What Are Some Coping Skills?

I’ve been having panic attacks almost everyday. I had two today. I try distraction, intellectualizing it, grounding, and deep breathing. The only thing that seems to help is Klonopin, but the nurse practitioner I see is so against it. She put me on Lexapro for the anxiety, and while that has helped, I’ve been getting panic attacks which I normally don’t get. I don’t want to leave the house for fear of getting one. Does anyone know any coping skills that have helped yours? :sunny:

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cbt is helping me heaps.
understand what fundamentally triggers your panick attacks.
hope you are feeling better soon.
take care

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I’ve also been having panic attacks and emotional swings. My med dose got increased last week. I was doing everything I could to cope and I thought I was doing Ok… but I wasn’t.

Under normal circumstances I cope with a long bath in a dimly lit room with classical music. I sit in a calm space and just let myself decompress from the action of what is going on around me. With my sis who knows me well, I’m perfectly honest and I tell her I’ve got a panic attack coming on. She’ll help me by shutting the windows to block the noise and turning off the bright lights and helping me talk it through…

I also try intellectualizing and distraction and that works well.

My girlfriend who knows I’m SZ… I have fibbed a bit and told her I had a blinding headache coming on and it was making me nauseous so I had to go to bed. I didn’t tell her it was a panic attack.

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i have generalised anxiety
I use a few techniques to deal with it such as I try to walk 40 minutes every morning and I also have been introduced to mindfulness which I practice nearly every day. Try to do 5 minutes to start with. you will find lots of meditation exercises for 5 minutes on YOUTUBE.
Reading novels distracts me
a healthy diet helps also and trying to keep busy

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My anxiety is so intense, coping skills/psychological interventions do not really work so well for me.
What does help me a lot are benzos - specifically, Klonopin, I take it as maintenance even if my current pdoc is not so crazy about me taking it, she does prescribe it to me as maintenance.
Klonopin even at regular doses helps me out tremendously and it is a pretty good mood stabilizer as well - it evens and tones down things for me. I am not worried about addiction, I am probably physically addicted to it, but I am dependent on all of my meds anyway - I have to take them regardless of addiction, so what the heck

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positive self-talk whilst having an attack helps me a lot, for example, saying ‘everything will be all right, you’ll be ok, you won’t get sick’, etc etc

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I have anxiety. My doctor wanted to increase my Xanax, but I told him I just wanted to keep it the way it was because I take it at night 0.5 and it puts me to sleep. I try to work through the anxiety and the sz with positive self talk too. It’s going to be okay. I love people. Everything is fine.

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I think it’s important to have at least one inexpensive hobby that you can take refuge in and satisfaction from when you get overwhelmed with living every day life. For me it’s photography and target archery. The first one helps me find something beautiful to share when my world is a dark place. The second gets me a bit active and lets me feel accomplishment when I look at the scorecard and have had a good round.

For me, at least, the best way to deal with my head being busy is to get the rest of myself busy as well.

Hope this helps?

10-96

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Here are some good resources/videos:

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Another one:

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I had debilitating panic attacks and developed a panic disorder from not addressing it early enough…when I feel like I might panic now, I tell myself" so what if I have a panic attack, it will pass"…I used to carry a “note” inside my pocket to hand to cashiers or anyone that might witness me having a panic attack to hand to them if I had a panic attack…it’s all about fear of having another one…the sooner you tell yourself it’s nothing to be afraid about, you’re one step closer to never having another one…

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I get panic attacks. They’re not as bad or frequent now but they were nightly when I was going through my relapse. Medication and understanding what triggers them & avoiding that as much as possible helps me. Also I know you mentioned you’ve tried distraction for me that’s a big thing if I focus my attention on other things it tends to help.

Can I ask have you tried talking through the panic attacks? When I had mine I’d usually get my mom and she would sit with me and talk me out of them just calmly talking about them, what I was panicked about, what I could do to not be panicked about it, sometimes just having someone there with you can help get an outside view on what’s roaming around in your head. I had one at my best friends house and she talked me through it telling me the situation wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, or it wasn’t my fault. That was a biggie. It wasn’t something I did or could control. Sometimes you just have to let go, and you may need someone there with you to remind you of this.

I hope they get better. I know panic attacks are not fun. Right now Medication is the biggest thing keeping me from having them as frequently. I take a generic form of Lexipro and I’m also on a bit of Lorezapam both do their job well with me.

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Thanks for the tip! I do have my mom to help me through it. When I was having one in the car the other night she played the distraction game with me and that helped. I do a lot of self talk but the only thing that helps is Klonopin. I’m so angry because my pdoc is really against benzos and refuses to give them to me. I need them for ECT because I have panic attacks from the PTSD of it and she will not give them to me. It’s not like I’m a former addict or anything. I was on them for years and never had a problem. My doctor said if she still refuses she’ll talk to her and as a last resort will prescribe them for me. My doctor is awesome. She gave me some Klonopin for this weekend until I see my pdoc on Tuesday because of the panic attacks. It turns out they’re coming from going off of Seroquel. I talked to the nurse at my pdoc’s office who talked to the doc on call. They said to increase the Seroquel until I see my pdoc. How am I supposed to go off Seroquel if I have that kind of reaction? Thanks for the replies everyone! :sunny:

I play instrumental music with a happy tune with lots of notes in it. It seems to fool my brain into feeling better for some reason. It is worth a try. You can rent CD’s from the library and load them into an iPod on your computer if you have no money for music.

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You will be better off knowing about this. Please google 'gang stalking and ‘cause stalking’. This is one way the part-time schizos deal with the voices. They will follow orders from the voices to stalk a stranger to verbally harass them about something private. Then they get forced into worse illegal stuff like vandalism, trespassing, harassing coworkers/ruining customer’s orders with possibility to get fired and date specific people with intention of battery, cheating or financial ruin…The mental care refuses to discuss this calling it delusional leaving many confused new schizo victims, insane and suicidal but this is mental care policy to sell the meds/treatment…You can never be upset with your mental care staff or you will be forcably hospitalized, even arrested in front of your own house. Some normal acting people are kept for months sometimes and you are responsible for the bill. Some end up homeless and many do lose their job over this…If this is causing you some stress and anxiety, know this is how some closet schizos deal with it. Worse, these will act up at work, church, school…some churches even tell their parishioners to act like this. Some who got pastoral counseling for mental health issues are left pretty nutty and allowed to do this to select church parishioners the elders wish to force out and no one else in the church will speak up at all as they are trapped – speak up and be mistreated or keep silent and live. NEVER date coworkers…I would even be lunch with the male coworkers alone as sometimes they will sexually harass a person without any concern for your financial survival…This is worse when psychotic unfortunately & management frequently will question the story of someone on mental care so woman is let go without unemployment even. You will find some men hunting up mistresses in social groups and woman has LOTS of problems and members of group gang up too…pick your social groups selectively…I’ve found the women’s only groups to be best choice…Meetup.com is really nice & cheap.

The wrong people always try too hard to make friends. They tell a lot of impossible stories because so much content is missing. Then they start to brag about hurting people or illegal stuff…This is when you get lost, never returning phone calls, emails or answering doors. Many of these folks will stalk someone and you will have to tell the person you do not want any contact … Many of the other folks do not discuss these situations much, ignore the voices, do not talk to self aloud and avoid these people/their involved friends and hope for the best…things will get better with the psychosis as contact with these causes worsening of psychosis symptoms. If you have a doctor who tells you that your PTSD is ‘false memories’…some of the doctors are telling victims to return to these groups. Some of the women have been harmed badly, their psych care ruined their credibility with the police so charges could not be filed and the abuser flaunts their accomplishment loudly…Learn from their mistake and if you hear this term from your psych doctors, you may consider switching docs.

Knowledge is power in my opinion. YOu also get some kids/old folks who show ‘thought insertion’ in front of you where person sounds possessed as they are talking about something they have no way to know. This is the artificial hijacking of your internal voice to repeat a phrase or words unrelated to current activities or train of thought & kids/dementia victims show this. This crap you need to ignore but it is terrible this is allowed to happen and kids are still being hurt for being ‘demonicly possessed’ when this is just a sick joke.

Some people suffer bad from trespassing. I met someone wealthy bragging about being able to get keys to anything and threatens to break everything you own repeatedly to get you in financial trouble, and unable to get an attorney to help. This is bunch of sex abusers looking for new victims, most of the people had nervous breakdown + PTSD it is so bad…The family tried to scare new friends with the terrible stories, then let the family abusers lose on new people. This is not illegal, but a civil cause with worthless piece of paper restraining order to keep it from happening. Actually, introducing your abuser with malicious intent is not illegal either. The cops in my city will call you a head case nuisance if you report this crap without photographic evidence of trespass and get forced psych evaluations like mentioned above to silence/ruin victims…If you think you are being trespassed, you can move when your lease is up but you will probably have the gang stalking (aka social problems) very noticeable for a while and then things move around in your place…(Keep your RX glasses on you always. These are favorite to ruin or steal.) Only way to deal with this is simple living and start to eliminate your possessions or have a ring drawn in the dust around your knick-nacks. Nothing but the basics and use stuff until it quits, never spending all your earn is only way to survive this…I replaced computer after computer and the little tablet/phone gadgets are SO annoying to replace parts within & expensive to service…desktop computer is easy to work on and replace fried up hard drives just out of warranty. Always backup your stuff and make the rescue disks…Learn how to fix your own stuff to keep from going broke. When I started to take projects to complete at home (book editing/web layouts/book layouts/Facebook), my electronics lasted better and there was more respect. I so hate living in the possessions owning me mode…keeping experiences as your luxury like travel are harder to tamper with until you get the ‘social problems’ sporadically while on vacation.

Otherwise, exercise with headphones…Yoga is great, especially learning the part about not thinking about anything except your breathing and keeping yourself in the pose without falling over. The calm lasts for hours and really becomes how you respond to stress after you get away from the stressor/fight or flight adrenaline response.

Some big cities have been totally taken over by the gang stalking including groups of teens surrounding adults and harassing you about ‘being on the check’ and harassed whenever out in public by at least a few…work harassment is so bad, they threaten to get your SSDI check canceled unless you go work at restaurant & leave the current job. Small towns have someone trying to get folks to gang stalk as the mostly old folks in town do refuse for a while…

I think you should see a doctor and have your meds changed, you sound sick. When I was really delusional and hallucinating, ECT really worked for me. Maybe you should look into it if the meds aren’t helping. Good luck to you. :sunny: