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Anxiety can be a very hard mental health problem for many to fight. There isn’t one right way to deal with anxiety, and you can come up with your own techniques and things to tell yourself to calm yourself down when you feel anxious. Now Forbes has taken a look at how people deal with anxiety differently, and what the different kinds of reactions to anxiety there are.

Your Personal Style in Dealing With Stress

Paula Davis-Laack teaches an online course about dealing with anxiety at Stanford University. She has also written a book called The Upside of Stress, which may seem like a funny title, but learning how to deal with your anxiety can be incredibly helpful.

As she writes in Forbes, “Just knowing that there are a variety of ways to respond to stress was enormously helpful for me in terms of thinking about my own stress response style. Being able to view adversities as challenges (rather than threats) and knowing that your stress response is meant to help you connect with others can really make a difference in how you process stress moving forward.”

Stress Responses

Knowing how you react to stress and anxiety is important to your mental health. As Davis-Laack continues, “Consistent stress sensitivity and lack of stress resilience have been shown to predict future mental-health outcomes.”

Davis-Laack then listed the five common ways that people deal with stress and anxiety. There’s the freeze response, where you are paralyzed by anxiety. Then there’s the fight response, where you get into a self-defense mode to combat stress. Flight response is when fear makes you want to flee or escape. Then there’s the challenge response.

As Forbes writes, “How you think about stress matters enormously in terms of how you process it. Some people view stress as a threat, while others are able to view it as a challenge.”

When you look at stress and anxiety as a challenge, “you get additional energy, your heart rate rises, and your adrenaline goes up.” When you know how to deal with anxiety in a positive way, you’re more focused, and “you are more easily able to access your mental and physical resources…People who are able to think about stress more as a challenge and less like a threat report less depression and anxiety, higher levels of energy, work performance, and life satisfaction.”

How to Reach Out For Help

While it’s important to have the inner strength and resources to deal with anxiety and stress, it’s okay to ask for help as well. This is what Davis-Laack calls a “tend-and-befriend response.”

Opening up to a friend where you can mutually confess your anxieties can be very helpful. “Being able to reach out to close friends, colleagues, and family members is central to resilience, flourishing, well-being, happiness, and just about every other positive metric of human functioning.”

So before your next stressful moment comes, look at how you can respond to it. Ask yourself how would you prefer to respond to stress, and how would you like to improve how you currently respond to it? And it’s good to think of different ways you can respond to stress in the future.

None of this comes overnight, but if you start improving your stress and anxiety responses now, it should benefit you greatly in the long run.

Steven Tyler is the famed lead singer of rock legends Aerosmith. Like the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith is just as famous for years of drug and alcohol abuse as they are for their incredible music. Tyler and his bandmates were lucky to get help before it was too late, and Aerosmith enjoyed a hell of a comeback in the eighties. Tyler has been outspoken for many years about his struggles with addiction, and he recently spoke out about going down “the worst path.”

Down the Rabbit Hole of Addiction

Tyler described addiction in Alice in Wonderland terms, telling The Fix, “I went down the rabbit hole.” And like many who have suffered from addiction, his deadly habits become more important than anything in his life.

“I have an addictive personality so I found certain drugs I loved and didn’t stop to the point of hurting my children, hurting my life, hurting my family, and hurting my band. There was a point where I didn’t have a band I didn’t care.”

The Mythos of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

Many musicians buy into the mythos of sex, drugs and rock and roll, which today has become a very hoary cliché after many musicians have overdosed and died. “I think rock stars…I felt like I had an obligation to keep that alive,” Tyler said. “I certainly had my way with women and women had their way with me.”

Many often wonder just how much money a rock star can waste on drugs, and Tyler said he blew somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 to $6 million on narcotics, primarily cocaine and heroin. In those days, a lot of rock stars used cocaine to keep going during grueling tour schedules.

“If it wasn’t for cocaine, I don’t think the band would have played every state in the United States nine times in seven years. Because there was no MTV back then, Peruvian marching powder, it was like, ‘Iowa, three in a row?’ Give me that. It’s what we did, but you know there is no end to that. It’s death, jail, or insanity.”

Making it to Seventy Through Recovery

Tyler is currently seventy years old, and he recently came to a drug court graduation in Maui, telling the grads in attendance, “You’re my heroes here today because you have come from somewhere that I lived myself. To come out through the wormhole like you’re doing today is a true beyond-belief miracle. I’m so proud of you, each and every one.”

While many rock stars have fallen by the wayside through addiction, Tyler knows he’s lucky to be alive today and wants to speak out and help others. “I want to be in touch with what it means to be in this band and stand for something in the rock and roll community or you fall for anything. I don’t want to do drugs anymore for that reason…That place lost me my kids, a marriage, a band, a lot of things and it’s for real. That’s how dangerous that is. So I take it seriously.”

When people suffer from anxiety, depression or other mental health issues, it always helps to have a good friend that can help you through. While a good friendship can’t solve all of your mental health issues, it’s important to have support when you feel down.

How we talk to our friends who are suffering from anxiety is important. The wrong words or phrases can be harmful, so how do you speak to a friend or family member who has anxiety issues?

Key Phrases to Speak

As Self explains, if a friend’s anxiety is going through the roof, a good question to ask is, “What can I do to help right now?” Yes, it’s a very simple question to ask, but a key question for someone suffering from anxiety. As one psychiatrist explains, “Without knowing what the person wants, it’s hard to know what to do. Some people may want support, some people may want advice, some people may want people to just leave them alone.”

As Carolyn L. Todd writes, “In general, asking is a better way to support someone than diving in under the assumption that you know how to help…Even better: If your friend mentions their anxiety on a day when it’s not skyrocketing, take the opportunity to [ask] how best to support them when it does feel unmanageable.”

And When Not to Speak

Sometimes not saying anything can help with anxiety. You can ask, “Would it help if I just sat here with you?” Many times with anxiety and other mental health disorders, people have a hard time articulating what they’re experiencing.

It can be very difficult for people to understand what they’re going through when they suffer from anxiety, and sometimes just being there can be very helpful. As one psychologist explains, “Offering a consistent, calm and reassuring presence speaks volumes. [It] communicates that they are loved and supported.”

Body language is important too. You want to make sure that your facial expressions are empathetic and sympathetic, that you don’t look irritated or annoyed by a friend’s anxiety.

Other Key Phrases That Help

As Self continues, other key phrases that can help include, “I love you and I am always here for you, no matter what’s going on,” as well as, “Do you want me to come over?” Texting a phrase like this to a friend can be very reassuring.

Carolyn L. Todd writes, “The specifics of what you say will vary based on your friendship and what exactly the person in question is dealing with. The point is to let them know they have your unwavering support, even when you’re not together in real life.”

What Not to Say

There are also key phrases you should refrain from when your friends suffer from anxiety. Don’t say, “There’s no reason to panic,” or “Just stop worrying and you’ll feel so much better.” This is obviously easier said than done, and sometimes trying to make a panic attack go away can make things worse.

Anxiety is a tough beast to get a handle on, and if you suffer from it you should seek professional help. At the same time, being a good and sympathetic friend is at least one step towards helping and healing someone who is suffering.

Lately, there have been screaming headlines all over the net about social media addiction. There are some people that believe that social media and video games are truly addictive, but there are also some people who believe the moon landing was faked. Should we truly be concerned about social media addiction? Or is this just hysteria?

Experts Speak Out

A recent headline even asked, “Is Social Media As Addictive As Cocaine?” Well, that might be stretching it, but as The Fix explains, “One expert suggests that media-stoked fears about addictive technology only serve to divert attention from pressing problems like online privacy and user consent.”

Citing a report in Business Insider, scientists from the Oxford Internet Institute believe it’s irresponsible to compare social media to hard drugs. A report on the BBC even claimed that some social media is “deliberately” set up to keep people hooked, which almost sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Harmful or Hysteria?

One engineer melodramatically said, “It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you coming back and back and back. Behind every screen on your phone, there are literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.”

One trick this engineer came up with is “infinite scrolling,” where you can scroll through content endlessly without having to click anywhere else. But is this trying to keep kids hooked, or is it just making social media easier to traffic? It’s certainly hard to believe that there’s truly something sinister going on behind the scenes when many tech people are trying to streamline technology.

A Big Difference Between Social Media and Addiction

As sources tell The Fix, comparing the buzz you get from social media to the high you get from a drug is stretching it. For example, your brain can release dopamine when you look at Facebook, but it’s nowhere near the high you can feel when you ingest cocaine.

As one source explained to Business Insider, “Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they’re in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviors, whereas things like cocaine, really you’re talking about 10, 15 times higher levels of free-flowing dopamine in the brain.”

In some parts of the world, there are rehabs that deal with video game addiction, and some people would scoff at this. Some feel it an addiction to tech can be a serious disorder, while many feel there are far more serious addictions in the world to be dealt with.

Is This Worth Getting Concerned About? Probably Not

People can get addicted to practically any substance, whether they’re harmful or not. And there are certainly many who would think it’s ridiculous to compare social media to cocaine.

Funny enough, many people reach out to each other on social media when they need help with addiction, so if social media is indeed addictive, maybe they’d have to find a low tech way to reach out for help. (Are there any pay phones still around?)

There’s a lot of ways you can look at Scarface, and while many rappers look up to Tony Montana as a hero, the film stands as one of the best anti-drug stories ever made. It’s a classic story of how a man gains the world and loses his soul to cocaine and greed, and it still packs a powerful wallop today.

*Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay for Scarface, and it was his way of saying goodbye to his cocaine habit. He sobered up to write the script and as Maxim reports, “some scenes were even inspired by his own experiences” with the drug. He also researched the drug trade with the DEA, which inspired the infamous chainsaw scene. (Stone was told of a drug lord who chopped up a snitch this way.)

*In making Scarface, director Brian DePalma wanted to show the brutal truth of the drug trade, which is why the film was so violent. In fact, Scarface was initially given an X rating for violence, but it finally won the R on an appeal. (The head of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, voted for the R, and said he would allow his daughter to see it because it had a strong anti-drug message.)

*To play a woman emaciated by drugs, Michelle Pfeiffer also lost a ton of weight from a diet of “tomato soup and Marlboros,” to the point where the crew was worried about her health and brought her food.

*Scarface was not a success when it was originally released, but it proved very influential over time, and it can be applied to a lot of areas of life, including the business world. While the movie is now thirty-five years old, it still has a strong anti-drug message, and it still has a lot to say about addiction and the war on drugs today. As Oliver Stone said, “Scarface was definitely on the money, it was right on. It was exaggerated, but it was close to the truth and nobody got it at the time. Miami Vice plunged in right where we left off.”

Addiction often runs in the family, so it’s not a surprise when the son of an alcoholic or an addict becomes an addict. Now a father and son who both thankfully survived addiction are looking back on their struggles and their eventual sobriety and survival.

*Rick Dyer, who is currently a criminal attorney, has been sober for over forty years. As he tells Men’s Health, he was a heroin addict who had to go through a horrible withdrawal in jail before he finally got sober. He spoke to his son Eric candidly about his past tribulations, hoping it would keep him on the straight and narrow. “He had never seen me drink or do drugs. He had seen nothing but the promises, hopes, and aspirations of recovery.”

*Dyer didn’t think his son would become an addict, but Eric eventually became hooked on opioids. Eric started smoking weed in high school, progressing to drinking, cocaine, and painkillers. He was finally hooked on opioids when he was a junior in college. “The entire day revolved around one thing. Was I going to have enough milligrams of oxycodone to not get sick?”

*Eric described going through withdrawal as similar to “the flu, a stomach bug, leg cramps, and back problems because you pulled your back out doing squats, all combined into one, and times that by a thousand. It’s the most uncomfortable feeling you could ever have, and the worst part is knowing that the only thing that can fix it is more of what’s making you sick.”

*Eventually Eric got on Vivitrol, an opiate blocker, which he said: “catapulted me into this world of recovery that I didn’t anticipate being in.” His father also told him, “If he hung in there, every day was going to get better. I kept promising him, ‘It will change.’” Eric is now a lawyer, like his father, and married. To others suffering from addiction, Eric says, “Ask for help and get help. Help is usually in the form of treatment. If you get treatment, you can live a life beyond your wildest dreams.”

Like many in recovery, Elizabeth Vargas is grateful she can help others suffering from addiction and be an inspiration to those who want to quit. Vargas told People when she wrote her memoir it was “one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve done. I was painfully honest about my struggles with anxiety and how I self-medicated with alcohol. I felt very alone when I was in the grip of the disease.”

*Vargas is launching a new show, A&E Investigates, and she’s glad that she spoke out honestly about her addiction and recovery. “If I’ve helped one person, I feel really great, but I hear from people daily. That makes me feel like it was worth it to be as brutally honest as I was.”

*Two years ago, Vargas wrote Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction, where she confessed she hit rock bottom in 2014. She told ABC she started out drinking socially, and recalled, “There are days when you wake up and you feel so horrible that the only way that will make you feel better is more alcohol. That’s when you’re in the death spin.”

*Vargas came from a military family where she moved around a lot and dealt with anxiety and insecure feelings since she was young. “Because I am basically so insecure and anxious and afraid I never, ever, in my life learned to reach out for help, ever.”

*Vargas especially regretted the damage her alcoholism did to her family. “I wouldn’t give a nanosecond’s worth of thought to die for my children, to kill for my children. But I couldn’t stop drinking for my children.”

*At one point Vargas wound up in the emergency room, not knowing how she got there, and she recalled, “I drank enough to be at a lethal blood alcohol level.” By 2014, she lost her marriage, and ABC threatened to fire her. When she finally decided to clean up her act, she told AARP, “It’s not like a lightning bolt. There was finally the acceptance that something has to change, and only I can change it.”

You got home from work, had a super quick bite, changed your clothes rapidly, and there you are, in front of your computer, starting your favorite video game. The excitement, the joy, it’s your favorite part of the day. It seems like the whole day was building up to this moment. It doesn’t matter are you playing a single-player game or online together with your friends, this activity will most likely take all of your leisure time. Surely, you’ll get up now and then to go to the bathroom or maybe grab a sandwich or some snack, but most probably you’ll be back shooting aliens or conquering a magical world in no time. Let’s make no mistake about this; you are not the only one. There are millions of hardcore gamers around the world, and that’s because playing video games can be so much fun.

However, like any activity gaming can also become addictive. So, how can you determine whether you are just having fun or becoming an addict? According to www.techaddiction.ca: “Currently, there is no single universally agreed upon definition of video game addiction. There is no set number of hours one must play in ordered to be considered addicted to video games. Most definitions of video game addiction refer to excessive play which results in negative emotional, social, relational, educational, or career-related consequences.”

Since gaming addiction is a relatively modern phenomenon, it is not a diagnosable disorder, and there are no set criteria or symptoms yet. However, if playing video games occupies most of your leisure time there’s a big chance that you are addicted. Like all addictions gaming addiction also develops gradually. Have you ever delayed going to bathroom or drinking water even though you were super thirsty just because you absolutely had to complete that mission? Or have you been lately saying to your friends you won’t be going out with them because you don’t feel like going out, while the actual reason for saying no was that “sick” new game you just got? Or maybe your school grades or work performance are getting worse with time because you’ve been too busy gaining spell points and increasing the level of your gaming character so you could challenge the dragon and save the magical world? Answering these questions might give you a better idea of where you are in terms of gaming addiction.

No doubt, playing video games can boost your mood and make you feel amazing. However, don’t forget that besides magical gaming worlds and exciting missions there are also a lot of real-life things happening, and you surely shouldn’t be missing out on those. As they say, moderation is key.

For more visit: http://www.techaddiction.ca/video-game-addiction.html

Simon Pegg is geek royalty. He’s established himself in the genre comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and is also part of the resurrected Star Trek team. Now Pegg is speaking out about his battles with alcoholism and depression, and how being in a Mission: Impossible movie helped straighten him out.

*As Pegg told Esquire, after he became successful, “I was depressed. I had always been susceptible to it. But at the same time as I started to ascend into what would conventionally be regarded as a success, I was going down.”

*Pegg added, “The more material success presented itself to me, the less I could understand it wasn’t fulfilling me in any way. It wasn’t that it wasn’t fulfilling me, it was because I was depressed. It’s not a mood. It’s a condition.”

*Pegg says his drinking was evident in some of his movies, including the black comedy Burke & Hare. “If you look at Burke & Hare, I’m bloated and f*cking dead-eyed…I look at it now and think, ‘F*ck me, I was in a dark place then.’ I was drunk a lot of the time and I was profoundly unhappy.”

*Pegg says he finally got well after disappearing at geek heaven, aka Comic Con. “I’ve never told anyone this – we were promoting a movie and I sort of went missing for about four days. I got back to the UK and just checked myself in somewhere.”

*Pegg also told Empire that he got a lot of help one of the kings of genre culture, wunderkind J.J. Abrams, as well as Tom Cruise when they were working on Mission: Impossible. “They took care of me and it helped me to get out of this dark place and realize that life was enjoyable. By the time I finished Ghost Protocol, I was better. J.J.’s unending faith in me makes me teary to think about it. He’s always stuck by me.”

Benedict Cumberbatch, star of Sherlock and Doctor Strange, is now receiving great acclaim for his new Showtime series, Patrick Melrose, where he plays a British scion who is desperately struggling with addiction.  

Cumberbatch told Variety that the show is his “passion project,” and that it’s “a hell of a role, a hell of a stretch for any actor, and a hell of an opportunity for me…” He would also tell the New York Daily News that playing an addict was “exhausting. Although, to put it in perspective, not as exhausting as actually living that life.” 

In playing someone suffering from addiction, Cumberbatch added, “You don’t learn how to act like a drunk by being drunk. You do it by figuring how to portray the potential psychological and physical effects. In this case, you also need to remember that isn’t just a story about addiction. It’s about whether we are ultimately capable of changing.”  

Cumberbatch is apparently very convincing in this role, because he told the Daily Mail that he’ll have “the odd blow-out” from time to time, “a big birthday, or a crazy weekend at a festival – but I prefer yoga and meditation…I remember when I saw Trainspotting I’d never taken any drugs, and people said it was glamorizing them. I thought, What is glamorous about this? Do I want to wake up having nightmares in my parents’ bedroom, with babies crawling on the ceiling? Nothing about this would induce me to do drugs. The consequences are fairly clearly laid out.”  

In a five star review of the show, The Guardian calls Patrick Melrose “a brilliant portrayal of addiction,” and Deadline feels Cumberbatch’s “tour de force” performance could earn him an Emmy.