
Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Anxiety - Mz
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632802/
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angersock
Part that mirrors my own experience:

> _Exposing someone with high anxiety sensitivity to the physiological
> symptoms they fear, such as rapid heartbeat, in the context of physical
> exercise increases their tolerance for such symptoms (McWilliams and
> Asmundson, 2001). This exposure reveals that the feared physiological
> sensations may be uncomfortable, but do not pose a serious threat (Ströhle
> et al., 2009). Repeated exposures through regular aerobic exercise may also
> facilitate habituation to the feared sensations (Beck and Shipherd, 1997)._

When you feel a panic or anxiety attack coming on, your body is going to start
feeling "off", and often this will be accompanied with a massive dump of
adrenaline. At that point, your brain is looking for a way to justify why it
is feeling super alert and anxious, and will do all kinds of shit to justify
what is, at heart, a primarily physiological mechanism. If you only ever
experience {sweat, heavy breathing, light-headedness, high heart-rate, energy
dump, shakes} in the context of anxiety, any single one of those symptoms
starts to pattern-match as "oh god here we go again".

By exercising, you show yourself those symptoms in a context that you have
control over and you can (if this reasoning is sound) desensitize yourself to
them. Additionally, if you find yourself having a state like this, hopping on
a bicycle/going for a run/whatever can help both burn the energy/agitation and
also satisfy the flight urge you might experience.

I am not a doctor, this was a way of dealing with a temporary spike in anxiety
due to severe burnout, your mileage may vary, etc.

