One of the worst feelings in the world is anxiety. The flushing, adrenaline rushing feeling coursing through your veins and making you feel paralysed and out of control is one feeling you don’t want to deal with all the time. Combatting that anxiety is also not the easiest thing to do because not every tip or trick out there is going to work for you. That in itself can be overwhelming to learn and by adopting the right strategies, you can restructure your habits, combat the anxiety and make sure that you feel good again. The anxiety monster is a monster because of the way it takes hold but you don’t have to give it power.
Not everyone is anxious because of a past trauma. Some anxieties occur because of pressures in work and pressures in life that end up manifesting as anxiety. Supplements like Naturecan can really help here, but there are things that you could be doing to combat your anxiety. We’ve put together a helpful list below:
- Scrutinise your schedule and routines. Not everyone deals with anxiety that comes with mental health issues. You could be dealing with a wonky routine or a schedule that keeps you out of whack. Some anxieties are influenced by a disorganised life and that can be helped with a brand new daily structure. The first way to check this is to examine your current structure and determine where changes could be made. You can start straightening out a wonky routine and minimise the unexpected, but for the most part, you have to examine first.
- Be aware of it. One of the most powerful ways to combat anxiety is to be aware of it. You need to see how it creeps up on you and judge how you draw attention to it. Making friends with your anxiety and facing it rather than fighting it is how you can embrace it and be aware of how it manifests.
- Practise deep breathing. Belly breathing is a great way to ground yourself when anxiety begins to take hold. Inhaling and holding a deep breath before slowly exhaling out is a smart way to prevent that anxiety from truly taking hold. Paying attention and making observations as you breathe can even help you to pinpoint where your emotions are heading.
- Search for that resolution. Sometimes, anxiety comes from distress due to an unresolved issue. When you feel like that, you need to allow yourself to deal with that issue and prevent it from becoming your new discomfort. Ignoring the hurt isn’t going to help because the feelings will always remain intact. Instead of trying to dismiss them, you need to face the discomfort and find that resolution that you need.
- Learn to progressively relax your muscles. If you have a free moment, sit in a relaxed position and learn to progressively relax your muscles one by one. Start with your head and face and release your muscles and unclench. Learning to let your muscles go will help you to release the tension from your head all the way down to your feet.
- Learn to accept it. Anxiety may manifest itself in failure or disappointment, but you need to learn how to accept any limitations preventing you from being calm and safe. Anxiety can be an origin from feelings like disappointment, or it can make you feel like you are the disappointment. It can come out of nowhere and it can feel like a dark cloud hanging over your head or a weight on your shoulders. Just because one thing has gone wrong doesn’t mean that everything will go wrong though, so you need to learn to realise that the feeling of anxiety doesn’t mean that you are failing at anything. Allow for a mistake to be as it is a mistake.You don’t want it to be an episode that is out of nowhere. You can accept what happened and you can move on.
- Work on distracting yourself. A great way to combat anxiety is the distractions you can come up with. These distractions can be anything from reading a book to watching TV, listening to music, or going for a run. When you distract yourself from the anxiety long enough, it will be able to go away. You just have to believe that it will.
Anxiety is not easy to deal with, but once you find your coping mechanism, you’ll be able to manage how you feel with ease.