Strategies to Help Your Anxiety
We all go through periods in our lives where we feel worried and anxious. It’s one of those human experiences that, while doesn’t feel particularly pleasant, reminds us that we are human beings and we are able to feel things beyond where we think we can feel. Understanding how to relax your mind, ease your anxiety and regain control is important if you want to be able to live a life that is not consumed by panic. You need to have the tools in your toolbox to help you to calm your mind and body and reduce those anxiety and the intensity of it. Below, we’ve put together a list of strategies to help your anxiety to lessen.
- Learning the connection between anxiety and depression. Right now you may be working with an anxiety therapist on your triggers, but what if that therapy isn’t working for you because it’s not just anxiety or dealing with it? Depression and anxiety walk together hand in hand, and while it’s not a specific strategy, understanding that connection between those two illnesses can help you to determine if what you’re dealing with is a sign of something more serious or if it’s just temporary anxiety.
- Don’t push it aside. If you want to help your anxiety, you have to acknowledge that it’s real. You have to be able to say to yourself that this is a real feeling and something that you are experiencing and that it’s not something to push away or feel ashamed of. Knowing when you feel anxious can allow you to take the steps that you need to ease those symptoms down, but the first step to that is accepting that you cannot control everything. Acknowledging those thoughts by asking yourself if it is as bad as you think it is, is the first step.
- Allow yourself to worry. Most people with anxiety try to fight the anxious feelings. Picture it like a tug of war with a monster in your head. The more you pull on the rope, the more the monster will pull against you. And in between you is a pit, a black hole of darkness and fear. In your mind, fighting the anxiety is all about trying to pull the monster into the pit, but the more you pull, the harder he pulls. What would happen if you just dropped the rope and allowed yourself to feel it? Well, the anxiety can’t pull you into the pit of fear anymore, because instead of there being a pit of fear, you’re accepting how you feel.
- Interrupt your own anxiety. When those negative thoughts or excessive worries begin to run through your head, you need to stop them in their tracks, and the only way to do that is to interrupt them. If a voice in your head is telling you that you’re not good enough, ask it why. If you don’t have that strategy in your mind to ask or to interrupt it and to disagree with it, then engage yourself with an activity or distract yourself with your hands. Do star jumps if that’s what’s going to help. But you need to interrupt that anxious feeling and move it forward.
