What do you do when a person becomes an anxiety trigger for you?

June 14, 2016 5:24 PM

If you've experienced having a panic attack in front of someone, and then having that person become an anxiety trigger for you, and managed to... un-do that, please tell me how! Anxious nerd awaits your assistance.

I have a therapist and am Working On Stuff, but am interested in hearing other folks' experiences and tips.

posted by ITheCosmos to Human Relations (5 answers total)

My mother-in-law has become this for me. I take a lot of Xanax now.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:20 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I haven't had a panic attack but I have experience anxiety around certain people. I used to be all cognitive behavior therapy helps me with anxiety. But now I am all mindfulness. Meditation has some similar concepts to CBT (I do not always feel bad around them...basically getting the all out of people/feelings) but one or the other or both may be helpful to you (disclaimer: in some ways they are opposites). Mindfulness is really helpful at getting out of anxious feelings and back to calm (and more accepting of positive feelings in stressful times). I can't recommend meditation enough for anxiety. I really like headspace but there's tons of free meditation recordings out there. I'd better go meditate now.
posted by Kalmya at 7:58 PM on June 14, 2016

Are you able to avoid this person until you have some time to work on your anxiety? That's obviously not a long-term solution but it might help temporarily if it's an option.

Also, seconding mindfulness. It helped me a lot to just pay attention to my body's signals that it's anxious, and reminding myself that I'm safe. That combined with deep breathing.
posted by a strong female character at 9:00 PM on June 14, 2016

I would not spend time with this person.

In my experience, most of the reasons we tell ourselves as to why we must hang out with X or Y are superfluous. Unless we are detained or in prison, we are mostly creatures of free will and can not spend time with people if we don't want to. The benefits of having your mental health stabilized almost always outweigh the fallout.

As to how...that is the hard part. I would do the slow fade. "Hey I'm not available this week! Sorry!" and don't propose a new date.
posted by pando11 at 9:38 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

My mother was the one to call me to say that my dad had a heart attack. She didn't tend to call me often (I usually phoned her) and from then on the sight of her number on my phone freaked me the hell out. I was convinced someone was dead.

I explained it to her and asked if she could please answer the phone with "everyone's fine!!" because those few seconds of "hello/hello" were killing me in anticipation of bad news. Weird, but she was happy to do this for me. Eventually her calls are no longer a trigger.

So my thoughts are... can you talk to the person about it?
posted by kitten magic at 11:34 PM on June 14, 2016