Change Your Anxiety For Good
Choose to have a healthier, happier life with some strategies for calming your nervous system.
Learn About Anxiety
By Christina Fenske
There is so much anti-anxiety information and advice out there online. However none of it really helps unless you decide to change your actions. Don’t waste a moment longer, learn to feel more relaxed, calm, sleep better at night, and put your time into what matters while changing old habits. If you find working on this alone difficult contact us for help. We offer professional clinical counselling for anxiety treatment in Kelowna and West Kelowna.
15 Anxiety Reducing Strategies
1. Learn more about deep-breathing and how to do it properly.
Don’t miss out, learn how to calm your body by doing intentional, slow, belly-breathing. It’s easy and you can do it anywhere. It doesn’t have to be perfect and far more is going on in your body and mind than you probably notice initially. Here is how to start:
- Begin, sit with your eyes closed, while turning your attention to your breath. Focus on breathing naturally through filling your nostrils up with fresh air, without trying to manage your breath.
- Become aware of the feeling of your breath as it goes into and out of your nose. Put one hand on your belly, and the other hand on your chest. Breathe in for a count of six. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale for a count of seven. Watching your hand on your belly as it rises when you exhale and falls when you inhale.
- Focus on your breath and let go of everything else that comes into your mind. Your mind may be jumping all over the place but gently bring it back to your present moment. You might notice that your breathing and meditation practice is causing your mind to become busier, but it’s literatlly just making you more aware of how busy your mind actually is.
- Resist the temptation to follow the different thoughts as they arise, and focus on the sensation of the breath. If you discover that your mind has wandered and is following your thoughts, immediately return it to the breath.
- Repeat this as many times as necessary until your mind settles on the breath. Don’t wait to begin belly-breathing. The sooner you make this a daily habit, the quicker you’ll feel relaxed.
When you implement belly breathing, you start the day in a here-and-now state. Better yet, you’re not wasting time worrying about the future or reliving the past.
2. Meditate.
Calm is an inside job. Give yourself the gift of serenity and start the day with 10 minutes of solitude and positive energy. Think calm, measured, and open-minded, and your daily activities will correspond.
3. Practice self-care.
Get a massage, a mani-pedi, or a haircut. Nothing says polished and well-maintained like a sexy, healthy glow.
If money is tight, look for a discount salon or a training school which offers quality services for people on a budget. So they don’t serve peppermint tea on a silver tray—close your eyes and imagine that five-star service while you take in the pampering you deserve.
4. Reduce or eliminate soda.
That morning jolt of joe can jumpstart your day and provide warmth and comfort, but anything with high-fructose corn syrup and 177 other ingredients will not.
If you’re accustomed to that 3 p.m. Dr. Pepper, switch it out for a soothing green tea. Not only does the caffeine jack up your central nervous system, but soda also depletes vitamins and minerals from your diet and wreaks havoc on your smile. Teeth become susceptible to cavities when the acid level of your saliva falls below a certain point.
5. Trim the fat from your budget.
Financial stress is a common reason people contact me for psychotherapy. Debt will keep you up at night and contribute to feelings of low self-worth and hopelessness.
Take charge of your finances and stop spending on non-essentials.
Track your daily expenses for a week or two and decide where you can cut back. Notice the items you accumulate mindlessly.
Possible reductions:
- Switch out your cable TV for Netflix.
- Contact your car insurance carrier, your mobile device company, or your credit card company and ask if they’ll reduce your bill.
- Cancel your newspaper delivery during the week and opt for the Sunday paper or an online service instead.
6. Get rid of the clutter.
Do you ever wonder how much time is lost when you can’t find your car keys or that package of highlighters?
Chances are you’ve got too much stuff cluttering up your living space.
Try this quick organization hack:
- Choose a drawer, cabinet, or closet.
- Categorize the stuff you don’t use.
- Make three piles for a) Things to throw away, b) Items to donate, and c) Things to sell.
Hold a yard sale and use the money to…
7. Plan a day trip.
When you spend time in nature, you give your mind and body a much-needed break from the hustle and bustle which causes you to Google things like “How to get rid of anxiety” in the first place.
Chances are, no matter where you live, there’s a serene, interesting, and charming place within a couple of hours of where you live
8. Go to bed early.
This may sound impossible if you’re accustomed to staying up late to catch up on the to-do list. But this one’s a must.
Sleep deprivation is a huge anxiety culprit. Inadequate shuteye can amplify the brain’s anticipatory reactions, upping overall anxiety levels, according to research.
“We all have anticipatory anxiety,” “Having moderate levels of anxiety about doing well is important. But it can be destructive when it begins to interfere with your life.” It’s impossible to have healthy emotional functioning without adequate sleep.
Don’t burn the midnight oil in hopes of catching up on the weekends. Unused sleep minutes don’t roll over.
9. Wake up 15 minutes early.
Like most anxious people, you’re probably rushing around in the morning and yelling at everyone in your wake, “Hurry up! We’re going to be late!”
Go slowly, and set yourself up for a relaxed day ahead. If you start to worry about the to-do list, take a deep breath and think: There is enough time.
10. Try using Lavender Oil.
Lavender oil has many healing properties and can be used as a natural remedy to reduce anxiety and other nervous conditions. There are many ways to incorporate lavender into your calm tool kit:
- Add essential lavender oil to your bath water for a calming bath. Use water infused with lavender leaves to soothe painful joints and muscles.
- Fall asleep quicker when you add a few drops to a tissue and place under your pillow.
- Use lavender in an oil diffuser to help with insomnia. The sweet, woody smell of the lavender oil helps you to fall asleep and stay asleep.
- For headaches, apply lavender oil to a cotton ball or your fingertips and massage slowly into your temples. The smell will relax you as the oil eases your headache.
- Lavender is used in aromatherapy massage as a muscle relaxant. Massage the oil into the skin and unknot the muscles of the back and reduce spasms.
- Lavender can be used as an expectorant. It breaks up the mucus from nasal and chest congestion that accompanies a cold.
- Inhale lavender oil to help with pain management, especially after a workout, a therapy session, or surgery.
11. Reduce caffeine, sugar, and processed foods.
Caffeine can cause heart palpitations if you ingest too much. Caffeine also can trigger panic or anxiety attacks, especially if you have an anxiety disorder. Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, can also cause palpitations.
Sugar acts as an adrenal stimulant and can cause anxiety or even panic attacks. Other offensive foods include those containing refined flour products and even wheat, since this causes inflammation.
Besides caffeine and sugar, food allergies are a big contributing factor in your overactive central nervous system. Do this step along with #12…
12. Try going green.
Check your diet which we know can impact anxiety. A morning glass of green juice can get you on the right side of calm.
For a different and delicious way to get your daily vegetables, try this recipe: Combine one banana or green apple, a bunch of kale, sliced ginger, one lime, cucumber slices, a few ice cubes, and a cup of water to a blender or juicer. For additional protein, add an egg, yogurt, nuts, or protein powder.
13. Your thoughts are not facts.
One of the most difficulty tasks of a counsellor is to influence an anxious client that the thoughts of going crazy, not being enough to others, guilt, and shame are not necessarily true. Negative thoughts cause negative feelings. This one’s tricky, because many of our negative thoughts are automatic, deeply internalized, and rooted in the subconscious part of our mind.
Do this along with #14…
14. Challenge negative core beliefs.
Remember that thoughts precede feelings. Negative thoughts lead to negative emotions, which lead to negative behaviors. For example:
- Frank wakes up and immediately thinks: I’m going to wow my staff with my presentation today. I just want to stay in bed all day.
- He feels unmotivated, nervous, and sluggish.
- He screams at his children when they don’t dress quickly enough.
How to challenge your negative mood to change your anxiety feelings:
1. Record your thoughts periodically. Try to pay attention to when you feel stressed out.
2. Write the feelings that accompany the thoughts. Think one-word responses, like frustrated, angry, worthless, defeated, etc.
3. Challenge your current version of reality. This is hard for most people because we tend to lack objectivity about the truth in our situation. Is there proof you don’t deserve that job promotion? Did you get reprimanded because of a poor work performance?
If you commit to recording your daily thoughts and feelings, along with reality testing, you’ll see that many of your negative feelings are created in your mind and not based on reality. The good news is you created the negative thought, and you can let it go.
15. Practice gratitude.
As bad as your situation is, there’s always someone in a worse predicament. Check out the headline of the daily newspaper. Be thankful your life is not the feature story.
Make a mental note of the positive things in your life. Remember that everything in life is temporary—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Remember there are always options in life, and worse fates exist than being anxious. After all, when push comes to shove, at the end of the (stressed-out) day, anxious people get the job done!
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The key to making the actions above work is consistency. You’re the expert on your life. Choose the ones that work best for you, and give them a shot. For additional support to manage your anxiety so it doesn’t manage you, check out Holistic Healing for Anxiety.
See you on the calm side!
If you should find these things frustrating on your own, ask us for help. Speak to our professional holistic counsellors today at admin@ovcs.ca.
