

For me, exercise and meditation have significantly reduced the anxiety I was formally treating with drugs and alcohol. The meditation took several months of daily practice before I started to notice that it was helping. Exercise, for me, gives me a general sense of well being that lasts much of the day. Combined, my anxiety levels are much lower and I no longer have those panic attacks that left me short of breath.

I do breathing exercises (both feet flat on the floor, deep breathing, hands resting on my knees with my palms facing upwards and fingers slightly curled).

When your breathing stops or gets shallow, change it into a nice deep breath.

Exercise and deep breathing. And I learned this long before I had an addiction problem. For me, burning up my energy pretty much makes it impossible for me to have anxiety issues. Reading also helped a ton when I was having severe panic attacks. But I don;t know what you are going through right now, but I do know doing things that make us feel better about living, makes anxiety/panic/stress fade away some. If it is very severe, see a Dr, but try these things first. Getting drugged up before attempting to work it out first is a mistake in my opinion, But if it is severe, see a Dr. I am not giving medical advice, just sharing that in my experience with these issues, these things worked for me and kept me from having to take any medication. And this was 20+ years ago :)

Hypnotherapy.

It is important that you do not focus on trying not to drink. It doesn't work very well and can have the opposite effect like this. Stop smoking.

You see, you imagines a lit cigarette didn't you. Whereas before, you were not thinking about it, the thought has popped into your head. If you are a smoker then your just about to light up a cigarette in the next 5 minutes.

Instead focus on your addictive behaviour, recognise the patterns of the addiction and how we submit to them. Then you will be able to break the addiction patterns and therefore avoid occurrences when relapses occur.

Yes, breathing, as others have said.

When I have an anxiety attack, my breathing becomes shallow and that seems to make things worse. If you take a few deep 'belly' breaths, it will slow your breathing and give you a chance to begin to relax.

Haha, I'm a hypnotist and far beyond that. And you've just written the most horrible trance induction. If you understand trance, reading this is enough to understand that it will give people reason to drink, smoke, whatever. Instead, they should quit.

As Milton said: "My voice will go with you..."

Hearts suggestions are great. That is what I try to do. But I try to add two additional things a couple of people on this board pointed out. Relax your mouth and face into a slight smile. Not a grin, baring teeth, but curve your lips slightly up and breathe deeply. The second, I find that the tenser I get the closer to my ears my shoulders have become - all curled up and stiff. Relax your shoulder blades, uncurl your shoulders, sit up straight and breathe deeply.

I used to get really bad anxiety and what helped me was a bit of basic CBT. I wrote down when I was anxious, why, rated it out of 10 and then what I did to try and get rid of it and then re-rated it. Sounds laborious and stupid I know and I thought so too before I tried it but it really helped. On a practical level it helped me identify what was working and what wasn't but it also made me be rational about it rather than just succumbing to blind panic. There are lots of CBT based books out there about anxiety.

Other than that I just drink lots of tea and go for long walks :)