Going mad? Problems concentrating

I used to suffer pretty badly from social anxiety, and unfortunately it still happens every now and again when I least expect it- I have the most embarrassing panic attacks.

I feel that (as a separate issue) you have answered your own question when you mentioned these facts-

1. I do tend to not get the correct amount of sleep needed

2. I play a lot of video games

3. take a lot of caffeine / sugar during the day

4. i have started smoking a lot of weed

If you tackle each of these issues separately and individually with full focus, I am sure you are more than capable of rectifying the biggest part of your problem. If you still find that you feel the same way after a realistic length of time that should be considered for sorting this out then you may then need to try and evaluate other issues regarding your mental psyche. This can be sometimes helped with counselling of various methods. This could be speaking to a professional, simply doing exercise, self help methods such as meditation or listening to C.D's or some other way. Good luck.

I used to suffer pretty badly from social anxiety, and unfortunately it still happens every now and again when I least expect it- I have the most embarrassing panic attacks.

I feel that (as a separate issue) you have answered your own question when you mentioned these facts-

1. I do tend to not get the correct amount of sleep needed

2. I play a lot of video games

3. take a lot of caffeine / sugar during the day

4. i have started smoking a lot of weed

If you tackle each of these issues separately and individually with full focus, I am sure you are more than capable of rectifying the biggest part of your problem. If you still find that you feel the same way after a realistic length of time that should be considered for sorting this out then you may then need to try and evaluate other issues regarding your mental psyche. This can be sometimes helped with counselling of various methods. This could be speaking to a professional, simply doing exercise, self help methods such as meditation or listening to C.D's or some other way. Good luck.

I agree with splodge - the caffeine alone is a huge stimulus, you are firing your brain with chemicals that stimulate it and make it over-active, the cannabis also has well-documented long-term effects and I expect that all these things are just by-products of the social anxiety.

A lot of the time, social anxiety is a varied form of agrophobia, and can be treated in the typical method of 'exposure therapy' - small things like walking round the block once a day, or even to the end of your garden, staying there until your anxiety has ramped up a bit and then heading back indoors - start small and work your way up. Use manned checkouts instead of self-service at the supermarket, speak to friends on the phone instead of via facebook etc - small changes to how to you interact with other people can make a huge difference... it sounds like you are having anxiety attacks to me, given what you report, but tehre may be other things going on - when anxious, chemicals ramp up in your brain and you try to process everything at once, which causes the overwhelming feelings. CBT may help with this but try approaching a few mental health charities as tehy are great for helping, even if it is just counselling or pointing you in the right direction.

As a side note, give up the weed if you can - it is a coping strategy that eventually will lead to worse things as you keep searching for the next buzz or high!

Thanks for the advice.

In the last few days i have attempted to cut down on drinking a lot of tea and coffee .

And started to drink water as a replacement . Yes it is true exposure therapy is help full as i have found out in the past but its just about pushing myself in my case to harder situations . Life is not easy with social anxiety let alone this horrible brain fog feeling i have been getting recently.