I’m sorry you were going through it earlier! I know how difficult it is!
I absolutely understand that. It took me a really long time to learn how to work around the anxiety and remember / use what I'd been taught. It's very difficult when you're in the moment, huh? It makes sense, seeing as how anxiety clouds judgement and seemingly takes over. I recommend taking a step back and taking some good, deep breaths.No when I start to freak out like this, the symptoms obviously get worse and then I freak out more, so I never think to try any techniques my therapist or anyone suggest because my mind is so focused on how I’m feeling
And I start to look into everything like oh well is my blood pressure low, what’s my temperature, and do I look pale. I start do that all those things and question what’s going on.
whenever I have to go out anywhere I always carry a cold bottle of water to hold and to press against my face when my anxiety starts, so it’s funny that you mention using an ice pack! I never knew that’s why though but my therapist told me it’s scientifically proven to help anxiety! Whenever I start to feel really hot especially in the face wrap and ice pack in a towel and put it in between my shoulder and neck/jaw. I haven’t tried dunking my face in cold water, but I should definitely try that! it’s the worst feeling when you feel super hot and then when you breath it feels like your breathing out hot air as weird as it may sound and your hearts racing. I find it difficult for myself to use all this techniques that are available for me even though I would absolutely love to feel better. I don’t get why I won’t do it even though I want to be better.
Yep, it's because of how the body responds to cold. The heart begins to slow down in order to conserve energy. Other beneficial changes occur, but I think that's the biggest one in terms of anxiety, getting the heart rate down.
Yeah my anxiety started when I got a kidney infection out of no where 2 years ago and it took a while to get rid of it and I was so worried about stressed out the whole time cause it was scaring me so much and I was nervous about going septic or something because of googling and around the same time a family member all of a sudden got sick and went to the hospital and was told he had pneumonia but we thought it wasn’t a big deal but since he was at an old age they ended up putting him in an induced coma and he never came out of it and we had to take him off life support, so that got me super worried about myself and what I was going through and started a fear of dying for me and then on top of all that someone else super close died in a car accident suddenly because of a heart attack and that made me even more scared and then some other passings happened as well. Ever since all of that I’ve had the worse health anxiety, social anxiety, etc. I feel like I’m bedridden, and confined to a room because of it. I’m constantly feeling weird and lightheaded and nauseous from the anxiety it just never goes away and it gets me worried about going out and going places cause I don’t want to feel that way while I’m out or at a get together/party. I’m terrified of something happening while I’m there like fainting, getting sick or something. And that fear doesn’t go away. I get anxiety attacks and panic attacks thinking about going out because of how nervous it makes me feel. I don’t know how to get around it.
I was really badly agoraphobic when I was younger like this all started for me around 12 years old. I got to the point of not being able to leave my bedroom and go to another part of the house. Forget school, get togethers, restaurants, nothing at all. I couldn't check the mail even. I had a really good therapist back then who taught me how to make my pulse lower and my parents or I were able to call him any time during the night if we needed to. One day he showed up and my door and insisted I go to the mall and eat lunch in the food court with him. I finally went. Couldn't stomach lunch but i sipped a drink. The whole time I thought i was going to make a scene or die or something and nothing happened. He did this to me a few times and took me a few different places it seemed like that helped me snap out of my major anxiety very quickly. I've been pretty much anxiety free for the past 15 years until i recently (September) had a horible miscarriage that had some bad side effects. And now it's all full blown health related anxiety for me!
