Excellent tips for relieving anxiety
If you are struggling with anxiety chances are you have dedicated a considerable portion of your life to seeking relief. This can become a frustrating and unyielding battle that requires more effort than the prize is actually worth. Nevertheless, knowing the right techniques straight ahead, and so bypassing the trial and error phase, will save you a lot of painful time leaving more of it for leisure. I decided to go through the lengthy battle of hit and miss, because I couldn’t take the stinging feeling of anxiety anymore, and now I am here to share the results of what anxiety-fighting approaches were worth spending my time on. Since it is true that something that might have not worked for me may work well for you, thanks to our subjective nature, I still enforce experimenting to see for yourself. Be that as it may, the following will surely give you a tremendous head-start.
Great things to do for your anxiety:
If you are struggling with anxiety chances are you have dedicated a considerable portion of your life to seeking relief. This can become a frustrating and unyielding battle that requires more effort than the prize is actually worth. Nevertheless, knowing the right techniques straight ahead, and so bypassing the trial and error phase, will save you a lot of painful time leaving more of it for leisure. I decided to go through the lengthy battle of hit and miss, because I couldn’t take the stinging feeling of anxiety anymore, and now I am here to share the results of what anxiety-fighting approaches were worth spending my time on. Since it is true that something that might have not worked for me may work well for you thanks to our subjective nature, I still enforce experimenting to see for yourself.
Exercising - will not only use up more of your energy that would otherwise be burned by anxiety, but it also provides a plethora of biological benefits. Release of endogenous transmitters and chemicals including serotonin, endorphins, endocannabinoids, and neurotrophic factors was correlated with aerobic exercise. The results are enhancement of mood, increase in physical and mental stamina, and shockingly even morphological changes in the brain. These physical changes were visible, using magnetic imaging, in a region of the brain called hippocampus, which is implicated in memory and cognition and is frequently negatively affected by depression. Therefore exercise is definitely worth the effort.
Cognitive approach – You are probably familiar with all the negative thoughts and ideas that accompany depression and anxiety. Thoughts about death, inflicting pain, and even irrational mental images of hurting others, although you would never dare to, are some examples. Shocking and intrusive as they might be, you will need to rationalize them or replace them with more innocuous content. This can be achieved via meditation and analyzing the sources of your anxiety, which you will consequently try to address. How you address them is something to contemplate as well. I applied exposure therapy, a technique where you face your anxiety triggers face to face. Although unpleasant at first, it helps tremendously in the long run and that should be your main concern. Short-term relief supplied by alcohol, cigarettes, and some recreational drugs can be misleading and often counterproductive. By facing your fears head to head you desensitize your anxious response effectively, because it forces you to find think about the irrationality inherent to anxiety. If you think you cannot handle so much anxiety at once, apply the trigger gradually until you reach the desired effect. Exposure therapy and many other cognitive approaches are those I found most beneficial. Therefore go ahead, I really mean it, and read up on these either on the internet or in books dealing with treating anxiety, which are usually rich in such advice.
Avoiding irritants - apart from exposure therapy, you will want start avoiding those triggers where exposure would be detrimental. If drinking alcohol, coffee, sugary drinks, and similar beverages and foods make your anxiety worse then simply exclude them from your diet. These triggers are different for everyone so you will need to be a judge on what to avoid and what can stay. The key to recovering is to stay in a positive and complacent mind-state for as long as you can, as this will rewire your default state of consciousness to a more stable one making intense shifts in anxiety unlikely. I know how much it can hurt to part with some of the deliciousness, but making dietary changes does not mean to revert to bread and water only. Substituting sugar treated drinks, leaving rest as it was, with water is enough to feel a difference.
Supplementing – vitamin and mineral deficiencies can sometimes be held responsible for psychiatric distress. Keeping proper levels is vital and failing to do so can exaggerate or even cause anxiety and depression. Fish oil, b-complex, magnesium, calcium, and zinc constitute my daily diet and I can, from experience, attest to their efficacy. The advantage of supplements is that they rarely carry a risk for developing, tolerance, dependence, or any negative side effects thus making them a safe and competent option.
Distract yourself – feeding your focus with some harmless activity will help you shift thoughts away from the ruminating negativity. Engage in whatever you feel like doing such as going for a walk or playing video games, it really is up to you, and if you do not feel like doing anything then try it at least. I find playing the piano less exhausting than obsessing about anxiety and so might you. Even if it fails to bring immediate benefits you can be proud of doing something productive that you can fully utilize later, when you are relieved of anxiety.
These are the techniques that helped me break the anxious habit; the cognitive approach proved most yielding. I implemented all of these in times when my anxiety was culminating, when panic attacks were my daily cup of coffee along with intense dissociation. The longer I practiced the better the results. Today, I can finally be as productive and social as I wish to be, as there is no crippling anxiety to stop me. It took a little bit of effort, but most of it was spend on researching; results of which I have presented here. Hope this will save you considerable time.
Exercising - will not only use up more of your energy that would otherwise be burned by anxiety, but it also provides a plethora of biological benefits. Release of endogenous transmitters and chemicals including serotonin, endorphins, endocannabinoids, and neurotrophic factors was correlated with aerobic exercise. The results are enhancement of mood, increase in physical and mental stamina, and shockingly even morphological changes in the brain. These physical changes were visible, using magnetic imaging, in a region of the brain called hippocampus, which is implicated in memory and cognition and is frequently negatively affected by depression. Therefore exercise is definitely worth the effort.
Cognitive approach – You are probably familiar with all the negative thoughts and ideas that accompany depression and anxiety. Thoughts about death, inflicting pain, and even irrational mental images of hurting others, although you would never dare to, are some examples. Shocking and intrusive as they might be, you will need to rationalize them or replace them with more innocuous content. This can be achieved via meditation and analyzing the sources of your anxiety, which you will consequently try to address. How you address them is something to contemplate as well. I applied exposure therapy, a technique where you face your anxiety triggers face to face. Although unpleasant at first, it helps tremendously in the long run and that should be your main concern. Short-term relief supplied by alcohol, cigarettes, and some recreational drugs can be misleading and often counterproductive. By facing your fears head to head you desensitize your anxious response effectively, because it forces you to find think about the irrationality inherent to anxiety. If you think you cannot handle so much anxiety at once, apply the trigger gradually until you reach the desired effect. Exposure therapy and many other cognitive approaches are those I found most beneficial. Therefore go ahead, I really mean it, and read up on these either on the internet or in books dealing with treating anxiety, which are usually rich in such advice.
Avoiding irritants - apart from exposure therapy, you will want start avoiding those triggers where exposure would be detrimental. If drinking alcohol, coffee, sugary drinks, and similar beverages and foods make your anxiety worse then simply exclude them from your diet. These triggers are different for everyone so you will need to be a judge on what to avoid and what can stay. The key to recovering is to stay in a positive and complacent mind-state for as long as you can, as this will rewire your default state of consciousness to a more stable one making intense shifts in anxiety unlikely. I know how much it can hurt to part with some of the deliciousness, but making dietary changes does not mean to revert to bread and water only. Substituting sugar treated drinks, leaving rest as it was, with water is enough to feel a difference.
Supplementing – vitamin and mineral deficiencies can sometimes be held responsible for psychiatric distress. Keeping proper levels is vital and failing to do so can exaggerate or even cause anxiety and depression. Fish oil, b-complex, magnesium, calcium, and zinc constitute my daily diet and I can, from experience, attest to their efficacy. The advantage of supplements is that they rarely carry a risk for developing, tolerance, dependence, or any negative side effects thus making them a safe and competent option.
Distract yourself – feeding your focus with some harmless activity will help you shift thoughts away from the ruminating negativity. Engage in whatever you feel like doing such as going for a walk or playing video games, it really is up to you, and if you do not feel like doing anything then try it at least. I find playing the piano less exhausting than obsessing about anxiety and so might you. Even if it fails to bring immediate benefits you can be proud of doing something productive that you can fully utilize later, when you are relieved of anxiety.
These are the techniques that helped me break the anxious habit; the cognitive approach proved most yielding. I implemented all of these in times when my anxiety was culminating, when panic attacks were my daily cup of coffee along with intense dissociation. The longer I practiced the better the results. Today, I can finally be as productive and social as I wish to be, as there is no crippling anxiety to stop me. It took a little bit of effort, but most of it was spend on researching; results of which I have presented here. Hope this will save you considerable time.
Intrusive thoughts:
A common problem with anxiety, from a psychological point of view, are intrusive thoughts which fail to leave your consciousness once they attack. The following example illustrates and explains the problematic mechanism behind intrusive thoughts and consequently proposes a solution:
Example
Wanting everything to be perfect at all times and costs can be a great motivation, but only within limits. Trying to live up to unreasonably high standards and consistently obsessing about your failures or events you misinterpret as failures, although they were fairly successful relatively speaking, will trigger a difficult to reverse cascade of anxiety. Constantly asking questions of the type what if it happened differently? or why me? why am I so unlucky? am I turning crazy? successfully consumes your focus pulling you out of reality, which deserves most of your focus, into a confined department filled with profoundly negative thoughts. As many anxiety/depression sufferers might have noticed from experience this can become quite a habit and habits are hard to break so in a sense you become addicted to anxious thinking. Unfortunately, the thinking begins to projects into behavior and starts eliciting physiological responses characteristic to anxiety such as panic attacks, racing heart and restlessness. Now the habit becomes even harder to break as you have associated it with strong emotions further imprinting the experience into your memory. See how this becomes a never-ending problem that constantly gains in force? Therefore it is important to break the habit as soon as possible to save yourself from prolonged struggling and it is why some patience and time are required to break the habit as you need to replace the practice with a healthier one.
Solution to example
Recognizing what the problem is and that it is an anxious response rather than a normal form of reasoning is the first move. The issue in this case is over-thinking and exaggerating so you will want to rationalize the response by questioning the negative questions/exaggerations. You might want to ask yourself: What are the chances of me going crazy considering that I have already experienced this without turning psychotic? Did it really turn out so bad? In other words, you are fighting your anxiety, which skews your view on reality, by using evidence and reason to counter its proposals. By adapting approaches like this one or similar and replacing the previous, detrimental one you successfully break the vicious loop.
A common problem with anxiety, from a psychological point of view, are intrusive thoughts which fail to leave your consciousness once they attack. The following example illustrates and explains the problematic mechanism behind intrusive thoughts and consequently proposes a solution:
Example
Wanting everything to be perfect at all times and costs can be a great motivation, but only within limits. Trying to live up to unreasonably high standards and consistently obsessing about your failures or events you misinterpret as failures, although they were fairly successful relatively speaking, will trigger a difficult to reverse cascade of anxiety. Constantly asking questions of the type what if it happened differently? or why me? why am I so unlucky? am I turning crazy? successfully consumes your focus pulling you out of reality, which deserves most of your focus, into a confined department filled with profoundly negative thoughts. As many anxiety/depression sufferers might have noticed from experience this can become quite a habit and habits are hard to break so in a sense you become addicted to anxious thinking. Unfortunately, the thinking begins to projects into behavior and starts eliciting physiological responses characteristic to anxiety such as panic attacks, racing heart and restlessness. Now the habit becomes even harder to break as you have associated it with strong emotions further imprinting the experience into your memory. See how this becomes a never-ending problem that constantly gains in force? Therefore it is important to break the habit as soon as possible to save yourself from prolonged struggling and it is why some patience and time are required to break the habit as you need to replace the practice with a healthier one.
Solution to example
Recognizing what the problem is and that it is an anxious response rather than a normal form of reasoning is the first move. The issue in this case is over-thinking and exaggerating so you will want to rationalize the response by questioning the negative questions/exaggerations. You might want to ask yourself: What are the chances of me going crazy considering that I have already experienced this without turning psychotic? Did it really turn out so bad? In other words, you are fighting your anxiety, which skews your view on reality, by using evidence and reason to counter its proposals. By adapting approaches like this one or similar and replacing the previous, detrimental one you successfully break the vicious loop.