Are you familiar with the feeling of overwhelming anxiety descending upon you? It is not something you could relate to other people in words. All the more so since anxiety disorder manifests itself in multifarious symptoms, such as troubled sleep, constant tiredness, avoidance, in some cases pains, and they can be different in every individual. Having an anxiety disorder means experiencing panic attacks, onsets of phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, and whatnot. Just think that 40 million adult Americans try to live it down on a day-to-day basis.
Being so wide-spread, anxiety nevertheless keeps people from discussing it freely. So celebrities who reveal their inner problems to the public do really good work inspiring others to better understand the implications of their condition and struggle on.
Oprah Winfrey
Seven years ago Winfrey opened up about her anxiety working her up almost to a nervous breakdown. “It was just sort of speeding and a kind of numbness and going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing,” as she described the condition. Yet she realized what was happening just in time to take herself in hand, calm down, and thereby avoid serious repercussions.
Selena Gomez
Selena Gomez’s popularity adds problems to her life, and she is given to expressing it freely to her Instagram followers. Not only living in the unceasing spotlight takes its toll – when touring, she confesses, “I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage.” Then the singer experienced a terrifying panic attack after the kidney transplant she had in relation to her lupus problem; but as she embarked on dialectical behavior therapy, her life took a definite turn for the better.
Kourtney Kardashian
Kourtney Kardashian has her anxiety attacks augmented by nausea. She is open about it in her blog posts. When she gets an onset of anxiety, she says she feels as if she started burning calories in a big way. When she has these days coming on, she takes pains to exclude alcohol, caffeine, and sugary food in order to make the condition wear off more smoothly.
Ryan Reynolds
“I have anxiety, I’ve always had anxiety,” ran the Deadpool star’s confessions to the New York Times two years ago. Reynolds said that the aftermath of a childhood with a strict father is still active in his adult life. Living with a parent who rides rough others as well as himself, believes the actor, engenders a lot of anxiety as other family members try to gain their share of control over situations.
Emma Stone
The actress, when questioned by Jennifer Lawrence for Elle, said that anxiety problems have been besieging her since early childhood – from about the age of seven! “That’s when I started having panic attacks…. My mom always says that I was born with my nerves outside of my body,” reminisced Stone. She wasn’t feeling quite happy about her revelations, but eventually, she found it healing on a par with therapy and treatment.
Amanda Seyfried
Talking to Allure in 2016, the model-cum-actress admitted that she takes Lexapro for obsessive-compulsive disorder and is likely to go on taking it because she has been on medications for anxiety for the last 20 years. OCD has been giving her plenty of causes for feeling anxious, up to fearing brain tumor. But Seyfried says she realizes that her fears are completely ungrounded.
Prince Harry
The British royals have always been open about many issues including their mental states, thereby helping take off stigmas from health problems. Prince Harry, for instance, told an interviewer how, following his mother’s demise, he started having panic attacks. Since the prince has to be in public regularly, he often has to suffer attacks when, in the presence of crowds of people, he begins to sweat profusely, and his heart starts to pound heavily. It ended in his resorting to medical help after his Afghanistan mission when he turned 28.
Ariana Grande
Back in 2017, while Ariana Grande was on stage at the Manchester Arena, England, there came a suicide bomber, changing the lives of the 25-year-old recording artist forever. On getting back home, Grande told Elle, she found she had difficulty breathing and was prey to debilitating onsets if dizziness. “I would be in a good mood, fine and happy, and they would hit me out of nowhere. I’ve always had anxiety, but it had never been physical before. There were a couple of months straight where I felt so upside down.” The singer got outspoken about her diagnoses of anxiety and PT stress disorder not a long time ago, but actually, she’s been getting treatment over the last 10 years.
Adele
An awful thing for a singer-songwriter to have is performance anxiety, and Adele has to come to terms with it every time. As she told the Rolling Stone, “I’m scared of audiences.” Constantly plagued by anxiety attacks, she is sometimes moved to queer behaviors, like once in Amsterdam when she got so nervous she escaped via the fire exit.
How to deal with panic attacks?
Introduce lifestyle changes
As you make the necessary changes to your lifestyle, you may find you get fewer attacks of anxiety and panic, and when they are on, the symptoms are milder.
- Address and deal with your sources of stress weakening their impact.
- Be wary of negative thoughts, recognize and curb them.
- Make a habit of regular exercise that mustn’t be too strenuous.
- Do yoga, learn meditation.
- See to it that your diet is well-balanced.
- Make sure you don’t overindulge in alcohol, caffeine, and substances.
- Join a local support group for those struggling with anxiety, panic attacks.
- Consult a professional on means of treating anxiety and panic attacks.
- Treatments can range from undergoing psychotherapy to taking antidepressants or other medicines.
Employing different treatments simultaneously or switching to alternative treatment methods after a while may be your best approach to the issue.
When you notice that panic or anxiety symptoms begin to interfere with your routine performances, make an appointment with your doctor.
