What does anxiety do to you? How to cope with anxiety?

In this post, I describe my recent experience with some very intense anxiety, what it did to me and how I dealt with it. I'm feeling much better now and thought I'd share this online just in case anyone else is having lots of anxiety and wanted to find out how anxiety has affected someone else. What anxiety did to me When I started to feel anxious, I'd worry about more things, which would make me feel more anxious and worry more, a negative downward spiral... Looking back, I was certainly worrying about things I shouldn't have, but at the time it was very hard not to worry about them! Anxiety overwhelmingly takes over the brain and affects the behaviour of many different parts of it: Interpretation Anxiety changes how you interpret things and twists the interpretation to what you're anxious about rather than what actually happened. Thinking Anxiety makes it hard to think of things other than what you're anxious about. Memory Anxiety makes it hard to remember thi...