Calming Down Thread

[fraud]

Some people have ways to calm themselves down and just forget about their issues. For me I take a warm shower and everything just melts away. How do you calm down?

[Myshlaevsky]

I hit people. Totally a joke!

[celestialkin]

Some people have ways to calm themselves down and just forget about their issues. For me I take a warm shower and everything just melts away. How do you calm down?

Forums like this.


I have been wanting to learn mediation for over a year now, though. Sadly I have no idea where to go for reliable and useful information. All that I find on the net is focused around religion and spiritual stuff. :smallfrown:

[Saithis Bladewing]

I hit people.

Okay, okay, I confess, I usually meditate or have a hot shower instead.

[Sneak]

I go outside and lie down on top of my car and look up at the sky. It really helps me.

Luckily, I haven't had to do it for a while.

[adanedhel9]

I pace until exhuasted.

Seriously. I'm a pacer to begin with (back when my parents had a telephone with a giant cord, I was known to tangle people in it since I didn't like sitting still while having a conversation). Just about any activity that can hold my interest long enough to calm me down (usually gaming, but also reading, browsing teh intarwebs, cooking, watching TV) has at least an equal chance of getting me all excited instead of calming me down. So I pace, letting my mind wander, until my thought trains start colliding at Exhaustion Switch. Then I usually either go to bed or come here. :smallwink:

Washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, or any other household activity tends to have the same effect, whether I want it or not.

[Dallas-Dakota]

I bottle it up inside of me.......

Or I go to here.

[Collin152]

I let the emotion boil inside of me, and try to find some way to replace it with sometihng better.
Which usualy comes from plotting or scheming, or some other kind of vile machination.
If the world gets taken over, someone I knew must have died.

[Dryken]

I've had so many methods... meditation, binaural beats, reading...

My current way of getting calm is to just put some earphones on, lie down on the bed with my eyes closed and just listen to some nice calming music that gets my imagination flowing (the current songs to do this now are "Shipwrecked" by Sky Cries Mary and "Dreams" by The Cranberries. Yeah I know, I'm a 90s music gal. :P )

[Elder Tsofu]

I usually try to think of something else. If I focus on something I usually get so in it that I forget being mad/excited.
Drawing (although I'm terrible at it) usually works wonders for me - except when I'm sitting in a rocking train (or similar) where it can be quite counterproductive. :smallwink:

[Maxymiuk]

I get sarcastic with people.

Don't judge me.

[SDF]

Nunnery... and smack

but I'm trying to kick the habit.

[Nychta]

Watch my cat sleep.

[El_Frenchie]

I get sarcastic with people.

Don't judge me.

Somehow, it comes off as non-surprising :smallwink:

When I needed to calm down when I was a kid, I'd just play. When I was a teenage, I'd listen to hard rock. Now, well, I try to rationalize and break it down to logic. It's effective, seeing as breaking it down into logical pieces take away some of the emotion linked to my frustration.

Talking to people helps a lot too. And I can safely say that I was blessed in that area. My close relations and relatives are good listeners and good advice givers.

I've also once tried concentrating on breathing deep and breathing out. It's surprisingly soothing. It doesn't need to be a fancy meditating position, just one where you feel most comfortable.

[Vonriel]

I don't know that I've ever actually calmed down, just shifted the heightened emotion to a different spot. Some day, the wall holding it all in shall break, and I have absolutely no idea what'll happen. Maybe I'll invent cold fusion...

[Klose_the_Sith]

I play the bass line to Queens of the Stone Age~Burn The Witch

[Drascin]

I watch or read something relaxing or funny. I find worries much easier to solve after they've been applied a dose of happiness - allows for better persepective when treating them

Usual tools for this are Lucky Star and Yotsuba&!, but Monthy Python is not unheard of either.

[ghost_warlock]

Usually, I just find something to distract myself - gaming stuff, sometimes music or a comedy show. Whatever it was that bothered me is still here, boiling away inside, but I'm not as aware of it anymore.

Nothing I've tried seems to make it really go away, just suppresses it for a while. You'd be surprised how much rage you can suppress before you burst (I still haven't).

I'm generally a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, though. Honestly! :smalleek:

I just have a frustrating/soul-shrinking job.

[CrazedGoblin]

listen to music i have a few tracks that work quite well

[Thufir]

I get sarcastic with people.

Don't judge me.

I do that all the time. Sarcasm is part of my way of life.

My usual means of calming myself down is just to do something else, be it gaming, internet, music, chess, reading, or whatever. Then sometimes once I have calmed down, I think more rationally about whatever it was that was bothering me.
Alternatively, sometimes I go for long walks, avoiding people as much as possible, and just let loose my internal fireworks.

[Atomsized]

Playing some video game, watching anime, or plotting my revenge against a person in very devious ways, i calm down with either of those 3 methods, mostly the 3rd one.

[Cristo Meyers]

I'm finding the incredibly over-the-top violence and bloodshed in No More Heroes really cathartic, but just about any game that can get me suitably involved and distracted will work: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, Sins of a Solar Empire, GTA: SA. That works for most stress.

[Player_Zero]

Watch my cat sleep.

Awwww.

Me, I as cool as a cucumber anyhow. Also, I hear cucumbers are very cool.

[Zaggab]

I'm practically always calm. I can't remember the last time I needed to calm down. I probably got it from my dad. Mom sometimes gets really un-calm on us because we're so calm.

[Sneak]

I get sarcastic with people.

Don't judge me.

I do this too.

Unfortunately, this usually pisses people off more, because they're often already angry when I do it.

[Ilena]

myself, i visit my horses, they have a very calming effect, and they know how to talk and lissen to me .. its more of a stress relief because i never normally have to calm down ...

[Mc. Lovin']

I make sarcastic comments either under my breath or to them

[valadil]

I do three things depending on the severity of the irritation:

Rant about irritation to someone who will listen.

Play guitar. When I'm pissed off is the only time I prefer electric.

Drive. I like to go down the highway for about an hour singing along to some metal till my throat gets sore. Then I take some random roads I never heard of before and try to figure out how to get home.

[Lorn]

Loud, heavy, loud music. ².

Living history combat reenactment. Have a show at least every month during summer, works wonders. Violence, and lots of it, yay!

[Gem Flower]

Pray. What? It works.

[sktarq]

Meditate.....yes Zen of a flower or seagull mews or whatever.

My former meathod was to hold it in until my near nightly martial arts practice, particularly sparring practice...that worked extreamly well actually.

[Lyserdigi]

Meditation is the way to go. although i can't always meditate if i'm boiling with rage. Then i just yell at casual people who happen to come in my way. But luckily that happens quite rarely now. Also if i just need to get my mind off something, i turn on my midicontrollers and start sequencing, or just goofing around with analoque softsynths.

The best meditation method that works for me, is to get reeally comfy on a sofa, put my headphones on, and listen some good ambient. the key for me is not to think, and the music really helps with that. I just listen to it not thinking about anything.

Also i have these quite big (2mx2m) or (6ftx6ft) mandalas on every wall in my living room. they help me to concentrate while composing. every once in a while, in the middle of sequencing when i counter some problems or have no idea what to do next, i sort of wake up noticing that i have stared one of those for an hour maybe lost in my thought, having come up with the idea of how to continue the beat.

There is also a neat trick to alter your brainwave frequency with sinewaves and headphones, usually to lower them to near sleep states, but with almost any sequencer one can quite easily do a 'guided' meditation session for a fixed period of time, which first slowly lowers you brainwave frequency, keeps them at a certain level for a while, and then start rising them slowly back to 'wake'- frequency..

-L-