Anxiety can often feel draining and take the motivation right out of you. The interesting fact about anxiety is all of the different ways it can affect your body. The symptoms associated with anxiety can be felt in your head, stomach, chest, and other areas of the body. Some of these symptoms could include: headaches, nausea/vomiting, shaking, panic attacks, fatigue, etc., and can be exhausting to deal with. Symptoms such as the ones that often come with anxiety, can make it difficult to go on about your everyday life and get in the way of having a social life, relationships, and responsibilities such as work, school, pets, children, and much more. It can feel like it is consuming your whole life and almost impossible to get rid of. Many people will experience feelings of anxiety at some point in their life, whether it is being anxious to do a presentation, starting a new job, or moving out of state. Life comes with many changes, and with changes and transitions comes anxiety. There are several coping mechanisms that can help reduce the stressors of living with anxiety every day. Learning how to maintain healthy coping mechanisms it can help you feel in control of your life again rather than letting the anxiety control you.
Educate yourself – The first step in treating anxiety is understanding your anxiety and what is causing it. Become more aware of when you are feeling anxiety, where you are feeling it in your body or what your symptoms are. This can help in identifying certain coping mechanisms that may work better for you than others.
Identify events or ideas that trigger anxiety – After learning to understand how your body feels anxiety, being able to identify what is causing those symptoms will help build awareness and gain insight on how to deal with what is causing the anxiety. This can also help you understand what events or specific things in your life that you may want to change to cause you less anxiety or not go to specific places if they are anxiety producing.
Exercise and sleep – Exercising can release chemicals in your body that provide positive thoughts or happy feelings. This can be beneficial when dealing with anxiety because it can help reduce negative emotions associated with anxiety. Exercise may not be for everyone but any physical activity even a 15-minute walk could be beneficial in lifting your mood. Along with exercise, making sure to get enough sleep every night is
beneficial in managing anxiety and keeping a clear mind.
Breathing techniques – When feeling anxious or struggling with anxiety symptoms such as panic attacks, shaking, nausea, etc. breathing techniques can help to refocus the brain and release the emotions being experienced. This can help reduce the anxiety levels and bring you back down to better well-being.
Journaling – Journaling is a great tool for coping with anxiety as it can be your guide to where your emotions are coming from, how you react, coping skills, and anything, and everything. Journaling can help you to keep track of what you are currently focusing on along with allowing you to write down your feelings as you are feeling them. Keeping track of your feelings and looking back on them will help with self-reflection and processing which are both great steps to being able to manage anxiety and emotions.
Self-care – It is important to implement a regular routine self-care plan to help you relax and prevent burnout in any aspect of your life. Self-care can come in many forms and look different to everyone. Some examples of self-care could include: playing with your dog for an hour a day, exercising multiple times a week, a bath at the end of the day, taking walks, etc. Anything that you personally find to put you at ease, relax you, or reduce stress can be included in your self-care plan. With anxiety symptoms, many tasks can be difficult to complete and burnout could be a potential risk if no steps are taken to reduce the anxiety symptoms. Having a self-care plan not only can help with reducing those feelings but also prevent you from having negative consequences at work due to burnout or becoming mentally impaired further. A common diagnosis of depression can often be followed by anxiety and making sure to take time for yourself is detrimental in managing/coping with anxiety and preventing further risk.
Understanding how your environment impacts anxiety feelings – The space around you can oftentimes reflect what is going on in your mind. If you are overwhelmed or have a hectic schedule with poor time management, your home may be reflecting that in ways of being messy, out of order, or just simply not how you like it to look with a less busy schedule. On top of experiencing anxiety feelings from what is going on in your life, not
taking care of your space may be adding to those feelings. This can go hand-in-hand with a self-care plan; once you can identify what causes your specific anxiety symptoms, you can start to recognize how your environment/space is making you feel. If you recognize that having a cleaned house or organized office space helps to keep a clear mind and reduce feelings of being overwhelmed, then it could be something to incorporate in your self-care plan.
These are a few ideas or coping mechanisms to start with for managing anxiety. A big part of being able to manage anxiety is being able to identify how you feel the anxiety and what is causing it. Once you can identify those factors, you will be able to understand what coping mechanisms may be beneficial for your specific symptoms.
While their are so many more coping mechanisms that are available and could be beneficial these first few steps will set you in the right direction to taking control over your anxiety, learning how to manage it, and creating more healthy habits and coping mechanisms on your journey.