ANXIETY SELF HELP
Feeling anxious?
It is natural and unavoidable to experience anxiety at times in your life, it happens to everyone at some point. If you feel your anxiety is out of proportion and is impacting negatively upon you then you need to do something about it. There are self help techniques you can try but you should also seek help from your doctor.
Anxiety Self Help
Anxiety can become a habit, and the more anxious you get about certain thoughts or events the more inclined to negative thinking you become. This negative thinking habit tends to feed the anxiety as you begin to expect and anticipate negative outcomes, problems and difficulties. However, habit behaviors can be changed and you truly can overcome anxiety and change that habit pattern. Follow the tips in this Anxiety self help article and see if you can overcome and conquer your anxiety, there will still be times when you will experience some anxiety, we all do, but you can reduce it significantly.
If you experience anxiety, you may find some of the following symptoms occur:
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Feeling hot, sweating more
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A desire to run away or escape
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A feeling of dread like something terrible is about to happen
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Racing heart
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Shortness of breath
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Shakiness
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Physical tension
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tiredness
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Low energy
Anxiety Self Help – How can you make your anxiety better?
- Meditation
- Hypnosis for anxiety
- Sleep
- Physical relaxation
- Positive thinking
- Exercise
- Taking positive action
There are changes you can make to your habits and thoughts and using hypnosis or meditation can also help you reduce and control anxiety. Understanding why you are anxious and when it started to become a problem may be useful to understanding what changes you should be making. For example, sometimes it can be the case that a period of extreme stress results in a sense of lasting anxiety that you cannot seem to shake off. It might be that you have always had a tendency to feel anxious. What is important is that you can change this. Anxiety self help, using meditation or hypnosis along with self care can help you break the cycle.
What anxiety is:
Anxiety is fear, it is fed by thinking negative thoughts which fuels the fear and keeps it going. The key is to change your thinking habits and initially this may simply be in the form of meditation or quietening the mind which can also happen easily in hypnosis. We all have fearful thoughts at times, but the key is that the anxious person pays heed to these thoughts and lets them take a prominent place in their mind, whereas a person not inclined to be anxious would push those anxious thoughts aside and give them less attention, less energy. This is again just a habit that has formed.
The rational mind
Our rational thinking mind may battle with negative worrying thoughts and try to keep them at bay, but ultimately there can come about a situation where the negative thoughts are constantly flowing and the rational mind is actively engaging with them and this is not ideal. You may think to yourself, why am I anxious about this or that, when other people don’t seem to have this problem. You can change though, you can reduce anxiety by controlling your thoughts. It just take a bit of practice. Yes – it is easier said than done, but with practice, practice, practice comes success.
Anxiety Self Help
Relaxation, meditation, hypnosis
Regular use of a meditation or hypnosis audio can really help, the reason for this is that you need to gain control of your thoughts and quieten your mind. Hypnosis calms and quietens the mind so effectively that you will with practice find yourself observing thoughts without getting involved with them, this is a helpful thing to achieve. Another thing you need to do to help alleviate your anxiety is to physically relax because no doubt your anxiety will have caused tensions and possibly aches and tense muscles in your body. In the Help Centre on our website there is a relaxing anxiety reducing hypnosis that you can play right on the page or you can download it.
Anxiety self help – Be busy be calm:
Another method of helping to ease your anxiety is to keep your mind occupied, keep busy so that your mind is focused and thinking or concentrating, so that there is no spare capacity to entertain anxious thoughts because you are too busy.
Exercise:
Take exercise and you may be amazed at how this positively impacts your anxiety, You can think positive affirmations while exercising. It boosts your confidence too, and this will help lift your self-belief that you can beat this.
Sleep:
Lack of sleep makes anxiety worse. Good sleep will help you manage your anxiety effectively. If you are having trouble getting to sleep or waking in the night you can make some changes to your sleeping space to help improve this such as ensuring the room where you sleep is extra comfortable, tidy, and a pleasant place to be. Making sure your bed and pillows are comfortable.
You could also have a little notebook and pen by the bed and if you find yourself worrying or thinking – I must remember this or that, you can make a quick note of it. This can help you go back to sleep. It can make quite a difference. If there are noises that keep you awake try earplugs, there are some lovely soft foam ones you can get which are very comfortable as well as effective at blocking out noise. Finally, don’t forget to have some wind down time before you go to bed.
Please note: if you are experiencing anxiety self help may not be enough it is is severe, so please see your doctor if you are feeling depressed or having suicidal thoughts. If you need help click here to go to the charity Mind website