Anxiety can manifest in different ways from feeling impending doom, racing heart, feeling sick to the pit of one’s stomach, or just feeling incapable of everyday tasks. Your mind is lying to you about the seriousness of various situations. Anything, everything, or specific triggers can become overwhelming.
When you suffer from anxiety, it can impact your daily life and even be crippling. Even though you may be able to logically justify how you’re feeling is overreacting to a situation, it still is not enough to cope with anxiety triggers. Sometimes, you may feel like you’re overreacting to a stressful situation, which can be made worse due to anxiety. It can be made worse because those around you simply don’t understand.
Some people need medications to help alleviate their anxiety and keep it under control. Other people can manage their anxiety naturally. There are those who use a combination of conventional and natural treatments. When you are only using medications, you’re primarily masking the symptoms. There is nothing wrong using medications to help with anxiety. Some people can’t manage anxiety without medications. If you solely depend on medications and are not implementing other means of managing your anxiety, you are doing yourself a disservice. Just living with anxiety and not doing anything doesn’t help you as well as those around you. Regardless of someone’s understanding of anxiety, it can be challenging at times to be around others with anxiety.
Often therapy is needed in conjunction with other treatments. There are natural ways to help cope with anxiety that can be used in conjunction with or in place of conventional treatments depending on an individual’s needs and medical recommendations. How someone manages anxiety is going to vary for each person.
What are you doing to manage your anxiety? There are multiple ways to help manage anxiety in conjunction with conventional treatments. It’s beneficial to implement simple approaches that are simple to not further overwhelm oneself.
Here are several ways that can help manage anxiety.
1. Practice deep breathing for about 5 minutes daily. Controlled deep breathing calms the nervous system and helps relax the mind. Keep it simple. Don’t worry about timing it. You can do it as you’re lying in bed about to fall asleep. Take a deep breath in, hold for a moment, exhale fully, hold for a moment, and repeat. When you get in the habit of deep breathing, you can then learn to stop when you feel anxious and start deep breathing.
2. Another helpful trick when feeling anxiety, look at objects around you and note the color of each object to yourself. It helps to redirect your thoughts and focus on something else. There are more complicated techniques similar to this but just noting colors of objects keeps it simple and is easier to implement when you are feeling overwhelmed due to anxiety.
3. Avoid triggers when possible. While not every trigger can be avoided, simple things such as eliminating or reducing caffeine can help. A cluttered home environment can trigger anxiety. Try to straighten up and organize your home when possible. These are things within your control.
4. Get plenty of sleep as that can cause anxiety. Set up and stick to a sleep schedule by going to bed at the same time every night. Try to get up around the same time each day. Create a tranquil and dark sleep environment conducive to sleep. When you get plenty of sleep, you feel better and can manage daily stressors better.
5. Exercise to the point of lightly sweating. You don’t have to do some strenuous exercise. Listen to your body when it comes to exercise and don’t overdo it. Exercise is a great way to get the blood flowing that can help with exercise. It could be as simple as walking or mindful exercise such as yoga, Tai Qi, or Qi Gong.
6. Acupuncture from a licensed acupuncturist along with the appropriate herbal formulas are great in treating anxiety. Many people find acupuncture to be extremely relaxing. Acupuncture helps to treat the body and the mind. Specific herbal formulas can be tailored to the individual and can be complementary to acupuncture treatments.
Instead of allowing anxiety to lie to you and control your life, do something about it. Find ways to treat and help manage your anxiety. Stop listening to the lies of anxiety.
