{"id":7139,"date":"2026-09-25T04:56:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T04:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/?p=7139"},"modified":"2026-09-25T04:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T04:56:20","slug":"how-to-exist-in-the-21st-century-without-having-anxiety-or-a-panic-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/?p=7139","title":{"rendered":".How to Exist in the 21st Century Without Having Anxiety or a Panic Attack."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Or even drink alcohol at all? Is that really in your best interest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world, we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Let it happen. If you feel panic rising, the instinctive reaction is to panic some more. To panic about the panic. To meta-panic. The trick is to try to feel panic without panicking about it. This is nearly, but not quite, impossible. I had an anxiety\/panic attack once in my life (it happened while I was still drinking alcohol!) and it was horrible. Since I stopped drinking alcohol almost 4 years ago, I never had a similar feeling again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accept feelings. And accept that they are just that: feelings<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t grab life by the throat. “Life should be touched, not strangled,” said the writer Ray Bradbury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is okay to release fear. The fear tries to tell you it is necessary and that it is protecting you. Try to accept it as a feeling, rather than valid information. Bradbury also said, “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be aware of where you are. Are your surroundings over-stimulating? Is there somewhere you can go that is calmer? Is there some nature you can look at? Look up. In city centres, the tops of buildings are less intense than the shop fronts you see at head level. The sky helps, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stretch and exercise. Panic is physical as well as mental. For me, running and yoga help more than anything. My body tightens from hours of hunching over a laptop or standing, and yoga and running stretch it out again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breathe. Breathe deep and pure and smooth. Concentrate on it. Breathing is the pace you set your life at. It’s the rhythm of the song of you. It is how to get back to the center of things. The center of yourself. When the world wants to take you in every other direction. It was the first thing you learned to do. The most essential and simple thing you do. To be aware of breath is to remember you are alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember that how you react to the news isn’t just about what the news is, but how you get it. The internet and breaking news channels report news in ways that make us feel disoriented. It is easy to believe things are getting worse when they might just make us feel worse. The medium isn’t just the message; it’s the emotional intensity of that message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Limit the number of times you look at the news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realise the world is not as violent as it feels. Many writers on this subject, such as the famed cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, have pointed out that, despite all its horrors, society is less violent than it used to be. “There is definitely still a lot of violence,” says the historian Yuval Noah Harari. “I live in the Middle East, so I know this perfectly well. But, today more people die from eating too much than from human violence, which is really an amazing achievement.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be near animals. Non-human animals are therapeutic for all kinds of reasons. As A.A. Milne wrote in Winnie-the-Pooh: “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen, though. That’s the problem.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t worry about things you can’t control. The news is full of things you can’t do anything about. Do the things you can do stuff about, raise awareness of issues that concern you, give whatever you can to whichever cause you feel passionate about, and also accept the things you can’t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember, looking at bad news doesn’t mean good news isn’t happening. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening right now. Around the world. In hospitals, at weddings, in schools and offices and maternity wards, at airport arrival gates, in bedrooms, in inboxes, out in the street, in the kind smile of a stranger. A billion unseen wonders of everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Or even drink alcohol at all? … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “.How to Exist in the 21st Century Without Having Anxiety or a Panic Attack.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.136,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.6785,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.85,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.2,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.9,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.27,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.02,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.47,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minimalism-lifestyle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t