Anxiety is probably one of the most common disorders that a person goes through in day-to-day life. If you constantly feel like you are worried or you can’t sleep or are constantly overwhelmed, chances are these are signs of overriding anxiety. Other symptoms could be your chest beating too fast, experiencing palpitations, undergoing a sense of panic or simply feeling nauseous. If you have or have not yet been diagnosed with anxiety, or just have a generalized anxiety disorder, a more chronic panic disorder, or are simply having an anxious day, then it could be difficult to find the one blog or one article which would help you deal with it. Oftentimes people with anxiety tend to overthink matters and therefore, spiral upon facing the smallest triggers. This can be dealt with little by little, through practicing a few methods. This blog would therefore be an attempt to help understand the reasons that could lead to anxiety and thereby, suggest ways through which it could be dealt with better.
How To Calm Anxiety?
People often look for answers to how to stop anxiety and the answer is, you cannot really stop it unless you begin to deal with the reasons that lead to it in the first place. Ways to reduce anxiety abound but it is important to understand that not every one of those methods would necessarily work for you. However, if you are searching for the answer to “How to help anxiety?”, here are some scientifically approved tried, and tested methods you could adapt in real life for anxiety calming.
How to Reduce Anxiety?
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Don’t Google your Symptoms
Understandably, it is natural human instinct right now to go on google and search for your symptoms, but this habitual activity called cyberchondria is actually hurting you in reality. You might experience a stomach problem due to an ulcer, or appendicitis, or simply, anxiety. Google would provide you with all of these possibilities but it is nearly impossible for an inexperienced person with no medical background to possibly understand this. It could be okay to look out for your symptoms once a while on google and be aware of any pre-existing health conditions, but searching for answers on the internet now and then would increase your anxiety. The healthy way is to consult a doctor in such situations.
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The H.A.L.T Method
Whenever you are feeling anxious, it is advisable to H.A.L.T. while this literally could mean pause, take a step back and relax, as it helps with anxiety as well, the H.A.L.T method devised by doctors actually stands for rethinking if you are feeling Hungry, Angry, Lazy or Tired. Sometimes something as simple as eating something or taking a nap or meeting a friend up for coffee can make you feel better. The important part is to realize which of the above feelings you are feeling the most and act accordingly.
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The 4-7-8 Breathing Method
The 4-7-8 breathing method is known to be great for people suffering from either panic or insomnia. This is one of the simplest things you can try out if you are feeling anxious. The process is to breathe in for 4 seconds, hold the breath for 7 seconds and breathe out for 8 seconds. The same process is to be repeated until you start to feel your nerves calming down. The reason why this process works is that not only are you focusing on taking deep breaths but you are also engaging your mind in counting. This detaches your brain from the cycle of negative thoughts you may have been experiencing that were causing you to feel anxious. This process breaks the cycle of spiraling thoughts and hence, helps you to get back on your feet after trying it out a couple of times.
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The Grounding Method
Often when we are in a spiral due to anxious thoughts and cannot help but overthink things way out of proportion than they really are, it is because of anxiety. Grounding is one of the more popular exercises that doctors recommend to better deal with anxiety. The Grounding method involves:
- Trying to count Five things around you that you can see
- Trying to count Four things around you that you can touch
- Trying to count Three things around you that you can hear
- Trying to count Two things around you that you can smell
- Trying to find one thing around you that you can taste
This method is also more popularly known as the 54321 method. Similar to the 4-7-8 breathing method, this helps in pausing the anxious thoughts because your brain is busy focusing and feeling things while at the same time counting them. This helps stop you from spiraling into a dungeon of negative thoughts and thereby prevents you from going into a depressive episode.
Conclusion:
There are probably a plethora of ways on the internet to deal with the question “Ways to calm anxiety?” While this blog lists just four, other ways could be to exercise daily, practice coloring or creating anything DIY, practice mindfulness, consume verified information about anxiety and people dealing with it through books and podcasts or listen to calming music. The one way to deal with anxiety is to primarily start dealing with things that scare you. The idea is to start small because people with anxiety know how even the smallest things can feel out of proportion sometimes. Although the above-mentioned steps help, it is advisable to always consult a medical professional if things seem unmanageable. By the end of the day, you would understand and cope with your problems in a better way than anyone can.
