Anxiety Solutions THAT WORK

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I find that silently humming certain pieces of music (very slowly) is helpful, like J.S. Bach's. That tends to slow me down, including my breathing. Some find breathing a certain way helps.

A few principles of anxiety solutions that have stood the test of time for me:

Get the ball rolling. Your anxiety will not go away instantly, it's like making a big snowball.
Give it time. Usually I feel a lot better after ten minutes of getting the ball rolling.
The skill of reducing anxiety takes time to develop. This can take months or years to develop, but you will see progress every few months.
Affirmations are useless because they are just words with no associated meanings. Visualize and imagine things with as much detail as possible, and get the ball rolling. If it's hard to imagine things now, then it will be easier if you keep trying after 10 mins.
There is no magic bullet. It takes a lot of time and effort, and the hardest part is that results aren't always easy to see or gauge.

There's a lot more to add, but I'll get to that later.

Exercise is the number 1 moderator of anxiety - regular, strenuous exercise that raises the heart rate for a sustained period. It is amazing how many people b***h about anxiety and do nothing about exercise, and convince themselves that they are physically active.

Diazepam (Valium) has a half-life of about 20-100 hours (http://web4health.info/it/bio-benzo-overview.htm), which is much slower than Anxicalm and may be a better drug for moderating recurrent anxiety. Reducing the frequency and dose of any anti-anxiety medication maintains their long-term effectiveness, so every dose that you can avoid taking is good.

Master Bay Shun ?

Don't do what it is you're anxious about. Problem solved!

Are the side effects of anti anxiety drugs bad? would anyone recomend them?

Side effects include drowsiness, impaired concentration and tiredness - a bit like drinking alcohol. (Small doses might paradoxically increase focus and concentration if you have any ADHD-type symptoms, by dampening distractions). Most anti-anxiety medications are (like alcohol) depressants and may be associated with, or worsen, depression. Almost all are addictive and have progressively lower effects over time, requiring higher doses for the same benefit, and there can be withdrawal symptoms (anxiety, confusion, insomnia etc).

I feel the benefits of a small dose of a slow-acting diazepam outweigh the negatives, and allow me to cope with day-to-day social interaction far better.

There are also non-diazepam anti-anxiety drugs like Lyrica with a much lower dependency and side-effect profile.

Great point! Exercise in nature is ideal, if you are like me, since being in the solitude of nature is also calming. Exercise might be the only activity that is good for both anxiety and being depressed, as far as I know. I am not talking about clinical depression, since I don't know if it helps that.

I wouldn't recommend that Lyrica though. I've seen people take it and some get REALLY high on it the first weeks of treatment, act drunk, do things they regret, forget what they done etc... Then many said it is horrible to come off, has really nasty withdrawals.

It's not really that simple. Just about everything in life causes me anxiety, so if I lived by that, I basically would never go out and do anything, ever. That system would pretty much preclude getting out of bed in the morning, and going on to face each day. You see how that would be problematic for me. It's really difficult at times, but if it's a situation that's in my best interest, I find it's best to just ride it out, take a few moments to breathe and collect myself beforehand, and then do it, riding out the anxiety as best I can, knowing that it's only a matter of time before I can return to my hermit cave (AKA my apartment) to decompress.