Anxiety Options

[karmakiller]

Ok, since this isn't a bear-your-soul kinda forum, I'm not going to do that, but lately I've been having lots of issues with Anxiety. It's always been a problem, but it seems like it's getting worse.

I'll have anxiety attacks (they're different than panic attacks), whenever I find myself in a crowd my heart beats really fast and find myself telling myself to calm down and just breathe.

My question is if any of you have any problems with anxiety? What do you do to cope with it? Have you sought any professional help?

I'm been thinking that I should go see someone for it, but I don't even know where to begin

[MissFits]

I know how you feel. It's pretty lame. I have really bad anxiety and panic attacks. Once I could leave my house for a week and a half because it got so intense that I couldn't control it. I had panic attacks about once ever other hour and extreme anxiety between them. I lost my job because of it.

I can't go see anyone about it because I don't have insurance or the money to pay anyone but their are lots of home remedies that I found really useful. One of them being smelling something that reminds you of your childhood. Maybe your mothers perfume, your fathers cologne, or baby powder (that's what I used). If you smell it and try to calm yourself down it is really useful, for me anyways. I also used statistics to keep myself from feeling completely insane. I found out that 1/4 people have panic or anxiety attacks at least once a week and that 90 some odd percent of people over the age of 50 have had at least one panic or anxiety attack in their life.

The best advice I can give is don't let it run your life. I read that is how phobias manifest themselves. If, for example, you have a panic attack in your car and you avoid getting in cars for that reason you might develop a phobia of cars by grouping cars and panic attacks. I never ran from any of the things that caused me to feel that way and it made me feel more in control which helped me get over my panic attacks. It's been about 2 months since I have had a full blown panic attack and I feel really accomplished.

I hope that helped.