Tips to Decrease Anxiety
Feeling stressed and anxious can greatly affect your mental health. It can also make you feel physically ill and unable to focus on the things that matter most to you. While anxiety is a natural part of being human, it can become unhealthy when it starts interfering with your everyday life. Here are some tips for reducing stress and anxiety:
Exercise
Exercise is a great way to release endorphins and reduce stress. It can help you feel better about yourself, sleep better, and feel more positive about your body. Exercise also provides an outlet for all of those pent-up emotions that come with anxiety--you can channel them into something productive!
If you're not already exercising regularly (or at all), start small: try taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or walking around the park during lunch break instead of sitting on a bench eating vending machine food.
Breathe deep and count to 10
Breathing exercises are an effective way to reduce anxiety.
Breathing exercises can help you feel calmer, more relaxed, and in control.
Breathing exercises can help you focus on the present moment instead of worrying about what happened in the past or might happen in the future. This can be especially helpful when making decisions that may affect your life long-term (e.g., choosing a major).
Get enough sleep.
Sleep is a crucial component of mental health. Sleep deprivation can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression. It's been shown that people who don't get enough sleep are more likely to develop these conditions than those who do.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends an average of seven hours per night for adults; however, this may vary based on your age and other factors such as whether or not you have children at home or work multiple jobs that require you to stay up late at night (such as nursing). It's also important to note that we all need different amounts of sleep during different times in our lives--for example, newborns require much more than older children do.
To ensure you're getting enough quality rest every night:
Get into bed at the same time every evening so that your body knows when it needs rest most effectively
Try to go to bed at the same time every night, even on weekends. If you find yourself having trouble falling asleep, get up and read a book or do something relaxing for about 15 to 20 minutes before returning to bed.
Practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a practice that helps you pay attention to the present moment. It can help deal with anxiety because it involves focusing on your breathing and surroundings as opposed to thinking about stressful situations in the past or future. You can practice mindfulness by focusing on your breathing when you feel anxious, or by noticing what's around you (the sounds of birds chirping, and cars passing by).
Don't give yourself a hard time.
It's important to remember that everyone experiences anxiety. It's a normal human experience and not something to be ashamed of! You don't need to give yourself a hard time about it.
Instead, try being compassionate with yourself when you experience anxiety. For example: "This is hard for me right now, but I know that I can get through this." Or even better: "I'm feeling anxious right now but I know deep down inside that everything will be okay." When we talk to ourselves in an understanding way like this, it can help us feel better about what we're going through and make us more confident in our ability to cope with these feelings in the future.
Take the time to take care of yourself, and you'll feel better more often.
Taking time to care for yourself is a great way to decrease anxiety. It's not just about making sure you eat well and get enough sleep, but also about taking some time each day for self-care activities that make you feel good.
Don't put yourself down. If your self-talk is negative, stop it! You should be kind and supportive of yourself on a regular--you deserve it! Even if someone else says something negative about you or your life, don't let their words get stuck in your head; they aren't true anyway. And if someone makes an unkind remark about another person or group of people, remember that this doesn't mean anything about YOU--it only means something ABOUT THAT PERSON OR GROUP OF PEOPLE who said those things (and even then there could be many reasons why this person acted that way).
Give yourself a break! Everyone makes mistakes sometimes; we're only human after all! So when something goes wrong (and believe me: SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG AT SOME POINT), try not to take things so personally by reminding yourself that everyone makes mistakes sometimes and no one's perfect :) Remember: everyone deserves second chances...even YOURSELF!!
Hopefully, these tips can help you start to feel more in control of your anxiety, and maybe even less afraid of it. This can be a challenging journey, it takes practice, but it's also one that can bring us closer to ourselves and others if we're willing to take the time. Remember that there is no magic cure for anxiety--you just have to keep practicing these techniques until they become second nature!