Anxiety is something most people face at one time or another. Be it public speaking, a job interview or other high pressure event, we all experience fear. However, real anxiety issues linger and interfere with a person’s ability to live a normal life. If this sounds like you, keep reading for advice on living with and dealing with anxiety.
In the throes of an anxiety attack, practice diaphramatic breathing to help you calm down. Place one hand on your stomach and inhale deeply, pushing your hand outward. Hold that breath for several seconds, and exhale slowly. This keeps you from hyperventilating and gives you something besides your panic to focus on.
You can reduce your overall level of anxiety by learning how to deal with daily stress. When stress is elevated, your anxiety is usually elevated as well. Try to delegate some jobs to other people and free yourself from some of your responsibilities. Attempt to get some time to relax and unwind every day.
To help you ensure anxiety is not taking control of your life, speak to your doctor about medications you can take to restore potential chemical balances. Medications are often prescribed for people dealing with anxiety disorders and the results have proven to be very effective in most cases.
To help manage your anxiety, consider meeting with a therapist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy. This kind of therapy can help you attack specific fears or worries by identifying and changing distorted patterns in your thinking. By looking at the full picture of how your worries affect you, you can hopefully decrease your overall anxiety when those thinking patterns are eliminated.
If you frequently suffer from bouts of anxiety that appear seemingly out of nowhere, or you feel anxious a majority of the time, you may have what is called generalized anxiety disorder. This disorder needs to be treated by an experienced doctor, or therapist before anxiety has a chance to take over your life.
A useful technique to manage anxiety about an event, or condition is to deliberately exaggerate, the outcome beyond all reason. Relate your concerns out loud to a friend, but describe the outcome you fear with as much emotion, and dramatic detail as you possibly can. When you are done, do it again. While it seems odd, research has shown that deliberately exaggerating the consequences that you fear, will often desensitize you to the trigger, helping you experience the absurdity of it all. This can allow you to place your concerns in a more realistic light.
Begin your day with a few minutes of positive affirmations. Tell yourself how you want your day to go. Make sure you are using cheerful and motivating words when applying this method. This can help your day go a lot better, which can minimize your anxiety throughout the entire day.
Planning ahead is a great way to reduce stress on a daily basis. Instead of waiting until the last minute for projects at work or school, start in advance to eliminate any hassle when you face crunch time. This will help to put you in the best position to maintain a positive mindset.
Learn to exaggerate your fears. This may sound crazy, but it has been proven to work. If you are afraid you will trip when walking down the stairs at an event, imagine yourself not only tripping, but rolling all the way down the staircase and taking other people down with you. Make it a funny, extreme mental picture, and you will feel your anxiety melt away quickly.
Deep breathing exercises can help more than almost anything to help diffuse feelings of anxiety. Learning a few exercises will give you something helpful to do when you start feeling overwhelmed. It can be helpful to just breathe for a few minutes and then, you will feel calm enough to go on.
Make sure that you have a good quantity of protein as the day wears on, if you want to feel your very best emotionally. Protein helps you to feel strong mentally, which eliminates that haggard feeling that you sometimes get, late in the day at work or school. Incorporate foods with protein, if you want to feel more energetic and comfortable and less stressed out.
In order to manage anxiety, it is wise to consider acupuncture. Acupuncture relaxes the body, making it useful for treating many problems. If it’s for a medical problem, many medical insurance companies may cover it.
If you discover that watching television causes your anxiety levels to go up, then turn it off. Limit the amount of time that you watch television, and do something more productive instead. Try cleaning the house, exercising, hanging out with friends, or reading a good book. Television time should be limited. Never watch anything that causes you to stress out immediately upon watching.
If you’re having problems at work or school, then talk to your supervisor or teacher. Let them know what’s going on and that you’re doing the best you can, even though anxiety can be affecting your productivity. The more you open up to people the less anxious you feel in general, especially at work or school.
If your anxiety is very severe, make sure that you visit your local physician as soon as possible. Severe anxiety can have a devastating impact on your life, and the longer you leave the condition untreated, the harder it will be for you to recover. Your local physician will be able to work with you to come up with a treatment plan that will work.
Do not isolate yourself from the world. When you suffer from anxiety, it can be easier to hide away from society rather, than face up to the fact that you have a legitimate mental health problem. Isolating yourself from others will only make your anxiety worse, and could lead to depression.
As noted earlier, most people experience anxiety at one point or another, but serious anxiety issues can keep you locked in a dark and lonely world. Hopefully, this article has shed some light on some of the things you can do to help yourself live a happier, more productive life with less anxiety.