What do you call the thing where you freak about everything in your life that does not require freaking out about for no apparent reason?
I can't get relaxed and I sure can't feel the Slack™ .
What is that and how do I get rid of it? It's stupid.
Panic attack.
Booze, oral sex, and a couple of days off of work. If it continues consider other routes of treatment.
"Catastrophizing" is what cognitive behavioralist call it.
Try breathing from your stomach and consciously relaxing muscles that are tensing. If that doesn't help, tense those muscles even harder, hold it for a second, then relax them.
Speak to yourself (in your head or not) in a very calm voice. Or modify the voice that is catastrophizing to a slow, relaxed tone.
Get some vigorous exercise.
Hope this helps.
Some folks find pot helpful--but those folks tend to be pot heads anyway.
Writing can help. Free-write anything you want, be creative, or hell, try to be boring if you want, whatever...make up fake news stories for an alternate universe if it makes you giddy for a couple of minutes, or you could keep a periodic journal, or just write out what you're thinking about at the time. If you can't think of anything to write, write about how you can't think of anything to write.
It may help you cool off, and it may also give you a way to really analyze what's going on that's getting to you. You may find your problems less intimidating on paper, because they tend to come into clearer focus one at a time that way. You can actually alter the way you are looking at circumstances by nailing the fuckers down to the page so they just sit still for a while. When I used to have similar kinds of experiences, I felt afterwards that a lot of what I seemed to be doing was "running in circles" in my own head, retreading the same worn steps, feeling the same frustrations and never budging from the same basic set of worries. Writing things out helped me get a better picture of what it is that was really bothering me, and what I could do about it.
Think about the fact that there is a cliche that says "at least it can't get any worse" and another that says, "it could be worse". One or the other is always applicable, so no worries there.
On second thought, give the pot a try.
Well, considering I've smoked pretty much non-stop for just under a decade and quit pretty recently I can guess where some of it comes from.
The rigorous exercise sounds good though, I feel out of my routine and this is the cost, I think.
I should be writing more, the calm voice thing has helped a great deal already, and oral sex is not a problem.
Quote from: Alty on November 24, 2011, 05:07:24 AM
Well, considering I've smoked pretty much non-stop for just under a decade and quit pretty recently I can guess where some of it comes from.
The rigorous exercise sounds good though, I feel out of my routine and this is the cost, I think.
I should be writing more, the calm voice thing has helped a great deal already, and oral sex is not a problem.
Still being quit = GOOD.
Quote from: Alty on November 24, 2011, 05:07:24 AM
I should be writing more, the calm voice thing has helped a great deal already, and oral sex is not a problem.
:)
Glad to hear about the two latter things.
If you've just come off smoking for that long, your melatonin cycle is probably going through some adjustments. If you're having trouble sleeping, I'd take a melatonin supplement at bedtime for a few days, see if that helps.
Quote from: Alty on November 23, 2011, 01:30:43 AM
What do you call the thing where you freak about everything in your life that does not require freaking out about for no apparent reason?
Awake
Quote from: PopeTom on November 27, 2011, 01:22:23 PM
Quote from: Alty on November 23, 2011, 01:30:43 AM
What do you call the thing where you freak about everything in your life that does not require freaking out about for no apparent reason?
Awake
:mittens: