It’s the middle of the night yet you can’t sleep because your brain is busy running a mile a minute with various worrisome scenarios. The more you think about them, the more your problems start to multiply and morph into these dark and tangled masses that tower above you and block all solutions from sight. Everybody has had dealings with anxiety at some point or other in their lives.
Here are 8 great tips on how to manage your anxiety and stop it from influencing your actions.
1. Deep breathing
Get your mind to relax by performing breathing exercises. They are designed to make your thoughts focus on repetitive physical actions instead of the dread churning in your stomach.
Take a long inhale followed by an equally long exhale and repeat the process. It will serve to calm your heart rate and lower your blood pressure which in turn will help ease the feeling of stress from your body.
2. Worst case scenario
One of the best ways to stop worrying is to picture in detail the worst case scenario you could conjure up and think of possible solutions to it.
As counter intuitive as it sounds, having thought of at least one thing to do in a worst case scenario provides your mind with a safety net and helps reduce your anxiety.
3. Live in the now
Worry feeds on pessimistic projections of the future. One way to stop it is to focus on the present.
Break down your day into very small chunks of time (quarters of an hour, for instance) and concentrate on the immediate tasks you have to perform.
4. Know your triggers
Keeping a worry journal will help you identify the external or internal factors that contribute to the rise of your anxiety levels.
Knowing what makes you worry can better help you avoid getting into such situations. It can also prove effective as an early warning system – giving you time to stop the worries before they develop into full fledged panic.
5. The worry corner
Reserve a portion of the day – half an hour in the evening, for instance – to go through your worries. It is a good way of conditioning yourself to worry only during a specific part of the day, which in turn makes the rest of your time more stress free.
6. Write it down
Anxiety is always accompanied by cognitive distortions, namely thinking patters that cause people to perceive reality inaccurately.
These patterns work by exaggerating the negative outcomes of potential scenarios like the all-or-nothing reasoning (where anything short of perfection is a disaster), filtering out the positive aspects and only focusing on the negative ones or personalization, where individuals harbor guilt for events over which they have no control.
A good way to handle these exaggerated thought patters is to write them down in full – thereby making us acknowledge just how far fetched some of the ideas are.
7. Sleep
Lack of sleep exacerbates anxiety so make sure to get in a solid 8 hours of sleep. If you have problems falling asleep, try practicing the deep breathing exercise before going to bed.
8. Exercise
Physical exercise produces dopamine and serotonin – they are mood controlling chemicals that relate to your sense of well being. Exercising also reduces the amount of stress hormones in the body.