Feeling anxious is normal and it can happen due to different situations or problems. Yet, it can also happen without a reason. Anxiety can be helpful in some situations. Yet, excessive anxiety can be frightening and feel uncontrollable.
It can incapacitate you and prevent you from living a normal and meaningful life. Finding effective ways of dealing with your anxious feelings is important. It will enable you to live a happier, healthier and fulfilling life.
Â
How to Reduce Anxiety
Â
1. Accept that you suffer from anxiety
Â
Anxiety can make you feel unhappy and overwhelmed. People hide feelings by abusing drugs and alcohol, going shopping, or watching television. Denying and hiding your anxious feelings allows anxiety to control your life.
The first step of dealing with anxiety is acknowledging your anxious feelings and fear. When you accept that you are anxious and fearful, you are able to control your anxiety. It prevents you from worrying all the time.
Acceptance begins by understanding that you are not responsible for your anxious feelings. It is also about realizing that it is okay to suffer from anxiety. Having anxiety does not mean that there is something wrong with you.
Besides, you need to understand that anxiety does not change who you are. It does not make you a bad person. You need to feel comfortable talking about it with your family, doctor or therapist.
Â
2. Educate yourself
Â
Educating yourself about anxiety helps you to develop your self-help program. So, you need to educate yourself about your anxiety diagnosis. This is important because it helps you to understand your illness. You are also able to recognize your symptoms of anxiety.
Learning about anxiety helps you to understand what causes your anxious feelings. You get to know about your thoughts and fears. It also helps you to understand how the symptoms of anxiety influence your day-to-day life.
Education helps you to understand how you can treat anxiety or the treatment options. You get to know the steps you need to take to deal with your anxiety symptoms. Anxiety education gives you tips for challenging negative thinking.
You get to learn about the common anxiety triggers. These include caffeine, alcohol and refined wheat. You are also able to prepare yourself for a discussion with your doctor or therapist. Understanding your treatment plan becomes easier.
Â
3. Seek therapy
Â
Seeking help for anxiety is important. What’s more, knowing when to go for the therapy is important. That is why you should keep educating yourself. Nonetheless, anxiety can be overwhelming that it makes it difficult to cope.
If anxiety is interfering with how you live your life, it is important to ask for help from a licensed therapist. Your therapist will help you to control your fears and self-defeating thought patterns.
For instance, cognitive behavioural therapy, also known as CBT, teaches you skills for managing your anxiety. You also learn that you are responsible for your feelings, thoughts and behaviour. You need to be willing to change and control how you feel.
CBT for anxiety teaches you how to identify and confront your worrisome thoughts. Also, the therapist teaches you how to relax your muscles. Relaxation training is good for physical tension.
Â
4. Look after your health
Â
To reduce anxiety, you need to take care of your physical health. For instance, you need to get yourself enough sleep. Sleep helps you to cope with hard feelings and situations. It replenishes your energy.
What’s more, eating a healthy diet is important. You should avoid eating foods that trigger your anxiety. So, getting rid of processed foods, caffeine, sugar, and alcohol is important. Caffeine increases your heart rate. It can also trigger panic attacks, particularly if you suffer from anxiety disorder.
What’s more, low sugar levels can also cause increased heart rate and panic attacks. Refined foods also cause inflammation, thus you should avoid them. Additionally, food allergies can also trigger anxiety.
Exercising regularly helps to ease tension, improve and stabilize mood. Exercises help your body to feel good. When your body feels great, your mind also feels wonderful. So, you can try out anti-anxiety workouts such as aerobics, swimming and brisk walking. Biking, running and dancing are also great anti-anxiety exercises.
Â
5. Meditation
Â
Meditation is an important tool for managing and coping with anxiety. So, learning the best ways to meditate is important. Meditation practice can decrease your anxiety symptoms. What’s more, a regular mental practice helps to quiet your overactive mind.
Deep breathing, particularly deep belly breathing helps your mind and body to relax during anxious moments. Meditating helps you to focus on what is happening in this very moment. This is important because one reason for anxiety is focusing on the past and the future.
Meditating enables you to stop giving your thoughts and feelings too much attention. It also promotes an attitude of accepting yourself as you are. It teaches you to accept your problems without giving them too much value.
An easy way of practicing meditation is to pay attention to your breath. You need to focus on the feeling and experience of breathing in and out. If your mind wanders, try to focus your attention on your breath again.
Â
Parting Shot!
Â
Reducing anxiety is possible. It does not matter whether you inherited it from your parents. It does not also matter whether you got it because of your lifestyle.
To deal with your worrisome thoughts and feelings, you need to accept that you have anxiety. Fighting anxiety and denying that your problems do not exist makes it worse.
The tools above will help you calm your tension, irrational thoughts and feelings. To be able to handle anxiety with ease, you need to educate yourself. You also need to do what works best for you.
What’s more, you need to believe in yourself and strive towards becoming the person you want to be.
