Anxiety can be debilitating to those who experience it, but there’s hope. Here are five tips that help with managing anxiety and empowering your life.
1. Balance
The key to happiness is often balance. It can feel like an impossible task when dealing with anxiety. Don’t be afraid to simplify your life and try focusing on things you can control. You can decide how much sleep you get, what you eat and how much you exercise. Starting healthy habits just in those three areas often help manage anxiety more than medication. Anxiety has been linked to not getting enough sleep, poor diet and not enough exercise. Remember to implement things into your life slowly. Take a month to start eating healthier, more colorful food before you try working on exercising a couple times a week. The point isn’t to be overwhelmed, but to build healthy habits.
2. Start A Journal
Documenting how you’re feeling is a great way to understand what you’re experiencing; especially if you have panic attacks. Always keep a small notebook with you so you can quickly jot down the time and place when you begin to feel anxious. You can also keep track of how much you slept or what you ate to see if you find any correlations. This can help you pinpoint changes that will help you balance your life. Writing things down can also help you gain perspective outside of yourself; because what you can see is something you can fight.
3. Make Goals
Anxiety can keep you from completing your highest aspirations or something as simple as driving to the store and back. Although right now it may feel like an impossible dream, write down three goals anxiety is keeping you from attaining. Put these goals somewhere you can see every day, like in your journal or on the bathroom mirror. Those goals aren’t unattainable, and with time you can accomplish and even surpass them. When trying to work through anxiety it’s easy to think that life will never change. If you put limitations on yourself, then you will not progress beyond that point.
4. Thinking Through Anxiety
Especially during a panic attack, the fear and adrenaline can be hard to handle. Many people experience an explosion of destructive thoughts and commonly the, “What if?” questions. What if I get hurt? What if I can’t find a bathroom? What if I make a fool of myself? The easiest way to calm down is to breathe and answer your own questions. You’ll find that if the worst happens you can handle it. This will take a lot of time and practice, but slowly you’ll discover that a lot of you anxiety you can logically think through and learn to trust yourself.
5. Get Help
Nobody expects you to get through this alone. It may be embarrassing or scary at first, but the more people you talk to about it the more you’ll find many people have gone through the same thing. Everybody has anxiety in different degrees. If it's severe enough, then go to a psychologist or psychiatrist. Anxiety is a disease, and there are many doctors that can help you personally manage and work through your anxiety.
