Hi all, I’m new to this community, 

I’ve very recently (last three days continuously) started feeling extreme anxiety, I’m going to see a doctor first thing tomorrow, but I’m having an episode right now and I was looking for help from the community on how to calm down. 

It’s only started these last three days, and it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt this way. I’ve never previously had issues with anxiety

The thoughts driving my anxiety 
- it’s a combination of hypochondria and thanatophobia
- it’s a fear of loss or illness. I’m terrified that either myself or someone in my family might pass away, and am all worked up over the mortality of life. 

Symptoms
- the last three days I’ve had extreme anxiety, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, and have become super emotional.
- I feel as if my heart has shrunk and even the tiniest things are making me emotional and causing me to begin sobbing. 

- I’ve broken down in front of my mother, wife and daughter, and even their hugs, love and reassurance aren’t helping me get out of this funk.
- I haven’t eaten meat last three days either, because even the thought of eating a once living animal has set me off. And even in general my appetite is gone
- I’ve also got an really upset stomach
- I try and think about other things, but I can only control the first 2-3 levels of my thoughts, the bottom 4-5th layers of thought in my brain haven’t stopped with the anxious thoughts. 
- it began over weekend, today was a workday and I was finding it difficult to concentrate on work 
- at night when I’m in bed, I can’t stop the bad thoughts. I try Netflix and YouTube to distract myself, and only comedy programs seem to help, if I watch anything violent, sad or even happy and heart warming I start crying. 
- comedy programs do distract me long enough to eventually fall asleep at around 1am. (Normally I sleep at 10pm)

Potential cause
- From my googling, I suspect the weather and a Severe vitamin D deficiency are at the root of my anxiety (seasonal affective disorder)
- I live in sunny Queensland. Except the last 6 months have been anything but. We’ve had lots of rain (even flooding) and cloudy days. We are also going into winter
- I also used to cycle into work, but due to poor weather, I’ve only cycled a dozen times in the entire year
- I’m not getting any exercise or sun, plus I’ve got dark skin, which exacerbates the vitamin D problem
- thing is even if I can rationally pinpoint out the potential cause, it doesn’t help stop the thoughts that are still swirling in my head

Any help and advice from the community on how to calm down would be appreciated, any tips on how to distract or calm down my mind would be appreciated. 

Writing this post has also been distracting and cathartic, but I know that after I post it, my mind will wonder back to the dark thoughts.