Why all of the sudden can’t I do the things I used to do love doing like go into grocery stores?

Thank you for reaching out. I am sorry to hear about the sudden struggles with anxiety in your life. I will do my best to share some background on sudden onset of anxiety and ways to overcome these symptoms in the immediate moment.

A sudden onset of anxiety can be triggered by many things. These can include a death in the family, increase in daily stressors, financial stress. Sometimes it can be caused by seemingly nothing at all or something you may not be consciously aware of. Unfortunately, anxiety can affect any one of us at any time. At the same time, anxiety can go away suddenly, especially if it is linked to a difficult time or situation. As you experience this anxiety, it is best to try to evaluate your life and try to identify if there are any extremely stressful circumstances occurring. You can pay attention to the things your body might be telling you like physical pain, physical symptoms of stress, or other mental stress concerns. The anxiety increase you are experiencing is your body's "fight/flight" response in which our body is trying to let us know, by reacting anxiously, when we think we are in danger in some way.

Since this appears to be the first time you have experienced anxiety, there are some techniques that you can do in the moment to help with these symptoms. Some people are fearful of medication, so I am going to share some relaxation techniques and grounding techniques you can employ.

• Deep breathing is very effective as it helps calm the nervous system. Start by inhaling through your nose (fill your belly with air), and then exhale through your mouth. Repeat 3-5 times.
• Mediation or mindfulness is another technique that can help. Begin, by going into an area that will allow you to use all of your senses as this will help reduce the anxiety. As you are moved into this area, focus on the sensations around you that your senses can detect. For example, things you can see, things you can touch or feel, things you can hear, things you can smell, and things you can taste. This will help ground you and bring you back to the present moment to reduce that anxiety.
• Another thing you can do is to carry around an object in your pocket like a coin, beads, cloth, or anything that you can immediately feel and touch when you feel anxious in public.

All of these techniques are helpful because they change your brains focus, allowing the anxiety symptoms to pass. A big key to calming your anxiety is recognizing why it is happening. There are other methods to helping process the anxiety you are experiencing, but that is best done with a therapist, live, to help you in tracking things like thought patterns that are increasing the anxious symptoms in these specific situations. I hope you found this to be helpful in beginning to work through your anxiety so that you can get back to doing the things you love.