1. Manage your worries
Worrying seems to take over when you have anxiety and you can feel like your worries are out of control. It may help if you find ways to deal with the worry by:
Setting a time for yourself to think about the worries later that day – to enable you to get on with what you need to do next. More often than not, when you get to your allocated “worry time” you will find that the worry wasn’t anything serious, or you may have even forgotten what you were worrying about.
2. Find someone to confide in and talk to
Ask someone you feel safe talking to if you can have a chat with them. Choose a place you are comfortable and able to talk and tell them how you are feeling and what is making you anxious. Just having someone show empathy and care by listening non-judgementally can help reduce your feelings of anxiety. They may also be aware of sources of support that they could signpost you to or help you refer yourself to.
3. Use a breathing exercise
This will help you feel calmer and manage the feelings of anxiety you are feeling.
Begin by closing your eyes and breathing slowly and deeply. Find any areas of tension in the body and imagine that tension disappearing. Now use a progressive relaxation throughout the whole body starting with your feet and moving upwards. Tense each group of muscles and then relax them breathing slowly and deeply throughout.
This will also help you to recognise when you are becoming tense and you can try to relax in response to this instead of this escalating.
4. Distractions and change of focus
There are many ways we can do this – when you realise the feelings of anxiety are growing, try to shift your focus by really concentrating on something that is in front of you at that time, it may be a flower, a picture or anything that you can take notice of that is outside of your feelings of anxiety. Notice colours, textures, smells or sounds using all your senses. By doing this you will have moved away from the feelings for a moment and can move on with your next activity feeling calmer. This technique is used in mindfulness practice and is proven to help reduce anxiety when used regularly.
5. Exercise
Physical exercise can help manage anxiety and panic attacks. Whatever your level of fitness there will be something that you can find that will help reduce your anxiety, simply by regularly engaging in it. This could be walking or running or anything that gets you outside in the fresh air. The positive endorphins and time out this gives us can be beneficial.
All of the above combined with a healthy lifestyle including eating well, avoiding stimulants and good sleep should help manage the anxiety.
Please contact us if things aren’t helping or symptoms are getting worse.