Anxiety is awful. It can be completely debilitating and stop you from achieving the things that you want to. And it also seriously impacts on your ability to enjoy your life!
If you are someone who suffers from anxiety, and you don?t have the money to start therapy, there are some things that you can do to help yourself stay in control.
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Journaling: Effective anxiety tool
Journaling is an effective tool for dealing with anxiety for a few reasons. Firstly, it means that you can get your anxious thoughts out of your mind and onto paper. This hopefully means less on an inclination to ruminate on the same thing for hours and exhaust yourself!
Secondly, when you write down the things that you are worried about it can sometimes help you to see things from a more rational perspective and that your worries aren?t as huge as you had first thought. You can make the most of this effect by using your journal to interrogate your anxious thoughts, ask yourself if they are likely or accurate.
Finally, you can use your journal to note down all the positive things about yourself, and that you have achieved, to look back on when you?re having a bad day.
Natural Remedies for managing anxiety
Some people like to use natural remedies to help them when they are in the midst of an anxiety spiral. One thing that people like to try is a soothing CBD oil, which you use by placing a small drop of the oil under your tongue and holding it there.?
Mindfulness
When you are very anxious, mindfulness can be effective but also quite difficult to carry out! If you?re feeling overwhelmed, the last thing you?ll want to do is sit down and concentrate on your breathing.
Something that might help though is to move mindfully. Try walking around the room or even better outside and paying attention to the feeling of your feet on the floor, the wind on your face – all of the physical sensations that you can feel. This will take you out of your mind and into your body, which has a calming effect.
It?s also a good idea to practice mindfulness when you are feeling calm, as you will then develop tools that you can access when you are feeling more anxious.
Move Around
When you are stressed or anxious, your body goes into flight or fight mode. It?s leftover from when we were hunter-gatherers, as back then if we were stressed it was usually over some impending danger like a tiger about to attack! When your body is in fight or flight mode, it releases cortisol, which helps you to create huge amounts of adrenaline ready to either fight or run away.
Of course, now, what we?re stressed about doesn?t often require a fight or to run away. This means that we are left with excess adrenaline that has nowhere to go. You may have noticed yourself shaking when you are stressed; adrenaline is the cause.
To help combat this, when you?re stressed, it can be amazingly helpful to move around and burn off some of the excess adrenaline! When something stresses you out, go out for a walk and come back to it later. You?ll feel better, and you?ll be better at the task at hand into the bargain.
Get Organized
If you are an anxious person, leaving things to the last minute is a very bad plan! Plan out your days so that you know what you need to do by when and allow yourself plenty of time to do each task. This will help you to feel in control and give you fewer reasons to panic.
Note: Getting proper sleep is also very important in anxiety management. Try and sleep for at least 6-8 hours in a day.
