Wonderful tips to Beat Anxiety
There are some easy tools that anyone can use to cope
with their feelings of anxiety. They include:
A1. Learning more about anxiety: This will help you to
understand what is happen when you start to feel increasingly anxious. First,
remember that we all feel anxious at times. It can help us to prepare for and
cope with hard tasks – such as sitting an exam or teaching a class. However, it
leads to problems when the danger isn’t real yet our body is signalling a high
state of alert.
A2. Learning strategies that help us relax: The two most
common strategies for relaxing and unwinding are calming down our breathing and
muscle relaxation. The former involves taking slow, gentle breaths (breathing
in through the nose, pausing for a few seconds, then breathing out slowly
through the mouth, again). The latter involves learning how to tense and relax
the different muscles - and then repeating this until our stress levels fall.
A3. Actively challenging our anxious thoughts: When we’re
anxious and tense we often see the world as a threatening and hostile place.
This usually reflects faulty, negative thinking where we jump to conclusions or
expect the worse to happen. This is out of proportion, exaggerated thinking
which is unrealistic – and makes us feel uptight. A strategy for helping is
replacing faulty thinking with a more realistic and accurate approach. This necessitates
us challenging our automatic thinking so we see things in a clearer, less
distressing way. Of course, it takes practise and effort to shift our change
anxious thinking – but it’s worth the effort in the end
A4. Facing our fears: One of the best ways of dealing
with our fears is exposing ourselves to what makes us feel afraid. For example,
if you avoid being with people as this leaves you feeling anxious then the best
way forward is to simply face your fear.
You could make a list that goes from “least to most scary” - and then
reward yourself each time you move a level up the list.
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1413980
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