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Bipolar people often have lots of anxiety. Here are some immediate ways to try to tame it.

What to Do When Anxiety Hits

1. Check Your Attitude

The Chinese word for crisis is “weiji” has two components.

These are danger and opportunity. If you focus on the

Opportunity aspect of your problem, you will definitely

Handle the stress much better.

2. Don’t Respond Immediately

Counting to ten, getting up and leaving for awhile, looking out the window, or taking deep breaths before answering that jingling phone may make you feel more in control.

3. Visualize

Imagine yourself on a sunny beach with the sun warming your body and the waves rythmically lapping at the shore line. Gulls are lazily floating by in a blue sky decorated with fluffy white clouds .

4. Pound the Pavement

Go out for a walk, even if it’s just around the block. Of course exercising more will give better results.

5. Hit the Tub

The warm water of a bathtub can switch the brain from its “alarm state” to its tranquil state. For an especially relaxing bath add 1 cup of sea salt and 1 cup of baking soda. If this makes you too floppy reduce the amounts.

6. Stop Hyperventilating

When anxious most people take shallow breaths from the chest, further increasing tension. Learn how to breathe from the abdomen. There are many books that can teach you how.

7. Make a Worry Appointment

Some experts suggest setting a specific time of day to have a worry session for 20 minutes. The trick to this is not to allow yourself to worry at any other time.

8. Go Down the Drain

Norman Vincent Peale suggest at the end of the day you should wash your hands and pull the plug in the sink. As the water swirls doen the drain imagine the cares of the day going down with it and leave them there.

9. Poking Holes in Time

If you have a pain in your neck due to stress, use an acupressure technique -massage your temples and it will help you relax.