Learning to calm down

Entriech

Hey there, H/A.

I need advice on how to get a better handle on my emotions. Specifically worrying. I worry, a lot, and it's been that way as long as I can remember. It's not a constant thing, it's always a response to something legitimate, but I think I'm taking it way further than I should, and I think it's been getting worse.

By way of example, yesterday my wife injured her back while bending over for something. I'm carefully hopeful that it isn't too bad, as she managed to walk around okay afterwards, and was comfortable while sitting last night. However she had a bad bit of back/sciatic trouble from an inflamed joint last summer, which involved a good month of recovery and pain, and I'm terrified that we're going to descend into that again. Rationally I know that she will recover, it may take time and effort, but she'll be fine. Moreover, she's an adult and capable of caring for herself. But emotionally I feel panicky. I'm worried about what happens if she wakes up today and needs help and I'm not there, or how bad it will be, to the point of distraction. I'm finding it impossible to concentrate on work, I've got a lot of nervous energy (very twitchy), and feel vaguely nauseous. Not much appetite either.

I have this same reaction anytime something like this comes up. You may remember a couple weeks ago I had a thread about the fact that our new cat wasn't eating. Same sort of response (perhaps less panicky, but still worried to the point of distraction).

What sort of tricks or techniques do you find help to reduce this?

Casual

When it starts to well up just stop what you're doing and clear your mind think, of a blank empty space, or a beach or a forest whatever a happy safe place might be for you. Then breathe. Slow deep breaths keep your self calm and carry on keeping your mind as blank as possible while concentrating on breathing. Do this until you start to get a hold of yourself again then just think rational thoughts. Things like she's an adult she can handle it, she has a phone if she needs you and its not actually that serious. Then if your at work you should probably just try to focus on a task. If you can get good at this technique its very effective, may take a little practice and mental disciplne though.

rfalias

I believe the obligatory "Exercise" is in order.
Go workout, run etc...

Working out is great for mental health, as well as physical. Especially stress.

SammyF

I find it's helpful to sit and come up with some sort of rational plan to deal with contingencies when they come up--rather than just panic about them. For instance, I'd plan ahead and leave some OTC painkillers at home in case the wife woke up and started having pain. I'd plan to call and check in on her to make sure she's doing okay if she hasn't called me first. And if things are bad I'd plan on being able to take a late lunch break and a little extra time to drive her to see a chiropractor or a doctor if she needed it.

About the cat thing, I'd think, okay, well I can reasonably afford to give this X number of days, at which point I plan on going to the vet. I would plan ahead and schedule an appointment with said vet in case I needed to use it because having it scheduled would make it easier for me to schedule some time off work to take the cat in.

It's not unreasonable to feel concerned for the health and well-being of a loved one or a pet. It sounds though like you panic about problems rather than thinking about rational ways to address them. To quote Doug Adams: Don't Panic. Nearly every problem has a solution, and it's usually much more common-sense than you'd probably like to believe.

FunnyFreak

What I do when I get pissed, panicky, or upset is I tend to stop when I'm doing, and find something to do that doesn't require thought. I'd sometimes go out on a run, or sit and watch tv, or play video games. Something to keep my thoughts off of what was bothering them.

Entriech

Thanks for the advice folks. I've been working on my breathing, and trying to rein in my emotions and thoughts before they get the better of me, and it seems to help a bit. At the very least I had an appetite at lunch.

In response to Sammy, I am already a pretty active plan-layer. At this point that's just being confounded by the fact I'm not 100% on the severity or extent of injury. I'm not sure if it's just going to be a few days of taking it easy, or if it's going to be the whole deal with difficulty walking around, doctors, prescriptions, etc. I'd say if anything it's that unknown that's really getting to me, but either way I'm sure I'll know once I get home based on how she feels after a night's sleep.

Thankyou, everyone. Even talking about it has helped a little bit.

Fallingman

I'm looking into meditation... It's a lot different to what I thought. It basically trains you to be able to focus your attention on what you want to focus on. That way, you are better able to control your thoughts when things start to 'spiral'.

I found a few vids on youtube that were good. I just try and avoid any spiritual/religious/too hippy types. There's a lot of crap out there.

Mr_Anonymous

Interesting... On the meditation front could you link any particular videos you found amazing?

Sporked

Something I do when I start freaking out is to just stop for a second, (I imagine yelling stop, whatever you can do mentally to pause the action in your head will work) and imagine a table or workspace in front of you with all the crap on it you're dealing with and just imagine shoving that shit off to the sides. Then you can look at the piles and pick a single thing or a couple things to deal with and deal with them before messing with the rest of it. Visualizing problems as physical items with solid shapes, maybe something that needs repair, blocks of clay to scuplt, anything really.

The idea is that a broken toaster (or cat) is easier to grasp than OMG OMG my cat's not eating oh fuck what do I do?! I don't know if I'm really explaining it well but translating my problems mentally from ethereal ideas of shit being not right to things that need fixing helps me focus more on the problem and less on how the problem feels, and it makes it easier to separate and prioritize the broken toasters so they can't gang up on you.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

I'd Fuck Chuck Lidell Up

whenever i started worrying too much i looked at things entirely rationally and decided that were i to worry about all possibilities i would have to consider the 99.999 percent of everything going right, the 0.00001 percent chance that it could go wrong, and subsequently would have to consider the 0.000001 percent chance that she will be bitten by a snake at any given time, the 0.000001 percent chance to be hit by lightning and then decided worrying about things that weren't likely to ever happen is an entirely useless way to spend my time.

doesn't really work for everyone but certainly helped me