Hi West Coast May and Ohmyohme,
Thanks for sharing your experiences and asking this question. I suffer from anxiety/panic disorder as well and like you both have expressed, sometimes the snowball effect is just horrible to deal with, especially trying to bring yourself out of it once the snowball's "landed" on you.
The deep breathing and relaxation really help me too West Coast, but like you might be feeling, once I got a handle on these techniques I began to feel like they were not really helping me free myself of the anxiety attacks all together. I wanted to try to understand where they were even coming from in the first place.
Two things have really helped me to gain what I think is a healthy control over my tendency towards anxiety. One is counseling. Counseling helped me to start looking at the underlying reasons for the anxiety, which for me stemmed back to childhood. Two is reading the book "
Soul Without Shame " which helped me identify the "Judge", the voice inside my head that, whenever it shows up causes me some type of anxiety, whether good or bad.
I still get anxiety attacks and some days and weeks are much better than others, but I am much better at being aware of what's going on, even when I can't stop myself from reacting according to my old patterns, i.e. becoming paralyzed by the anxiety and panic.
One thing that you might try is writing out an anxiety plan for yourself, i.e. what you are going to do when you feel the anxiety coming on. This has helped me immensely because when I'm in the throws of the anxiety attack, I almost on automatic pilot fall into my anxiety plan. By the time I get through all my steps, most times, I'm able to come down from the attack with out too much of a problem.
I hope these things help! Hugs of courage-giving energy to you both:)!
Leah :music:
P.S.
I'm sure the caffiene is having an ill effect because it's a natural stimulant. Over stimulation doesn't allow you to move into periods of reflection so you rarely get to validate yourself from within which leaves you subconsciously open to being swayed by other people's and your own judge's judgements which can definitely lead to anxiety.
