Cutting out caffeine made a huge difference when I was getting debilitating anxiety about my old cat’s health (despite her being pretty much fine). Honestly, doing that was more helpful than therapy (though I’m not sure that I had the right therapist)

Other than that, going for a walk while on the phone with someone also really helped, as it kept me from spiralling thoughts and had me active.

In a pinch some really sour candy can help to knock you out of an anxiety attack too. You might want to have some on hand.

Try fasting. Wake up, have coffee or whatever, water, but no food. Nothing all day. In the evening, eat a couple of raw carrots if you can. Next morning, have some yogurt, small lunch, small dinner.

I dunno why this works for me, but I suspect it draws unconscious, autonomic anxiety from the nebulous mass of all possible problems and focused on one simple, easy to solve problem - hungry.

Like how slamming your fingers in a door can make your knee pain go away for a bit.

Exercise, a cat and forced social interaction with your local community. This feeling of angst is growing more and more among the population. My own opinion is the dissonance between how we would normally live our lives versus the bullshit that has grown all around us, causes a certain amount of despair. All the best.

Exercise is supposed to help.

5 minutes of meditation. It won’t solve the anxiety, but it will insert just enough perspective and space to help you recognize a couple things:

• you are not your anxiety, it’s more like weather that you’re experiencing.
• the things that you’re worried about may be real, but your experience of them is warped by the anxiety.

My therapist gave me a really helpful metaphor. Anxiety is kind of like putting your hand right in front of your face. It blocks everything else out. It’s all you can see. It’s all you can experience. While this isn’t the desired state, you also can’t get rid of your hand without losing a real part of yourself. So instead, what if you focus on inserting space. Move your hand further from your face, and it becomes an element of the environment. It’s a thing you can observe. It’s still real, and it’s still there, but it’s now more in perspective.

That’s what meditation, even 5 minutes, can do. It pushes your anxiety into perspective. It won’t get rid of it, but it will help you see it as an element rather than your entire experience.

My therapist told me to start throwing a ball at the wall and catch it when I find myself in a downward thought spiral. It really works because apparently it’s hard to focus on a ball and have a mental breakdown at the same time.

I’m part of the autistic spectrum (originally diagnosed as Asperger’s, but apparently that term has possible roots in Nazism and “racial superiority”, yikes!), and I found that going outside and taking a walk outside always helped me calm down. I remember whenever I got upset as a child and overreacted, the teacher would take me for a walk around the school, and I always felt better afterwards. I also liked eating my favourite snack to calm down, though that might just be because I like snacks.

Just my two cents. I don’t experience too many of the negative “symptoms” of autism anymore nowadays, but I hope you (or somebody else) finds this helpful!

• Mindfulness or loving kindness meditation.
• daily walks outside.
• Breathing exercises.
• reduce caffeine, bring in herbal teas with an actual mindful ceremony kinda thing (being present while making it).
• picking up creative hobbies to do

Apparently sour food helps.

If you’re broke, pretty much all of the usual external aids are out unless you already have them

Valerian nd kava have pretty potent anti anxiety effects. Pretty much the most potent ones, and the most reliable plant based stuff since even with the usual variances, you won’t have zero effect, nor too heavy.

So that kinda leaves you with non chemical options (just because they’re plant based don’t mean they ain’t drugs, ya dig).

Breathing exercises are the front line defense, even if you aren’t in practice, so you start there. Doesn’t even matter what kind, because there’s a chain of control. Control your breathing, control your heart rate and brain patterns. Control those, you control the stress chemicals being released, and that’s where the panic attack part really lives

It isn’t instant, but it works.

The problem is starting them. What I found helped a good bit when I could, was the opposite. Start out doing anything that spikes respiration and pulse. Sit ups, pushups, jumping jacks, whatever you can tolerate physically. Just crank out enough to spike your breathing and pulse a little. It serves multiple purposes, but the key to it is breaking the cycle of the attack. Usually, once you get that spike, you’ll be able to engage breath control easier than if you try starting that first.

Beyond that, you gotta find things to ground yourself in the real world instead of your head. Again the what doesn’t matter much, but I tend to find practical, hands on stuff works well enough. Like, sharpening knives grounds me (it’s my thing, what can I say). If there’s something that normally centers you and lets you kinda hit flow state, that’s the thing to try.

Shit, even something that’s mostly bad for anxiety can work if the ritual of it is calming enough. Like the process of making tea can help despite the caffeine sucking for anxiety.

None of it is easy without a breakthrough option though, and I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass and pretend otherwise. So if you do already have valerian, or an antihistamine, lead with that, but follow up with breathing exercises anyway!

You gotta use a multifaceted approach.

Music that takes focused listening, or else the kind that zones you out.

As others have said, light exercise is okay at pushing the feeling down. Anecdotally, a change in scenery also helps me when I get that way. Go for a walk somewhere you haven’t been before and see what’s there.

Also the 54321 rule seems to help ground me if I feel myself start to spiral.

• Name 5 things you can see
• Then 4 things you can touch
• Then 3 things you can hear
• Then 2 things you can smell
• Finally 1 thing you can taste

Not food & stuff but maybe try to unsub from communites that make you feel bad for a while. Like politics and news (and you can join back later when feeling better)

Body weight exercise routines are free and the equipment is cheap and require little home area. It’s one of the only things that helps me in high pressure days. And prayer.

Squats and push ups for immediate relief.

I’m not sure about this myself. I too suffer anxiety. I use medical marijuana, which helps. I think depression is the bigger factor for me. The breathing techniques can help in the moment. Just big deep breathes if nothing else. It may only help momentarily; I don’t know what else lasts longer. Good luck to you!