How do you handle stress, anxiety, and anything else you might deal with during your day?

I have two tricks that can help in the moment when having an anxiety attack:

If at home, fill a large (bigger than your face) bowl with ice and water. Once full, take a deep breath and plunge your face into the water. Hold your breath for as long as you can then come up for air. This stimulates the mammalian diving reflex. I've never had to do this more than twice even in a full blown attack.

Anywhere else, try the 4-7-8 breathing technique. This helps me while driving or when trying to go to sleep.

I suffer from recurring, debilitating panic attacks (clinically diagnosed panic disorder) and daily Zazen meditation has helped me a great deal over the years; Not only in just generally coping with them but also helping me mitigate their effect and even in preventing them entirely if I catch them coming on early enough. It's super easy to learn the basics, only requires 10-15min a day, requires no special equipment and it just works... all it requires is persistence and consistency in order to get the benefits.

It's also wonderfully flexible, too. I can do it wherever and whenever I need to, be it in the shower or even when I am out and about. Sometimes I just count my breaths, sometimes I use koans (repeating a phrase or word that has meaning for me, e.g. "Serenity"), and sometimes I listen to music or chanting (e.g. Gyuto monks) while doing it. Sometimes when I am having a really shitty/stressful/panic attack filled week I meditate for an hour or more a day, sometimes when I feel a panic attack coming I can just quickly take some deep breaths while counting them for a few minutes to re-center myself and prevent it from escalating, sometimes in the middle of a panic attack I can just start meditating and it helps me detach to take the edge off.

For anyone else struggling with panic attacks or generalized anxiety I really can't recommend learning meditation enough, be it Zazen, mindfulness, transcendental or whichever you prefer.

I have generalized anxiety quite often. Meditation hasn't worked for me, mainly because I have hard times building habits and because the first few sessions increase my anxiety. Venting occasionally helps, but I also bake. I find baking comforting, and the act of measuring and mixing everything perfectly gives my brain something to focus on. Along the same lines, programming, puzzle games, riveting debates, occasionally compulsive cleaning while listening to mid-high tempo EDM, I like things that force me to think about anything other than my anxiety.

If you imagine anxiety as a pack of rabid squirrels high on cocaine, my method would be like throwing a pack of acorns somewhere else and yelling "FOCUS ON THIS, NOT ME".

The biggest coping mechanisms for stress for me are exercise and hobbies.

Exercising is like a drug. Specifically, if you get to a place where your body works with you when you're exercising, then just starting to exercise helps to drain the stress out of you.

Hobbies are therapeutic as well. Some of them I do directly as stress relievers, such as speed cubing or juggling. Some I do to preemptively keep myself sane - I make sure to have some "me time" every week wherein I do something entirely for my own enjoyment, because life is meant to be enjoyed.

weed atm, formerly adderall (which was terrible for me), and a little bit of meditation

Regular anxiety: accept that it's unavoidable be one with your anxiousness.
Clinical anxiety: psychotherapy, weed, medication.

Eva, I hope you'll be getting better all the time!

Something about posting on psuedoanonymous internet forums tends to quiet panic attacks for me personally, at least.

I think there is a general pattern: When we are able to articulate and be listened to, we will feel less anxious. From my experience, I feel extremely fortunate for the occasions where I was in need of emotional support and was given it. For me the problem was that I wasn't ready to be given the support. Then a vicious state of self-isolation took root.

I really believe that the awareness of "I need help, because ...", and the knowledge of "who can help when...", are life-saving. This includes the awareness of "I can help myself in need, when...".

I second @cfabbro's recommendation for intentional breathing and meditation. I think they're a great way of training the awareness of emotions. The awareness and familiarity with emotions is a sort of bodily knowledge about the self. This knowledge is... empowering, for the lack of a better word.

I don't even think there's a strict boundary between self-care and caring for each other. Either implies the other and is embedded in the other.

Some disclosure for context... I've been on medication and psychotherapy for anxiety and depression. The meds helps me with one thing: reducing the likeliness of the worst episodes. The rest is emotional work.

I manage chaos by introducing order. Constructive distraction. Divert focus from chaotic, stressful events and focus instead on something that has structure, like a task, a game, or a show that has a plot. Not escapism, mind you, as I still handle the causes of my stress, but alleviating the stress through an activity that occupies my excess head space.

I would meditate, but my brain is far too active and it never works. Constructive distraction is a much more effective strategy for me.

Meditation's come up a few times already, and I just wanted to add a bit to that. I'm terrible at sitting still and being "calm". I prefer a "moving meditation", which for me is yoga. I do the one breath, one movement, one intention. And just try to be present in the physical form itself, holding longer, stretching deeper, shifting the balance to work on strength. The focus is on keeping the breath calm - inhaling deeply and exhaling in measured time.

Before yoga, I did this with running. Just focusing on calm, measured breaths while looking up and running. (This is obviously not one breath one movement.)