Calm Your Anxious Mind

Anxiety is difficult to handle - especially if you use the same thinking that brought you the anxiety.   Here are some ways to decrease the anxiety until you can master RESTRUCTURING.  

Control Your Breathing

Severe anxiety symptoms are often linked to poor breathing habits. Many men and women with anxiety suffer from poor breathing habits that contribute to anxiety and many of the most upsetting symptoms.

Controlling your breathing is the solution – and it's not what you think. Even if you feel you can't take a deep breath, you actually need to slow down and reduce your breathing, not speed it up or try to take deeper breaths. Take more controlled, slower, shallower breaths.  

Talk to Someone Who is Objective

Effective anxiety reduction is often about distraction, since your mind can be your worst enemy when you have severe anxiety symptoms. A very effective technique is to talk to someone you like and trust, especially in person (so you can benefit from their energy). 

Try Some Exercise 

During periods of anxiety your body is filled with adrenaline. Putting that adrenaline towards aerobic activity can be a great way to lower your anxiety. That's because exercise has numerous advantages for controlling your anxiety symptoms. Exercise burns away stress hormones, tires your muscles, releases endorphins, forces healthy breathing, and is a healthy distraction.  

Getting Used to Physical Symptoms                                                                        

Many of the thoughts that affect anxiety are not thoughts per se, but reactions to physical experiences. This is especially true if you experience panic attacks, where a physical sensation can trigger severe anxiety and panic. By getting used to the symptoms when you're not experiencing anxiety, your mind stops associating them with your panic attacks. Examples include:                                                                   Dizziness – If feeling dizzy causes a panic attack, spin around in a chair and let yourself feel more dizzy.                                                                                             Rapid Heartbeat – If a rapid heartbeat causes panic attacks, run in place as fast as you can until your heartbeat speeds up.

The latter is known as "exposure therapy" and there are countless ways to create exercises that will habituate you to your panic attack triggers.

Listen to Good Mood Music

Every little thing matters. That's why even if it sounds like it won't make a tremendous difference, listening to your favorite music can have a powerful effect on your anxiety. They key is to not just choose songs you like, however. The key is also to make sure you're listening to music that represents the way you want to feel. Happy or relaxing music, not just any music.

The reality is that music does affect emotions. So while many people find it soothing to listen to angry music when you're angry or sad music when you're sad, the truth is that this type of music will only help you get in touch with those negative emotions. They won't help you feel better. 

Let it All Out

Anxiety is interesting, because it tends to get worse when you try to fight it. It's not clear why that occurs, but most likely the stress that your body goes through in order to control the stress of anxiety only makes it worse, as does the effort it takes to try to not feel your natural feelings.

So rather than have any desire to stop your anxiety, an interesting coping strategy is to go overboard embracing it. I like to call it the "going crazy" technique. When you're feeling anxious, find a place that you can be alone and go nuts. Yell at mirrors. Scream. Punch pillows. In a SAFE way, make fun of the things you wish you can do. Have a bit of fun with it, but also let out all of your emotions. 

Living in the Moment

Finally, simply learning to live for today can impact your anxiety. One of the most important things that psychologists and counselors teach those with anxiety is: "Okay, you're anxious. So what?"

Those with anxiety often start to focus too much on how they feel and their worries about the future. Each day becomes trying to live with anxiety instead of trying to live in general. Learning to embrace the idea that you have anxiety and trying to live a great and exciting life anyway is important.

And what's interesting is that if you can learn to finally have that mindset – to let yourself experience the fear and try to live the life anyway – you will find that your anxiety tends to dissipate with it. It's not a cure, but it's close!