Why "doing Something Relaxing Does Not Help Your Anxiety

Why "doing something relaxing” does not help your anxiety

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

(Now this shouldn’t have to be said but if the “do nots” work for you then by all means do them. They’ve just never worked for me.)

a doodle that accidentally took a little bit longer

Tiny doodle of some suf angst from the trailer 👀

Thoughts on Ms. Dare, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Grace in a polyamorous relationship? I tried imagining Jercy with Annabeth but I couldn't vibe with that. But with Rachel? I see a lot of potential, like Zukki.

Listen I'm an avid jercabeth shipper (thanks @derpy-grackson) but I can 1000000% see jerachel? as a thing!

And I have headcanons because you didn't ask for them but I'm forward af (this is a mix of demigod and non-demigod ones since I can never decide):

Art. So much art. Just everywhere. Their apartment is covered in paint splotches, discarded charcoal drawings scattered on the floor and between cut up magazine pages.

There is always music playing. Sometimes they're playing it since Percy can play piano, Rachel took dreaded flute lessons as a child, and Jason learnt how to play the Reed pipes since his only friends in early childhood were stars and wolves. Also Percy is learning how to play the drums and Rachel and Jason just............. stare............. because their boyfriend is really hot and his curls bounce in his face and his eyes close in bliss and how can they not???? But sometimes it's just crackling through their little speakers around the lounge. Soft jazz and modern pop and rock and their playlist is a mess of genres that's absolutely perfect for them. They have a vinyl record player but it doesn't work because they bought it from a secondhand store and didn't bother to ask if it actually works because Rachel just really wanted to paint it. It's a pretty ornament in their living room now.

They spend many week nights huddled up on a single couch watching bad reality TV because Percy and Rachel thinks it's hilarious and jason just loves his humans. Also they judge people a lot..... what do you mean she chose H I M he has frosted tips there is nothing good about him???????? yea their neighbours hate them.

When Jason and/or Percy have to go on a quest Rachel will stress bake and stress paint (but that's mostly swirls of colour, usually in dark shades) that represent the absolute mess that is her anxiety while she waits for them to return. Bonus however is that they pretty much always come home to a house filled with baked delights.

They have a set alarm that goes off on all three of their phones when they have to take medication. It's the loudest most obnoxious tone but it works because it snaps them out of their focus (more like hyper focus) and it's hilarious to seem them all scrambling to the kitchen to take meds

Jason loves to cook and Percy loves to watch him and Rachel loves to interfere. There was an incident with pasta sauce on the roof and a wooden spoon stuck in the toaster. They don't talk about it.

They love doing nature things together. Like walks on the beach and picnics in the orchids and spending time outside with the sun on their face and the wind kissing their skin. It's just really peaceful and after the horrors they've all experienced they need it more than anything.

After Rachel delivers a prophecy she always feels sick to the core. Like her entire body is rebelling agaisnt the death sentence she inevitably gives her friends. Percy and jason wrap her up in blankets and give her hot chocolate and they watch old Pixar movies so she can appreciate the animation and "cute bois? Have you seeeen treasure planet???"

Forehead kisses, my friend. And nose kisses. When they wake up, before they got to sleep, on their way out the door, coming back home. So many soft kisses.

Percy likes to plait Rachel's hair because it's so long and so full of curls and she looks like a warrior princess if he does it just right.

Jason just has a lot of pictures of them on his photography account. He picked up the hobby in high school (the little of it that he had) and Percy and Rachel are rudely photogenic. With Percy's earth brown skin that soaks up the sun and Rachel's paleness that contrastd every other bright colourful thing about her, eyes and hair and smile. They look like royalty in his lens, they look like gods.

Rachel loves their dark side, because they do inevitably have one. And monsters tend to think Rachel is easy bait for the two demigods but truly that is the words mistake you can make. Because they will tear the world apart with a look alone before letting one inch of her freckled skin be harmed.

They hold hands a lot. Percy just really likes to be touching someone at all times, Rachel leeches of their warmth, and Jason needs them close. So it works.

Thank you for letting me be forward and I hope you like this because I'm obsesssseeedd!!!

Wither and Decay...

My favorite thing: Thinking about how much fun Dick (the trolliest Robin) would have pranking the Young Justice team on April Fool’s Day: 

Conner gets out of the shower to discover that the clothes he’d left had mysteriously been replaced with a pink bunny suit

M'gann tries to watch tv but finds that every channel on the television has been replaced by either Bee Movie or Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up music video and she doesn’t know which is worse

Artemis wakes up from a nap and doesn’t notice someone shaved off part of her eyebrow 

Kaldur takes a swim but discovers that someone slipped dye in the pool and now his hair and skin is green

Raquel bites into an apple but realizes too late that it’s actually just a fake apple skin filled with ketchup

Roy goes into his apartment but is startled to find that every single surface has been covered completely in Shrek faces 

Zatanna tries doing her homework but each of her pens self destructs five seconds after she touches it and turns into a flower (Dick just didn’t have it in him to do a mean prank, but he couldn’t leave her out of the April Fool’s fun)  

Someone mysteriously tampered with Red Tornado’s programming and now he can only speak in rhymes 

But he saves the best for Wally, because every year they have a competition to see who can prank the other the most. Dick has won four years in a row, whereas Wally has never succeeded in pranking Dick once

Just a few of the many pranks Dick has pulled on Wally this April Fool’s Day:

- Replacing the lenses of his goggles with pictures of naked Aquaman - Paying everyone five bucks to call him Waldo and Speedy the entire day - Changing the ringer on his phone to a recording of Conner screaming - Convincing Zatanna to curse Wally to sing the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody whenever someone says the word “whelmed”