Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Create! This almost goes without saying, but people who struggle with depression or other mental and emotional challenges can be gifted with tremendous creative energy. Perhaps when everything else seems totally out of control, people naturally gravitate to those things that can still be given order: words, notes, colors, shapes. When you are having a hard time, focusing on creative pursuits can be tremendously therapeutic. If you can shift your concentration from your feelings of panic and paralysis to arrangements of language, sound, image, or movement that express these feelings, this can enable you to regain your balance and your agency. Don't force this, or let your self-image come to hinge on your creative production?everyone gets writer's block, everyone experiences Mental Health different phases of creativity?^but don't underestimate its power, either. 370

This is the best method I can think of to deal with a panic attack or similar situation. It Crisis is what I wish someone had told me to try when 1 was collapsing under the weight of fear and despair:

i) Breathe. Put your right hand on your belly and breathe into it deeply, feeling it expand. Now exhale for twice as long as you inhale. Count the seconds if you like. This will bring your heart rate to a steady pace and will keep your system from getting overloaded with oxygen. Repeat this process. Stay conscious of your breathing. Remember: if you're still breathing, you're still alive.

2) If you are not at home, if you are at a show or a restaurant or are traveling and are in common space at a stranger's house, quietly leave the room. When there are lots of people around me and I feel the way you're feeling, it generally makes it worse. If you're with a friend, ask them to come with you; if you're alone, that's OK, too. Go out to the yard or into an empty room, perhaps the bathroom, somewhere you won't attract a lot of attention and where you are not in physical danger. Don't move very far. Don't cross any streets.

3) Now, come back to your body. You might not be able to feel your limbs, or your skin either. This is a reasonable response to fear, but returning awareness to your body will do a lot to make you feel safe. If you have someone you trust close by, ask them to hold you, very gently Focus on their arms supporting you, keeping you safe. If you're alone, wrap your own arms around yourself.

Sit down somewhere, a soft place if you can find one, and slowly, gently, rock back and forth. Your body remembers this from when you were a baby and it will comfort you now just like it did then. Keep breathing, exhahng twice as long as you inhale.

If you are still feeling disconnected from your body, close your eyes and imagine you are filling yourself back up again. Imagine a warm, white light pouring into your feet ^^^^^j ^^^^^^ and fiUing you up, moving through your legs, up your torso, into your shoulders?keep 371

breathing?down your arms and into your hands, up your neck, into your face, all the way up to the top of your head. Now you are full. Rock gently back and forth until the rhythm naturally slows itself, until you are still and safe. Keep breathing, exhaling twice as long as you inhale.

4) If you're alone and still having a really hard time, find your list of people to call when you feel like this. If one doesn't answer, call the next person, and then the next one. Go down the list, all the way down and back up to the top if necessary, until you reach someone. Tell them exactly what's going on with you.

5) Don't fight it. I cannot stress enough that the only way to get through difficult feelings is to let yourself feel them. Trying desperately to hold at bay everything raging inside you will only intensify the storm. You must move through these feelings. Don't deny the experience, acknowledge it for what it is. Name it: "I feel really scared right now," "I feel like the walls are closing in on me," "I feel like I'm sinking."

And just hang out with it. Don't let it consume you, don't let it be everything that you are. Recognize it for what it is, a feeling, and then let it move through you. Soften into it and be with it and it will pass through ten times more quickly and cleanly than if you clench onto it.

tf You're Experiencing a Breakdown

Mental Health

If something in your life causes you to experience an emotional or biochemical shift, or the memory of a serious trauma begins to be released, the result can be emotional fragility, deep depression, and generalized anxiety and suspicion. If you are undergoing this, you may feel as though you are falling apart.