What are the best methods to relieve stress? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Managing stress and anxiety is my central life-struggle.

Many of the things I do to be happy I have discovered in an attempt to not panic.

I used to worry constantly. About everything. I had to learn that worry is ineffective, that I have no control over most things and that living in the worst case scenario was stressing me more, not “preparing me”.

I have trouble sleeping – I always have, even as a little girl. Except for one precious cup of coffee early in the morning, I don’t drink caffeine. I exercise nearly every day, go to bed early, and do everything I can to improve on my sleep.

I have a hyperactive personality. My mind is always wired. It races, and I hold multi-voice conversations with myself. I talk myself off the ledge every day.

For my noisy, noisy brain and my irrational, terrified voices, holding conversations with myself works for me.

I’m a stressball, which means I’m tense. Very tense. I exercise and stretch and breathe but I also get reflexology massages. Whenever anything is healthy and claims to “provide relief from stress” (aromatherapy, floats, cranial massage, hot stones, chimes, sound therapy, whatever), I’m listening.

I have learned to love myself and feel like I’m worth loving which was the only way to halt the insecure, jealous, controlling voices.

I enjoy trying new things and being bad at them and not getting everything perfect, a far cry from the Dushka that wanted everyone to think she could do no wrong. (No one ever believed that, but still.)

I am a recovering overachiever.

I have a very driven, super compulsive personality and have learned to let it guide me rather than own me. This has taken many years and I fall off the wagon with an almost musical regularity. I scramble back on as gracefully as I can.

I take deep breaths – deep, deep breaths – whenever I feel overwhelmed (writing this makes me feel overwhelmed, but look. I’m still here.)

Meditation has been very helpful, in particular being OK with the thoughts that “I’m not doing it right”. I breathe and focus on my breath and get distracted and dash after a thought and come back and can really only do a few minutes at a time.

And, you know what? I’m not “doing it wrong”. There is no such thing.

What has helped me the most is the knowledge -deep and certain and primal - that I seem to figure things out.

We’ve done this before, haven’t we, Dushka?

Don’t you think that if you’ve made it this far, maybe that’s proof that we’ll be OK?

You are in good hands, Dushka. Because, you know who’s got you? You.

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