Nothing of any importance. Managed to screw myself up to the point of having constant generalized anxiety, so yeah, things are really working out here.
It sounds really counter intuitive but it works.
That's a real panic attack. Drinking cold water can help reset the loop causing it (worked for me maybe once). The only thing that really works for me is GABA (700mg daily for a year, then 250mg daily for life) - but it did come up short in my blood work.
Yes! Recognicing that it is a feedback loop is probably what has helped me the most. This is weird, I love controll systems and I see feedback loops everywhere in all kinds of contexts. Yet spotting this one was very hard.
For me it's the stubbornness/trying to diagnose my hardware approach of:
well I'm either having a heart attack or this is just anxiety - so I can force the condition by doing this bike sprint and that will give me valuable information.
Had a bout with anxiety in the past, and an elevated heart rate from exercise would sometimes trigger it later.
I get a pool of cold water in my hands, lean over the sink, and kind of face-plant in the pool.
(A quick cold shower works even better, but is more involved.)
YMMV, HTH!
I'm thinking you'll reach the end of this dark tunnel here soon - but with a bit of work! The posters here have been thoughtful and there's a lot of good stuff to consider - I may be able to touch on this from another angle.
If you have the funds, I would strongly encourage you to see either a psychologist or psychiatrist. I have suffered with clinical anxiety and regular panic attacks for over a decade. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 and Psychosis about 2 years ago, which are very rough and sometimes "team up" to make my existing anxiety/attacks worse.
Even though this "teaming up" effect has been given me more anxiety than I can handle... trying out a 1 or many medications, reading books on coping skills/etc, and putting in the effort to test out said coping skills are great for many people.
If you don't want to go this route, I would at least spend some time looking into and testing out various coping skills. You can use them as soon as things are headed in the wrong direction. This approach will also help if you have non-clinical anxiety as well.
note: not a doctor... just a "patient" and can relate :) - I think you got this!
Been there, done that! I have about 10 "core" mechanism that have stuck, but some stop being effective because I needed to change them up to make it more suitable to address my suffering.
The psychwards I went to before my Dx/meds taught (DBT) (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) it's more about coping and life skills to execute on. You can also find therapists that practice with this modality. In a nutshell, DBT is all about "mindfulness" and "skills" (basically more involved coping mechanisms). It's more "actionable" than regular CBT in my opinion - but I'm biased.
You can skip the DBT therapy and look up all of the skills and practices on your own too. It's good to have a professional as a therapeutic guide and hold you accountable, however. I won't go too far into that, but you have to track "bad habits" (PG-13) and if you followed through with what you set out to accomplish for you illness.
Also, if you're in the US, you can freely/anonymously join the local DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support) meeting. The name is misleading though - it's basically for any mental or "advanced" mental illness. My sample size is 1, but their were folks in the meetings that had debilitating anxiety / anxiety disorders soo..
You may badly want to be one of these people who emerges from lockdown in an amazing new body with all of these projects completed but you shouldn't feel like a failure if you couldn't. This was not a normal time and adding pressure to be productive is not the answer for everyone.
Secondly, I've worked from home for 6 years now and the "turning off" thing is very important. Not only is it unrealistic to have those expectations of yourself, it's irresponsible to do so.
If you feel guilty about not working, just remember that often times the time you spend not working on a problem is just as important as the time you spend working on it. It's actually how you tend to come up with most creative solutions.
Not only that but you deserve time off.
Email is in the profile if you wanna hit me up.