More than 20% of the population experience regular anxiety and “pressure” trying to deal with day-to-day pressures of life. The feelings are not just in the “head” of people with anxiety but also in the entire body as well. Anxiety creates an automatic response in the body that elevates heart rates, flushes the body and produces more stress hormones in the person. Their anxiety is not just something you can talk them out of but instead they need to find a way to manage the emotions from the inside out. Here are 5 highly researched ways to help to get the anxiety better under control.
Talk It Out
- One of the fastest ways to get your anxiety out of you is to simply share it with another person.
- That is one of the reasons that therapy is an essential addition to pharmaceuticals in the treatment of anxiety and depression.
- Everybody should have one person that they can share their entire heart and mind with. Despite conventional wisdom, that doesn’t always have to be your spouse, but it should be someone that is consistently there for you.
- Activity- Find the person that can you can share your deepest feelings and concerns with. Someone who will listen and not try to fix what you’re feeling.
- Perhaps that is a therapist or maybe even just a best friend, but in the end you are looking to find a person who will simply be a great listening ear.
Write It Out
- Another way to help coach the anxiety out of yourself is by writing the anxiety out of you.
- One way to get the energy and thoughts that keep you stuck and swimming in overwhelm and pressure is to get the thoughts out.
- Activity- Take a blank piece of paper and just start writing down all of the thoughts that are swirling through your mind..
- Once you’ve completed a line, write over the top of your last line.
Think It Out
- Much of our pressures day in and day out will come from our repetitive thoughts that don’t serve us or that aren’t even accurate, but they feel incredibly real.
- Our negative thoughts create negative feelings and those feelings over time are what constitute our pressurized world.
- One of the fastest ways to change the thought is to redirect it from a negative thought to a positive thought.
- Activity- Evaluate your negative thoughts by intentionally gaining an abundance of positive thoughts to counter your negative thoughts. Begin to make a list of all of the good things that are happening to you in your life every day. Identify three things a day that are positively impacting you and make sure to write them down.
Chunk It Out
- Sometimes the reason anxiety is so consistently upon us might be because of our brains ability to blow certain situations out of proportion. Anxiety makes us feel like some things are way too big to handle.
- One way to change the scope of the things that stress you out is by re-framing the problem in a more achievable way.
- Activity- Break your anxieties down into bite sized chunk like the following examples. Instead of your child stressing about getting perfect grades, help them to refocus their attention on simply getting one assignment done at a time.
- Instead of feeling overwhelmed that you have to do everything that needs to get done all at once, chunk your stresses down into bit sized pieced that seem more manageable.
Turn It Out
- Usually when you’re overwhelmed and overextended our tendency is to withdraw into our own little shell and maybe hide from everyone else.
- Instead of letting our anxiety get the best of us, we need to use our nervous energy to get out of ourselves and redirect the energy toward the service of others.
- There are an amazing amount of “happy neurotransmitters” that we can feel when we are serving or caring for others.
- Activity- Find a way to turn your anxious tendencies into the service or well being of others. By redirecting your focus outside of yourself to the service of others you may begin to find other benefits and chemicals to combat your anxiety.
