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Why "doing something relaxingâ does not help your anxiety
A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing ârelaxingâ things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.
This advice is always well-intentioned, and Iâm not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way. Â
THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a ârelaxingâ thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing thatâs bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.
You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust meâitâs a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You canât physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind.Â
People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.
In fact, you could say thatâs what anxiety isâhyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or theyâll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture.Â
Therefore, I present to you:Â
THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS
âGo on a walk
âWatch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.
âGo anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching
âDraw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind
âDo yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally driftÂ
âDo literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:
âDo a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.
âWrite something. It doesnât have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when youâre done. Itâs not for publication, itâs a relief exercise that only you will see.Â
âRead something, watch TV, or watch a movieâas long as itâs engrossing. Donât watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in.Â
âMasturbate. Yes, Iâm serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie itâs running. It canât run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (âŠI hope. If it can, thenâŠignore this one.)Â
âDo math problemsâliterally, google âalgebra problems worksheetâ and solve them. If you havenât done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I donât mean with math, I mean with the anxiety.Â
âPlay a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel.Â
âPlay a video game, as long as itâs not something like candy crush or Tetris thatâs mindless.Â
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:
âList the capitals of all the U.S. states
âList the capitals of all the European countries
âList all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors.Â
âList all the blonde celebrities you can think of.
âPull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever. Â
Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  Iâve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too.Â
(Now this shouldnât have to be said but if the âdo notsâ work for you then by all means do them. Theyâve just never worked for me.)
This wouldâve been great an hour ago
This is good advice for anxious peeps and peeps with anxious friends. Seems obvious now but I hadnât thought about it this way before.
I need to listen to music or run an audiobook any time I walk somewhere because otherwise the distance between my room and the mailbox (let alone between home and work) is too long to be alone with my thoughts.
My âyes, andâ just to say that all of these are great, and also some tips for turning non-brain occupying activities into brain occupying activities.
My tip for turning walks into a brain occupying activity (besides listening to an audiobook or calling somebody) is to learn a little bit about (depending where you walk) plant identification, bird identification, architecture, language, etc. if Iâm wondering what each of the 20 different plants in the garden I just passed by are, Iâm not thinking about other things. If Iâm in a neighborhood where many of the signs are not in my native language, trying to read them and figure them out is another way to keep my mind busy. (You can also do games like âlook for things that begin with sâ for any object, labeled or unlabeled.)
Similar with manual hobbies. I donât draw much, but I do a lot of fabric stuff. Straightforward stitching might not be great when anxious (unless Iâm doing e.g. a language practice audiobook at the same time), but puzzling out a difficult mending/repair project or planning/starting a new patchwork project (colors, shapes, how I want the pieces to go together, and even piecing them together if itâs a complicated one), can be very mentally occupying.
If I find my mind wandering will listening to audiobooks or podcasts, upping the speed usually helps. If my mind still wanders, then it probably means Iâm bored with the thing and should listen to something else.
I hope that helps someone!
Still trying to figure out how to make doing yoga more compatible with my brain âŠ
The above comment, about nature identification and manual hobby crafts, reminds me of a great piece of advice I saw from another post I think I reblogged somewhere:
Start a new sicktime hobby when youâre still feeling well.
Itâs great to do low-energy activities when youâre ill, or distracting activities when youâre anxious, but trying to find, start, or learn a new hobby when youâre already ill/anxious is really hard! So if e.g. you think youâd like to play a video game next time youâre anxious, install Steam and learn the controls for a game now! Donât wait til youâre in the middle of a panic attack!
Which leads to my next pointâŠ
Playing Tetris is a great distraction!
Yet another reason to love Tetris!
As someone who has actively worked in mental health over a decade AND suffers from severe anxiety, here is what has helped me and my clients in panic and/or anxiety attack moments:
1. The Five Senses Game: list 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, and 1 you can taste (this is where I would give my client a piece of candy, something to drink, and/or something from their lunchbox, etc). It's all about pulling someone out of their head and making them stop and think.
2. The 6 Colors Method: tell me what you see that's red, that's blue, yellow, green, orange, purple or pink. The colors do NOT matter, and the number doesn't either, really, it's still all about getting them out of their head.
3. Wash or wipe your face and hands with cold water. A wet wipe in public also helps if you have them (I work with children and half my caseload has kids of varying needs with autism so most of my foster parents have wet wipes on them in the community). It is neurologically proven to help "reset" the brain when you're in meltdown mode. You can also hold something cold or take a cool shower but please do NOT hold ice for too long because it can hurt you or them.
4. Follow up with box breaths and do NOT underestimate breathing exercises. Yes, they're hard as hell to do when your brain is in complete disarray, but I usually encourage this one after we've used a different coping skill. With littles, encourage them to "blow out the candles" on their fingers, give them a candle to smell, etc. I've even used something similar with toddlers trying to cry/scream in a tantrum. I'll lower my voice and tell them I can't hear them and tell them to take a deep breath (it's important you do the deep breath too so they can mimic you; kids love to mimic adults and copy what we do and they're so eager to do things "right" by copying us). This has worked 4 times out of 5 when I use it and I've got very young kids I work with and I have a gaggle of niblings.
I hope this can help someone đ€ I'm autistic so I also tend to fall into something familiar to get my brain off of something and lately it's been Moonlight Peaks on my Switch. The biggest thing is to get out of your own head most of the time and something distracting where you use your brain, or even something that's completely shocking and pulls you up short, can help so much!
can i have a sip of your cigarette
tumblr is the website for if you're just someone's weird sister
If Batman and Spider-Man switched rogues galleries none of their villains would last more than ten minutes against the new enemy
Batman takes down all of Spider-Manâs villains with ruthless efficiency and preparation
Batmanâs villains are all like âTAKE ME SERIOUSLY DAMMITâ and Spider-Man is like âNo đâ
The Joker would have an intense hatred for Spider-Man because Spider-Man is actually funny
That was the exact thought process behind this post
In Gotham:
âRiddle me this-â
âI like knock knock jokes better.â
In New York:Â
Green Goblin is getting his ass beat by 12 orphans in spandex
Once again John Oliver proves that you can do anything with money and lawyers
Oliver then proceeded to detail how with $50 and knowledge of the law he was able to successfully apply online to create a debt buying company named âCentral Asset Recovery Professionals,â or as Oliver put it, âCARPâ named after âa bottom-feeding fish.â
After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.
Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.
Then, instead of chasing down the 9,000 debtors in the debt package as a normal collection agency would, Oliver decided to stage the largest one-time giveaway in television history and work with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to forgive the $15 million with no consequences for the debtors.
Okay but now I know what I want to do of I get rich?
You dont have to be rich to do a bit of this actually
RIP Medical Debt is a charity (and therefore takes donations). They buy the rights to medical debt and then forgive them. So far theyâve forgiven over 1B in medical debt.
So a little ray of hope for someone out there today.
Donating $10 buys $1,000 of medical debt. This is real, it works, and weâve done it ourselves. You can too.
As of June 29, 2024, the charity is still active under a new name, Undue Medical Debt
Signal Boost!!!
If youâre Catholic this is a great thing to do for the Jubilee year by the way. Forgive debts and set captives free!
Now renamed as Undue Medical Debt:
Undue Medical Debt makes it easy for donors to make an impactful difference in the lives of those struggling with medical debt.
I got a letter recently letting me know that a $3k medical bill from an emergency room visit in 2018 had been purchased by Undue Medical Debt and destroyed. Gone forever. They were very clear that I didnât have to do anything, but they would appreciate it if I would talk to people about it to spread the word about what they were doing. Fucking phenomenal.
I got $2k erased last year!
Once again John Oliver proves that you can do anything with money and lawyers
Oliver then proceeded to detail how with $50 and knowledge of the law he was able to successfully apply online to create a debt buying company named âCentral Asset Recovery Professionals,â or as Oliver put it, âCARPâ named after âa bottom-feeding fish.â
After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.
Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.
Then, instead of chasing down the 9,000 debtors in the debt package as a normal collection agency would, Oliver decided to stage the largest one-time giveaway in television history and work with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to forgive the $15 million with no consequences for the debtors.
Okay but now I know what I want to do of I get rich?
You dont have to be rich to do a bit of this actually
RIP Medical Debt is a charity (and therefore takes donations). They buy the rights to medical debt and then forgive them. So far theyâve forgiven over 1B in medical debt.
So a little ray of hope for someone out there today.
Donating $10 buys $1,000 of medical debt. This is real, it works, and weâve done it ourselves. You can too.
As of June 29, 2024, the charity is still active under a new name, Undue Medical Debt
Signal Boost!!!
If youâre Catholic this is a great thing to do for the Jubilee year by the way. Forgive debts and set captives free!
Now renamed as Undue Medical Debt:
Undue Medical Debt makes it easy for donors to make an impactful difference in the lives of those struggling with medical debt.
I got a letter recently letting me know that a $3k medical bill from an emergency room visit in 2018 had been purchased by Undue Medical Debt and destroyed. Gone forever. They were very clear that I didnât have to do anything, but they would appreciate it if I would talk to people about it to spread the word about what they were doing. Fucking phenomenal.
I got $2k erased last year!
I highly recommend developing a tolerance for polite low level conflict, not just because it will serve you well when employers or whoever try to impose bullshit on you with the expectation you'll fold rather than expend energy arguing, but because it will make you a genuine asset to your friends and allies whenever they're in positions where they're less able to fight for themselves.
the first and most important step is learning to stay calm when someone with authority tries to pressure you. take a breath, think about what you actually believe, and respond in your own time. if they try to brush past or talk over you, you can say "excuse me, can I think about that for a moment. I'd like to give you a proper answer." self esteem. you're both just upright monkeys.
nothing in the world makes me more evil than just being kind of annoyed
me when i'm in genuine agonising distress: i'm so sorry if i'm bothering you with my childish histrionics :/
me when i'm just in a bit of a bad mood: i hope hydrogen bombs fall on every living thing in the universe
Answer: yes they can!
âSometimes suffering is just suffering. It doesnât make you stronger. It doesnât build character. It only hurts.â
â Kate Jacobs (via quotemadness)
wow the former mayor instituted policies that made it easier for poorer newlywed couples to afford to live in Seoul and now we're seeing elementary schools filling up again? Surely this means nothing.
"Population decline" is one of many neoliberal myths sold by people who want to convince you that your neighbors' misery is due to cultural reasons and not due to their slashing of social safety nets. Every time we see concession to the working class even in capitalist countries, we see any number of social ills that was seen as a crisis and too ingrained in society getting better fairly quickly. Never let anyone pretend that redistribution of wealth in the short term and the capture of means of production and distribution of capital in the long term isn't the solution to many many of the social ills we see today.
it is actually so important to me to be alone at my house
honestly one of the all time tweets of all time tbh
My morning glory doesnât like the wind chime
SHUT
reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to âviolating one or more of Tumblrâs Community Guidelinesâ, but since my wish came true the first time, Iâm putting it back. :)
OH MY FUCKING GOD, ITâS BACK ON MY DASH.
THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.
The last time I saw this on my dash, I didnât think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.
AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.
THIS SHIT WORKS, TRY IT.
YOOOOOOO
I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT âITS WORTH A TRYâ SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS
LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL
IM STILL FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS
holy fuck, I didnât expect this to work, I was like psh, whatever itâs just a quick reblog, but I wished my Dad would actually respond back to me AND HE FUCKING DID A FEW DAYS LATER, I GOT A FUCKING TEXT FROM MY DAD TODAY WHO HASNâT SPOKEN OR RESPONDED TO ME IN MONTHS HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS MAGIC IT WORKS.Â
I WANTED TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND AND I DIDNâT THINK IâD GET DAYS OFF BUT THIS WEEKEND IâM HEADING UP THERE??? THIS IS CRAZY SHITÂ
SO LIKE I JOKINGLY WISHED FOR MY OWN LEN KAGAMINE AND THEN LIKE A WEEK LATER I GOT A LEN NENDOROID??? H ELP
WTF OKAY SO THIS SHOT ACTUALLY WORKS BECAUSE WHEN I WISHED, I HAD WISHED MY CRUSH WOULD LIKE ME BACK AND GUESS WHAT? I HAVE A BOYFRIEND NOW. WHAT THE HELLLLL?????
ok Iâve said this before but IM DOING IT AGAIN THE FIRST TIME I SAW THIS, MY WISH DID COME TRUE SO I REBLOGED AGAIN AND SAID IT IN THE TAGS BUT THEN I WISHED FOR SMTH ELSE AND IT LITERALLY LITERALLY HAPPENED LIKE A COUPLE DAYS LATER WHAT THE HELL SO NOW IM WRITING THIS HERE FOR YOU BC I DONT BELIEVE IN THIS CRAP BUT STILL ITâS AN AWFULLY BIG COINCIDENCE
OKAY I SWEAR TO GOD THIS THING WORKS YOU HAVE TO PATIENT BC I WISHED THAT I COULD MOVE AWAY FROM MY SHITTY TOWN TO A WARM PLACE AND GUESS WHAT THIS JULY IM MOVING TO NORTH CAROLINA OKAY GUYS IM NOT MAKING THIS UP I AM SO CONFUSED ACTUALLY THIS IS GREAT BYE
LEMME TELL U SOMETHING THIS SHIT WORKS
i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.
What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?
It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.
My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict đ
