5 Tips To Cope With Your Anxiety
The holiday season is supposed to be a time that’s full of joy and love. However, for those suffering from anxiety, it can also bring with it a bounty of triggers and worries that can derail the good feelings and cause people to turn back into themselves. If you are someone who experiences anxiety, regardless of whether it is great or small, here are 5 tips to keep anxiety to a minimum this Christmas, well into the next decade, and even beyond so that you can remain at your best.
Take a Deep Breath
Deep breaths are a fast and easy way that anyone can reduce their anxiety and keep it at bay when they feel the onset of an episode. The repetitive nature of breathing helps to level you out, and the deep diaphragmatic breathing techniques help you to battle the fight or flight response, which is so common with anxiety issues.
The switch from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system allows you to calm your body down. You can do this by counting to four and filling your stomach and chest with air and holding it for four seconds, and then releasing it for four seconds, repeating until you start to feel calmer.
Accept the Anxiety
While anxiety can be crippling to many a lot of the time, it is still only a feeling, and the more you try to fight it, the stronger the grip it will have on you. Accepting your anxiety will help you better come to terms with it, which will allow you to deal with it in the best way that you can.
This isn’t to say you must enjoy your anxiety, nor should you accept it as an inevitability. Instead, you can come to recognize the triggers and feelings you experience before becoming too anxious. In time, this will teach you to prevent anxiety attacks before they happen, as you can cope better with the symptoms before they become problems.
This all falls inline with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is the primary approach utilized for <a href=”https://heightsharmreduction.com/anxiety-treatment-houston/” target=”_ blank”>anxiety</a> by Heights Harm Reduction of the Houston Heights.
Exercise Regularly
Much like deep breathing, exercise is something that is always recommended to those suffering from anxiety. The positive chemicals that flood through the body following an intense workout make you feel happier and less inhibited, which can directly affect your mental wellbeing and stave off any anxious thoughts you could suffer from.
However, this is not a recommendation to force you to hit the gym, especially if being around too many strangers could affect your wellbeing. Doing exercise from the comfort of your home or around the neighborhood- basically anywhere you feel safe – will do wonders for your self-esteem and help you better manage your mental health and your physical health too.
Positive Self-Talk
It’s too easy to talk yourself down when suffering from anxiety, stress, depression, or other mental health issues, and this allows the negative thoughts to compound and exacerbate, which only makes your situation worse. Using positive self-talk in place of negativity can keep you grounded and can mitigate anxious feelings about yourself.
Positive self-talk is a powerful coping strategy for those suffering from anxiety. You can use positive phrases or words to help keep your anxiety levels down. For example, instead of thinking, ‘I cannot cope with this,’ consider telling yourself, ‘This episode will soon pass.’
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when experiencing anxiety, but reminding yourself, you can overcome it will do you a lot of favors.
Free Yourself From Worries
Our brains can be tricky things, and while you should trust what your mind tells you in most normal situations, those experiencing anxiety can learn to doubt whatever their brain is telling them to help keep their negative feelings at bay.
It’s not good to always ignore your feelings, but identifying when your brain is trying to trick you can do wonders for keeping anxiety levels low throughout your experience. If you can recognize a worry as absurd, such as panic over messing up a speech or even getting your order at the restaurant wrong, you can cope better with the negative thoughts and hopefully eliminate them almost entirely.
Ask yourself if your imagined scenarios are realistic, and if they are not, you should not concern yourself by worrying about them.
Be Well
Everyone deserves to enjoy the holidays, so keeping these top anxiety tips in mind during any family events or parties over Christmas will make it much easier for you to cope. If you live in the Houston, Texas area and require further assistance for your anxiety issues, Dr. Kelli Wright can help! Learn more by visiting the home page of the Heights Harm Reduction website, or click here to check out our other blog posts.