I dealt with severe agoraphobia for like 12 years and OCD since early childhood and it’s so weird to me that now the outside world really is dangerous/contamination really is a threat, when those were major irrational fears I had to work past

there’s a huge difference between the real dangers of covid vs irrational fears I dealt with growing up but I learned a lot about how to cope with anxiety and panic

this is a miscellaneous thread now bc 1. I’m not a professional 2. I don’t know anyone else’s situation 3. I just wanna throw my vague coping mechanisms out into the ether in case they’re helpful for anyone

1. One of the best things I ever learned for dealing with the physical effects of panic attack/learning how to prevent them was understanding biofeedback, how adrenaline worked, and how to prevent a panic attack with one really stupid trick that somehow works a lot of the time

I forget where I even learned this, but basically when you feel panicky/short of breath/know a panic attack is going to happen, you’re kind of too late to calm yourself down, because your body is pinging the adrenaline and responding to it, so telling someone to calm down/take

deep breaths isn’t that helpful bc it’s fighting the physical state — but bc adrenaline is released in excitement, you can trick your brain with a mantra of “oh, I’m not scared/anxious, I’m excited” and it.. works for a lot of things, mantras also keep your brain from what-if ing

and then on top of that breathing slow & exhaling fully helps prevent panic attacks bc it fully clears the lungs of carbon dioxide that can trigger panic attacks when ppl breathe too shallow in anxiety, and cold water/the dive reflex can also help if that’s accessible

2. My therapist taught me this and I don’t know how common it is, but it’s helped me a lot for general anxiety, it’s called parts work. I hate it but it helps. The simplest way I can explain it in a tweet is, your psyche is made up of a lot of parts. Again I am not a therapist

If this advice is not helpful for you then don’t take it - but the technique I was taught, was when you feel overwhelmed, it’s like a lot of different “parts” of your brain are responding to stressors in the ways that you have been conditioned by life to respond

there’s way complex parts theory and you can read books on it but for simplicity’s sake: if you could split yourself into different parts, what parts of yourself are there? Is there an inner child, is there a nurturer, is there a part of you that makes decisions?

When I was overwhelmed my therapist taught me to conference internally by considering what parts of myself were responding, figure out how to listen to that part individually, and from there figure out which parts can solve the problem

I haaated doing it, it felt like an acting exercise or something- but it taught me how to internally listen, delegate, and function. It’s weird but it helps deal with stressors bc you surgically take them apart and understand why you’re stressed/what your capability is to fix it

3. Asking “is this a thought, or a feeling?” has helped so much for OCD shit — I feel like this is the hardest one to explain & maybe the least helpful. But it kind of goes back to parts work - do I really think I didn’t do X? or am I anxious? why am I anxious? ymmv