Tips for Dealing with Anxiety About Anxiety

Physically taking a step back has helped me many times. Its something small but when I'm around someone that is making my anxiety worse I take a slow deep breath and a small step back distancing myself from the person. I can't remember where I read about it but anxiety stems from our fight or flight instincts so distancing yourself from the perceived threat may help. I also carry a hairtie with me everywhere because fidgeting helps me a lot. This is what I do with the hairtie https://youtube.com/shorts/aCCjbnDBCSs?feature=share The only thing is sometimes if I untie the knot too fast I accidentally fling it across the room so sometimes I use two hands to untie it if I'm particularly anxious and don't have another one with me or I'm worried about losing it.

love these techniques! Is there anything you know about fighting anxiety in the moment (when in social situations)?

Honestly I just try to have a plan for when anything goes wrong. I know I'm an anxious person and I get panic attacks about getting anxious at the wrong time/around the wrong people so when I start to feel off, I start going through one of my plans depending on where I'm at/who I'm around. Sometimes I pull up Elyse Myers videos on Instagram/youtube (everything about her makes me feel better) or sometimes I practice a grounding technique (54321 or 333, if you google them they should come up) and I have a playlist (mostly twenty one pilots because their songs help me a lot) that I can sing to at the top of my lungs. If I'm going to be around any pets or kids I always try to spend time with them because both are great distractions from my mind. Planning is one of the ways I ground myself so if I'm feeling anxious and I have a day coming up where I need to get 3 things done I'll write those things down and an estimate of how long they'll take me to complete and any other info related to those things. Hope this helps!

Anxiety about anxiety is a different realm because you need to know what the first anxiety is triggered from, hopefully determining that will help, otherwise my other shotty advice is trying to rationalize the fear (I know its hard and you might have already tried but its all I know 😅 I need help too)

I heard this weird idea somewhere, "There's no use worrying about something twice" I took is as, if I can't change or effect anything right now, I should try not to worry about it because it won't fix anything. Its helped me a lot, I use to have anxiety days before events or anything that scared me, but telling myself there's nothing I can do to change it currently, it helped, but takes a while for your brain to adjust (Now I only have anxiety a few hours before things instead of days 😅😅😅)