How to Manage Your Anxiety: A Toolkit
Anxiety comes in many forms: from general unease to fully fledged panic attacks. It can disrupt your day and stop you from living life to the fullest but it doesn’t have to be so debilitating. Below you will find a toolkit to help you both prevent and manage your anxiety attacks better:
Understand the root causes of an anxiety attack
Break through the mystery of the anxiety attacks you experience by understanding their root causes. Read about the physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that take place when an anxiety attack happens so that you can understand how and why these occur. This removes much of the mystery and worry behind anxiety attacks, making them much less daunting to deal with.
Stop fearing & change up your language
Fear of anxiety attacks is a major component of recurring attacks. Actually, fearing an anxiety attack to happen is a form of anxiety in itself. Notice the language you use when thinking about it. Instead of thinking, “oh my gosh, I’m terrified I’m going to get an anxiety attack!” and scaring yourself, you can reframe the way you think about them. Make an effort to have more affirming thoughts, such as “Ok, anxiety attacks don’t feel good, but this is my body’s emergency response. It is just a physical thing.”
Calm yourself with breathing techniques.
Calming yourself down helps you to shut off the mechanism that causes anxiety attacks and helps end the stress response. From here, it’s only a matter of time until the body restores to a healthy equilibrium.
Slow, relaxed, deep belly breaths help calm the body. Try this simple and widely used technique: Start breathing in counting to 4, then breath out counting to 6.
Relax the body
Help put an end the stress response by relaxing the body. A major element of anxiety attacks is muscle tension caused by the stress response. Try some deep breathing or start moving to get the body more relaxed, and watch your mind follow suit. You may also want to try deep relaxation or the body scan meditation technique.
Keep your body’s stress in check
Keeping your body’s stress within a healthy range will prevent involuntary anxiety attacks. You will also have more control over your body’s reactions when stress is minimized (persistently elevated stress can cause the body to act erratically and more involuntarily than normal, which can affect the level of control you have over your physical, psychological, and emotional capacities).
Mindfully distract yourself
It may sound simple, but distracting your attention can help you break out of the anxious thought patterns. This is a great technique to have in your toolkit! Try counting, calling a friend, drawing, playing a game, reading a book, listening to calming music, and more.
Recognize your body is doing what it’s supposed to
We all have survival mechanism and this stress response you experience is simply your body reacting how it should in response to the danger you think you are in. Many people go to great lengths to experience the rush of the stress response (skydiving, bungee jumping, other dangerous and thrilling activities). A high degree stress response isn’t a bad thing, but the body’s temporary emergency survival mechanism in action. We can shut it off anytime by using the above strategies.
Remember: all panic attacks come to an end
The feeling in that moment is that this pain will last forever, but all anxiety attacks, no matter how powerful, do have to come to an end. You can end them faster by trying some of the above tips.
Know that riding out the attack will help you return to calm, and your body also wants to find calmness again! No matter how powerful the anxiety attack, it will end.
Feels like you can add to the list? Go ahead and let us know in comments!
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