[legion]

Reducing or eliminating caffeine certainly will help.

I exercise regularly by running and weight lifting, but the thing that helps my stress levels the most are taking daily walks. I try to walk 5 miles a day. It's not just the exercise, but the dedicated time to think and work through the issues of the day. Even when I was hyper-stressed out when I lived in Atlanta and working for an @$$hole boss, I used my walks to formulate a plan (and contingency plans) to escape.

I had a pretty chaotic childhood and used to take my dog for 1-2 hour walks just to get out of the house. Over time, I started using the time not just as an escape but to figure out what things I had control over that I could use to make things better.

I have had one panic attack in my life, but I eventually traced it to a medication I was on at the time (a steroid for inflammation with a stimulant side-effect). I'm not high-strung, so it was a weird experience for me. After the attack passed, I started thinking about why it happened. I was stressed out about not having clear direction about something at work. I thought to myself: "This isn't like you. You're apathetic. You don't care. Cleary something else is the cause." I stopped taking the medication and felt normal the next day.