Anxiety

I have suffered from anxiety since I was a little kid. The first time I got overly anxious was in kindergarden - I puked right before our class left for a field trip.

It isn't clinical or anything, but it's there. And while I've tamed it a bit, there are still triggers - feeling helpless, physical pain, adults arguing, tension (whether it's obvious or imagined by me)...

It's the first day of October tomorrow. And you know what that means? Hockey season starts Midterm mania starts. Our first midterm is next Thursday, and it's for a class I feel like I know NOTHING about, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to learn everything for then (yeah, yeah, I probably should be studying for it instead of writing this but I can't). And on top of that I have a tutorial assignment to prepare for which, again, I don't know how to approach; and then there are all the other classes that I have to keep up with AND I have a sprained ankle and I can't go anywhere on my own and - gosh, thinking about this is making my head feel like it's being squished into a small helmet.

Okay, so enough thinking about it. Breathe. That's one way I deal with my anxiety. A trick I learned from the handy folks on Tumblr - inhale, but then exhale for longer than you inhaled (I forget the exact times).

I deal with my anxiety in several other ways, and they kind of depend on the situation I'm in. One thing I tell myself is that I'm not actually nervous, and that the situation isn't terrible - it's a challenge, and it's exciting. When faced with a threatening situation, our bodies kick into fight or flight mode - we start sweating, our hearts beat faster, our extremities get cold (at least mine do anyway) from redirection of blood from our limbs to our internal organs... anyway. A lot of people, myself included, tend to associate these physiologic reactions with nervousness and anxiety, but I've started trying to re-associate them with excitement instead; and for some reason, this settles my anxiety a little.

I don't know if anyone else does this, but another psychological thing I do is think of something that will calm me down and make me feel less sick (which I often feel when I get anxious) - for me, this 'something' is water. Back in elementary school when my anxiety problem was more of an issue than it is today, I used to walk to school in the morning and visualize clean oceans, pristine streams, tap water, and drinking water (yes, going to school was enough of a trigger to induce anxiety for me!). I still resort to this sometimes.

And lastly, there's music, which I currently have blasting through my headphones into my ears to keep me from breaking down. I have a playlist of songs that are - for some unknown reason - very comforting to me (musicology experts, wanna jump in? I think it has something to do with key and chord progression). But for extreme situations (or when I'm not on Spotify), my go-to comfort song is Fireproof by One Direction. My play count has reset since I transported my iTunes to my new computer, but last I checked, it had been played close to a thousand times. Belting out a few tunes is also very therapeutic...

Oh yeah, and then there's sleeping it off, which is sometimes hard when you have a million thoughts buzzing around in your head. But you have to tell yourself that your health is more important than anything else, and getting a good night's rest is important for your health. That usually works for me, anyway.

How do you deal with anxiety or being nervous/stressed?