Why did my anxiety suddently get worse?

@adele07 hi welcome to 7 cups, I'm Lola 💗 I think of anxiety as a monster in your head, that's always there but sometimes he wants you to know he's there. It can come without triggers, without warning, but he will fade back into the background again. So at this time, you need to be extra kind to yourself and know it's not gonna be like this forever💖 do you take meds?? Cause of you do there could be something the doctor can give you to help you through this difficult time💖 gives you a giant tiny hug 💗 brighter days will come💖

Hello, I'm sorry to hear of the anxiety you've been dealing with. This is a long response, but I sincerely hope it is helpful to you if you choose to rest it.

I've experienced many episodes of anxiety and many panic attacks in my life. After many years I finally sat down and studied and thought about things. I found a few conclusions that really helped me out, maybe they can serve you well too. First, think about emotions. What are they? What is there purpose, why does everyone have them and why are the the same for everyone? Everyone can experience happiness, sadness, anxiety, psnic, anger, etc.. they are the same ones for everyone. And they are not just how you"feel". They each have an set of effects on the body and on cognition and behaviors. Add for why we have them, I think the answer is that each one servers a very valuable purpose. Each one, in general, helps increase the rate at which you succeed at things you are doing. They are like mini built-in programs that optimize our body and mind for dealing with some set of circumstances that we perceive were are currently in. For happiness, for example, we often become more social in many ways, defensiveness decreases, we smile, we feel a very positive vibe that makes us want to stay and return to these conditions in the future, etc.. For anxiety, it often makes us much more alert, awake, and vigilant. Thinking stopped often picks up and attention becomes more focused and harder to break. It gives us a quite negative vibe that makes us want to find out the cause of whatever is wrong or leave. Think about those symptoms of anxiety for a moment. Anxiety is one of the body's built in "problem solving" modes. Like anger, it is designed to help you succeed at dealing with a class of problems, such as "find the danger" or "find a solution to the problem" or " find a way out of this". In situations like that, anxiety helps you by promoting behaviors that help you out. So anxiety is not a bad thing. Next time it happens maybe try to just observe the symptoms. It's not the easiest thing but the times I did, I found it very interesting, and even calming, to recognize familiar, expected, symptoms. But, so then what is going wrong? Well, it is pretty easy to prove that what you are actively perceiving, and the judgments you are applying to the facts that surround you, directly influence the state of your emotions. Here is what I was dealing with often myself: I was telling myself "I don't want anxiety! I have to solve this!" And so my body was turning on its "problem solving mode", anxiety, to "help" me some this problem. Once I saw this ironic loop, I literally laughed. So what did I do? I looked upon anxiety for what it was, a helpful thing, something that helps me solve a class of problems. And then things improved dramatically and immediately.

It also showed me a very easy trick to stop a negative cycle of thoughts (which exacerbates anxiety) and reverse it into a positive cycle of thoughts (which eliminates it). This actually works really well for panic attacks too. If you are in an episode of anxiety or panic, it is likely very hard to break your thoughts away from whatever is upsetting you, even if it is panic or anxiety itself - however, you usually can tell what it is that you want to happen. It can be anything as long as you really, genuinely want it to happen right now. It can be as easy as "I want this bad feeling to go away". Now, once you have that, focus on it, try to imagine it happening right now. Pretend that, whatever it is that you want, is happening right now. Keep bringing your attention to this until - you feel slightly better, even just a tiny bit. (You will feel better because when you imagine something that you want happening, you are forgetting a change in your prescriptions and that directly impacts your emotions.) Once you feel a tiny bit better, grab hold of that feeling! Focus on it, celebrate it in your mind! It is proof that you are not sick in this negative feeling at all. At all. And then you will feel a little better still. Grab hold and celebrate that next increment! And the next and the next and very quickly, the panic or anxiety will be gone. I've done this successfully many times. I have been able to snap out of a panic attack in just moments with that trick. And you know, after some practice, you feel more confident and less bothered by these (helpful, wonderful) negative emotions and then they happen much less often.

I hope you find that helpful in some way. Wishing you happiness.