How to "Not Face" Anxiety Disorders

Hello.
This is a somewhat serious topic this time.
That said, I don't intend to talk about it in an overly heavy way, so I would appreciate it if you could read through it lightly.

I write about this quite often on Twitter and elsewhere, so my followers might already know, but about three years ago, I suddenly developed an anxiety disorder and a sleep disorder.
It had been about a year since I changed jobs, and things had settled down. The environment was much better than my previous job, so I still can't think of any one definitive cause. However, one night, when I tried to go to sleep as usual, my heart rate skyrocketed like an EDM track, and I was hit with a sudden sense of impatience and nausea.
Although the symptoms themselves subsided in about 10 minutes, I couldn't sleep even after waiting until morning, and that's when the sleep disorder that continues to this day arrived.
I didn't call for you, who invited this guy?

Since these symptoms of anxiety and obsession vary greatly from person to person, it is very difficult to talk about them all together, but one common symptom is agoraphobia.
It seems to happen often on trains and the like, but it's a state where a specific place where you had an attack in the past becomes linked to anxiety, and you start to feel anxious just by going there.
In my case, this became perfectly linked to my bed...
It was a disaster from there.
For some reason, I was also hit with a super annoying mystery symptom where I felt an infinite urge to urinate no matter how many times I went to the bathroom, and I became afraid of quiet places where people gather because I hated the sound of my stomach growling...

Anyway, putting my symptoms aside, let's move on to how to deal with the illness, or rather, how not to deal with it (a strange expression, I know).

First, as for Western medical treatment, for the first two years or so, I was prescribed a combination of an SSRI and a non-benzodiazepine sleep medication, and for the past year or so, I have only been taking the sleep medication.
Regarding how to deal with the act of "taking medicine," there are issues such as dependency and side effects, so I think many people would like to avoid taking it as much as possible. Like, even if they do take it, they want to stop as soon as they can.
I was the same, and honestly, I still feel that way even now.
However, I was quite saved by the following words from my doctor.

"Well, it's just a tool. It's fine if you can maintain your performance by taking it."

This is actually true, and in my case, I don't really get nausea from the sleep medication, so I thought I should just take it and sleep, which made me feel much more at ease.
Well, when I can't sleep, I can't sleep.

However, in my case, this insomnia and obsessive symptoms are all caused by one specific trait.
That is the trait that once my consciousness is directed toward a sensory organ in a part of my body, I cannot shift my consciousness away from it.
For example,
If my consciousness turns to my heart rate, I can't shift it away.
If my consciousness turns to the urge to urinate, I can't shift it away.
If my consciousness turns to my breathing, I can't shift it away.
It's things like that. I think even healthy people can empathize with this to some extent regarding breathing. When you become conscious of something that was happening unconsciously, it takes a while for it to return to unconscious mode, right? For me, the time it takes to return to this unconscious mode is extremely long.

So, as for how to resolve this, I think the answer is actually meditation or mindfulness.
However, I'm not going to introduce such a lofty method here, but rather something a bit easier to do.
That's because there's no way we can reach such heights with our disposable time while living our daily social lives, when even the Buddha had to train extremely hard to finally master it.

I recommend action games.
Games with high real-time elements like rhythm games, typing games, and Tetris are highly recommended.
It's a very brute-force solution, but if your consciousness is directed somewhere and anxiety is activated, you should just concentrate on something else so much that you can't do that.
There is no time to have an anxiety disorder while dealing with a large number of falling notes or Tetriminos.
I think of these as training wheels for meditation.
Ideally, you should be able to freely shift where you direct your consciousness without doing things like this, but it's quite difficult, so let's have games help us.
To give a slightly more plausible answer, exercise is also quite good.

In short, you just need to have a few other things you can concentrate on.
However, you can't go running on a train, so I think it's convenient to add mobile games to your repertoire.

Well, having written this far, you might think, "Are you saying I should be playing action games all the time?" but that's not realistic, is it?
That's true. This is not a way to achieve remission, but a way to just escape appropriately.
It's just my feeling as someone affected, but I've half given up on the idea that this can be fundamentally cured.
But by escaping little by little like this, the times when I suffer from symptoms during other hours have decreased significantly.
Well, it's like ocean waves, so they do come when they come, but when that happens, I intend to manage somehow with the help of my training wheels.

There is an opinion that telling people with mental illnesses to "do your best" can sometimes be bad, but I will leave that aside here.
Let's all do our best to live together somehow.