[Malik Ishtal]

This thread is super useful, thank you for sharing your tricks, guys!

I've found that for me, ranting to someone via text rather than out loud is the best way. It calms me down out of my crying (if I'm crying, which sometimes happens) and the clacking of the keyboard is rhythmic and soothing after a while. It's nice to see what I want to say appear on the screen before I send it to someone, because that's always something that makes me spiral worse; saying things wrong is one of my biggest stressors.

Otherwise, finding something mindless with accomplishments attached to distract myself with helps. If I have my 3DS handy, out comes the Pokemon game.

I do a lot of unhelpful nervous things like pluck out hair on my arms and legs, which helps distract but totally consumes my focus, and isn't very good. I don't recommend it to anyone who needs hyperfocus to distract from their brains freaking out. I end up just losing minutes to doing nothing.

I'll second recommendations of doing things with your hands, too. Dishes calm me down when I'm in the right mindset.