how I conquered my anxiety | techniques that actually worked

so yesterday was a bad day when I was 20 I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and this didn't come out of the blue as I got a bit older I realized I've been struggling with anxiety for my whole life I just hadn't had a name for it and that came in many different forms I struggled with the metaphoria I had a general fear of life I couldn't deal with being in school I was deeply afraid of trying new things at some points I experienced so much Social Anxiety I couldn't even open my mouth and

if you've met me you know I love to talk my default response was fair and I didn't have the tools to manage it in my adulthood I have found my anxiety has improved massively and this was no accident I've had a lot of therapy I got sober and in this process I have learned how to manage this thing that was debilitating for so many years and obviously I'm not infallible I went to sleep last night really going through it and so I thought you know what today's a lovely day I really want to film a

video why don't we go on a little solo date I'll go and get some lunch and we can sit down maybe in like a park and chat about how I've managed to overcome and manage my anxiety so it's kind of a vlog and kind of leading by example cuz I'm showing you like some of the ways I calm down and manage my emotional regularity and then also uh hopefully just actually giving you like practical advice and tips which I feel like for so many things around anxiety people will say like speak to a professional and

like that is actually really really really important and helpful and don't get me wrong like getting a diagnosis was so so validating but I ended up not trying the medication I was prescribed I was too afraid to try the medication which I think speaks volumes and professional help is really important but I can't give you that in a YouTube video and that's a very vague offering I'd much rather tell you how I have made some progress and hope that in a more practical sense that that can actually help lovely day I'm excited I'm going to

pack a bag I could also really do with the coffee so let's go I know it's boring but sometimes the simple advice is the most effective just getting outside getting some sun on your skin if there is Sun available and going for a walk all very effective for me even though I hate that they work I actually feel a bit insane but I've just written some thank you cards for um the people who took care of my dad when he was in uh the hospital in Putney CU they were so great and I've been meaning

to do it for about a month now but I just haven't found the time but I thought um yeah today's the day so yeah I've written a few thank you cards [Music] t on [Music] a there you go [Music] bab this there's a thing in London now where some places say they do cold brew but they're not actually doing cold brew it's just an iced Americano but I'm thrilled to report that it's Bagels do actually sell a cold brew I'm a girl with um a three tast and drinks kind of energy so I brought this

hip hop living soda tropical Peach from home and then our Bagel is tuna fish salad right then that looks so good she's good I'm so deeply content right now I've had half I'm going to save the other half for after I feel so much better already it's funny isn't it ultimately with plants like a little bit of food really does help back to anxiety I've made a big list of things that helps I'm going to go through them with you let's start with the like more general anxiety I'm talking not situational I'm talking the stuff

that haunts you dayto day and for me that involved a bit of work on shifting my mindset nothing like starting off with a real classic but gratitude is very important for me it really has reframed everything I know it's cliche I know you get that advice a lot and it annoys you but it does work and the way that I practically bring that into my life is I make a gratitude list every night or at least more nights than I don't obviously I'm not perfect it doesn't happen every single day if you're starting from scratch

and you've never actively tried to bring gratitude into your life before I would before bed every night list three things that you're grateful for just three and do it every night for like a month if a month's intimidating try two weeks you only need three things as well you don't have to make these orate long lists but it's just a great way to remind yourself of the good things in your life and to use the muscle so that when difficult things do happen and things that are incredibly challenging that you might not be grateful for

in whole it becomes a lot easier to pick out the parts that you are relieved of the case I found that even in the most difficult things I've ever experienced there are silver linings and there are like glimmers of Hope I've done a lot of work on improving my internal monologue and I'm nowhere near perfect yet in fact I'm I'm not even good at it but I have started to now acknowledge when I'm using the words I need to and I should in contexts where I don't actually need to do the thing you'd be surprised

at how many of these I shoulds and I need toos are actually not obligations at all they're just expectations you're placing on yourself and so working through that selft talk has been really really helpful for me sorry there's a full-on helicopter welcome to London so weirdly a big part of correcting the selft talk is not actually correcting it it's just acknowledging when your language your internal monologue language is actually being a bit detrimental to yourself and placing unrealistic expectations on yourself maybe not even unrealistic just high pressure expectations so for example I always say to

myself I really need to read a book a month because I do a monthin review on my substack I say I need I need to do this do I need to do it or is it just something that I would like to do that I feel like I am a failure if I don't do if I can read a book a month that's great but there's no point letting that contribute to my internal anxiety modog when there's a task that feels Monumental just think about the first or second step that's all I want you to

think about I'm sorry about the helicopter I have a feeling he's sticking around so when there's a task on my to-do list that feels Monumental that is something that causes me large amounts of Stress and Anxiety I just focus on writing down and acknowledging the first two tasks so for example learning to drive felt like an absolute mountain to climb it felt very overwhelming and anxiety inducing because I have never been very comfortable in cars and I was very overwhelmed at the prospect of getting started so I just said to myself okay just do the

first two steps and I wrote down what I thought the first two steps were which was to book my theory test and to book my first driving lesson and the pre-step of that was even just to inquire about a driving lesson so I just booked my theory test and inquired about driving lesson for me that's a much more manageable approach than trying to plan out every step because one you don't know what every step is going to be that's you trying to exercise control to control the situation to make yourself feel better or at least

that is in my case but um yeah it's just not the vibe and I also reminded myself that it was absolutely fine if I wanted to switch to automatic I could just start letting manual and then see how it goes reframing it as just trying it was much easier for me I find great benefit in bringing myself back into like The Wider context really regularly I know this doesn't work for everyone sometimes it feels a bit nihilistic but I find it really helpful to remember that the world doesn't revolve around me I'm one of seven

billion people on this Earth and really we're just like ants it's kind of of lexim city and again I find that context helpful when you are thinking about something bad that you've done or something that you regret are you the worst person in the entire world or do good people make mistakes all the time and what would a good person do to rectify that mistake now if you're a spiral try and ground yourself in reality by acknowledging your thoughts as they come through and identifying whether they are facts or predictions when we were in ICU

with my dad he was on a ventilator and sometimes he would I don't know like kind of like start convulsing a bit and in the panic I would think he was having a seizure but actually he was just coughing and just needed some assistance I need to differentiate here like where the assumption is versus where the fact is and what I actually know to be true and it stopped me from going down an absolute Rabbit Hole of assumptions I've just had to move because some people sat in the Park right next to me under my

tree and I just felt a bit awkward oh yeah I was saying about spiraling yeah for me like I just have to ground myself in exactly what I know right now the facts trying to find out the rest of the facts and not letting myself run away with potential evolutions of the situation I was bad for it in school as well like you know oh I felt like that exam went badly so I'm definitely going to fail and then I'm not going to get into University and it's all going to go wrong that is simply

not a helpful way of thinking when you don't even know how you did in the exam I'd say a big part of that as well is just learning not to dwell which is hard and just takes practice like be kind with yourself exposure therapy can be super super helpful I am not recommending this uh this particular scenario do not do what I did but I had really really bad mopobibi you can see how that worked out for me but actually that was a great benefit of my relationship with booze was that I'm now much less

phased by sick I'm definitely not healed but it definitely helped and on that topic do not be afraid to get professional help and to go on medications they're there for a reason if your Baseline is just that you can't handle uh you know the level of anxiety in your day-to-day and it feels you know there's no amount of mindset change or thinking that could help it to the point where you can manage the day-to-day then absolutely consider medication and speak to your doctor and I know that CBT gets a bad rap at least in the

UK it does but honestly if you're offered six free sessions you may as well try it even if you just take one nugget of information away from it that's helpful for you that could really change your life just being open to it basically I think is really good the next one seems really obvious but it was just absolutely not obvious to me which is take a look at your lifestyle and just just assess on a very neutral level if anything could be contributing to your anxiety when I got diagnosed my anxiety was at its absolute

worst and that was in part due to the fact I was drinking like three to four coffees a day and then drinking heavily in the evening and like repeating that cycle over and over there were many more factors at play but that was definitely not helping if there is stuff that you can manage or change then be open to that my life improved drastically when I went down to two coffees a day and I drank my first one after eating breakfast and for me personally quitting booze was the best thing I've ever done for my

anxiety cuz I would often black out and I wouldn't remember what i' done the next day I found it just immensely anxiety inducing so removing that entirely from my life really did make a positive difference for me see not some of this advice is a bit like oh it's not that deep it's not that deep but some things and some situations are that deep and I have also this year particularly and when I got sober really practiced how to deal with things that are in fact very challenging and anxiety inducing and these are some of

the things that have helped me in those moments of severe situational anxiety when I just cannot shake my anxiety and it's keeping me up at night which is kind of how my anxiety functions these days I use rituals I have learned a tapping routine that one of my previous therapists taught me I will see if I can leave a link below towards two tapping routines but they are proven or like a technique that's used to manage anxiety in the moment and especially prevent panic attacks and I also do breathing exercises my breathing exercise of choice

is breathing in for 4 counts holding for four counts and then breathing out for six when your body notices that your out breath is longer than your in breath it thinks you're no longer in danger and is able to like slow the rest of your body down to match it that's probably not the exact explanation for what is going on but it's you know it's what I got God the wind is winding when my anxiety is particularly bad at night I use headspace as sleep casts on the app this is not sponsored I have just

used them for probably like seven years now and I find them immensely helpful they're these calming story St they last 45 minutes they start with a wind down and a breathing exercise and then go into these lovely little stories set in different places there's one called cat Marina that I really like there's one set in a hamam which I love and you're just a wool flower sitting down or walking through the area and observing all the people and the animals and what's going on I think headspace is great value for money as well cuz they

have so many meditations on there I use them less but the Sleep cast I use all the time particularly when I'm stewing on something at night I have a thought exercise that I do that I find very helpful which is can I deal with any of this right now can I resolve this situation in this moment or can I do anything which will help it especially at midnight or 1:00 a.m. when I'm having these cyclical thoughts the answer is no not right now this is an unresolvable situation what this usually results in is me making

a note on my phone of something that I need to do in the morning or something I don't want to forget to do in the week so it's assessing the things that you can change right in that moment and accepting the things that you cannot change and working on that acceptance and the fact that you're not in control of every element of the situation I think is really important and the bits that you are in control of great you can do something about when everyone wakes up at 9:00 a.m. once I've done that thought exercise

and accepted what cannot be changed right in this moment I then visualize myself dropping it like just putting it down it doesn't always work but sometimes it helps I feel like it's probably the equivalent of like prayer for religious people of just like giving it over to God but there is no God in my opinion sorry you can believe what you want to believe I fully endorse it but basically I visualize myself putting down the big rock of anxiety in that vein like you can't control things you can't control everything at all you can only

control your response to stuff so an example of this is let's say someone around me says that they feel like they're going to be sick it's not their job to move out of my way it is my job to get up and find a space away from them and to be helpful where I can be but I understand that my limits as someone who is phobic means that I'll be a lot less helpful if I'm around around that person as they're sick but you know I can go and get paper towels or something like that

but you know I'm responsible for my response and that might be sometimes removing myself for like these long periods of drawn out anxiety uh which I think kind of bleeds into stuff like grief you know let's say you you've had a relationship breakdown or something like that it's really helpful to over time build a list of activities that calm you down and just have it as a note on your phone cuz usually when you're having that kind of ongoing anxiety I tend to get into a scroll hole I tend to leave into like quite unhealthy

behaviors just to you know make me what I think might make me feel better so like maybe online shopping or like put again putting pressure on myself making big plans for some reason like soothes my anxiety but doesn't actually help so having an ongoing list of things on my phone that help for example films that I can watch that calm me down oh my god I've got so much stuff on my arm that's so gross um TV shows again that calm you down foods you eat that make you feel better for me like making a

cup of tea really really helps and it's a tin anything putting my slippers on makes me feel so much better in just the moment or like brushing my teeth or having a shower or going for a walk but usually there's probably specific things that you associate with making you feel Karma definitely lean into those if I've had a really difficult visit with my dad I just crave getting home having a cup of tea and just sitting on the sofa and watching like Princess Diaries 2 and that's absolutely fine and I'm glad I know that about

myself as a final note I will say that you can handle anything for 12 hours that would horrify you if you had to do it for a life lifetime you can withstand more than you realize over a short period if that's a day or a couple of days and in those acute moments it really helps to remind myself of that you are going to have really anxiety inducing times in your life whether you struggle with anxiety or not it is just a part of life and it really helps me to remind myself that as a

positive an overall positive net positive about life things are always changing and thus factually you are not going to feel like this forever in those moments I try not to hypothesize about about the future I try to stay very present in the here and now and just remember that this two Shall Pass got a real side part going on right now it's giving Indy sleev for me like having a why of why I am trying to overcome my anxiety was really helpful like I see how debilitating some people in my family find their anxiety and

how much it shapes their entire worldview and I just don't want that to happen to me you can't unlearn stuff because once you've learned it you've learned it but I can like not fight it but I can challenge it and prove to myself that I'm not bound by this concept of myself that I've had previously and that's not an all at once thing either i' would say that I've really made progress with my anxiety over the past 3 years anyway I'm going to finish my bagel and I think go home time to get [Music] up

I bought a black Cent sbet ice cream it melted faster than I could eat it so it's got all over my hands really good though I think it's from a brand called Romeo you might notice I've changed I am in gymwear please enjoy our laundry in the back cuz I'm going to work out I booked it before I checked the weather forecast for today luckily it's indoors but I'm actually too hot to function right now I have no idea how I'm going to do it but I know it will make me feel better I know

it will help my anxiety and I could always have a cold shower if we have to do hit I will be complaining [Music] Jack has made us a lovely dinner I'm so tired I'm wrecked from this class oh the table looks nice though you should see how nice is that sorry but how good does that look chicken did not come out how I plan but it's still fine I think I'm going to ram this video off here cuz I'm just so unbelievably pooped but thank you for joining me on this little exploration into my anxiety

and what's helped I hope it has in turn helped you thank you so much for watching please subscribe if you're new and you like a little Vlog I make a lot of them subscribe to the substack if you want to see more of me if you want to hang out and like the video as well cuz it helps in the algorithm thank you so much I will see you in my next one big love