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A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” 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 I’m 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.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s 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 me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t 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. 

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 that’s what anxiety is–hyper-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 they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t 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 you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t 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. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play 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. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve 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. 

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 I’m wondering what each of the 20 different plants in the garden I just passed by are, I’m not thinking about other things. If I’m 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 “look for things that begin with s” for any object, labeled or unlabeled.)

Similar with manual hobbies. I don’t draw much, but I do a lot of fabric stuff. Straightforward stitching might not be great when anxious (unless I’m 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 it’s 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 I’m bored with the thing and should listen to something else.

I hope that helps someone!

Start a new sicktime hobby when you’re still feeling well.

It’s great to do low-energy activities when you’re ill, or distracting activities when you’re anxious, but trying to find, start, or learn a new hobby when you’re already ill/anxious is really hard! So if e.g. you think you’d like to play a video game next time you’re anxious, install Steam and learn the controls for a game now! Don’t wait til you’re in the middle of a panic attack!

Which leads to my next point…

Playing Tetris is a great distraction!

If the above stretch ain’t compatible with you for reasons like having bitch ass knees, here are some alternative and amazing stretches for the muscle in order of easiest to hardest (but imo least to most helpful) to perform:

However, just keep in mind that none of these stretches will help you if you have a herniated disc, which compresses the nerve roots that protrude from the spine itself! For that you’ll for sure need some different medical intervention.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

Here's how it works:

Someone starts a fire at an army draft office.

The cops look through their files for anyone who might be in the political orbit of someone who'd want to do that. People picked up at protests, for drug charges, vandalism, anyone who is already on their radar. They look into their known associates, anyone they live with, anyone they drink with.

Then they start subpoenaing these people for a grand jury summons. They give you immunity (but only for the matter of the grand jury!) so that you can't exercise the fifth amendment against self incrimination. If you say nothing, they can imprison you almost indefinitely for contempt of court. If they catch you in a lie, that's criminal perjury.

They'll ask you for information on everyone you know. Obviously they'll ask about their involvement in any crimes, but they're casting a wide net. Who knows who, where do they hang out, who talked to who about what and when. They'll ask you to spill interpersonal stuff, whether anyone is cheating on someone, whether people have substance abuse problems or embarrassing personal issues, if anyone is closeted, anything they consider dirt. Anyone you name is gonna get subpoenaed and they'll be asked for all this information on everyone they know, including you, and although you have immunity from your own testimony, you don't get immunity from each others.

Assuming you didn't personally do anything they can prosecute you for in the matter of the grand jury, they'll go after you based on what they know. The cops will arrest you on any little thing they have suspicion of, even if they know they can't prosecute you, just so that they can keep you in jail for a few days while you miss two shifts at work and your friends have to scramble to raise bail. They'll leak any embarrassing info that comes out, to your boss or your family or even the local press. Whatever they can do to make your life a little harder.

They will lean fucking hard on anyone who is involved in the scene but had second thoughts or felt like they were dragged into something they never wanted to do in the first place by their friends. The cops will say 'do you want to get your life ruined by people who did something stupid over something you barely even believe in' and sometimes that's a very compelling argument! If people have dependents or kids who they think won't be looked after if they go to prison, there's a lot of pressure to cooperate.

It's important to note two things:

1) Based on the ratio of actual prison sentences to maximum possible sentences for the charges, it's better for people not to cooperate with the jury both individually and as a group. People who talk still get sentenced, with the information they helped provide.

Hating women? Those manosphere guys are never going to be happy as long as they hate women.

Hating men? Same. Hating the patriarchy does not mean hating men, and hating men will never make you happy.

TERFs? They're fucking miserable. Hating trans people will never make you happy.

Hating kids? Boomers? Billionaires (yeah, this one hurts)? Politicians? People writing fanfiction "wrong"? It's never gonna make you happy.

“It’s okay if you thought you were over it but it hits you all over again.

It’s okay to fall apart even after you had it under control.

Tony and Sarah have spent the last year supporting me in every imaginable way. They are there for me whenever I need them and it is amazing to be part of such a wonderful family, even if it’s not by blood. Plus, I’ve never had anyone as proud of me as Anthony is, I won an award for my performance poetry, and he put photos of my trophy on his facebook and twitter pages, raved about how incredible it was and wouldn’t stop telling me how proud of me he is.