The 3 Best Ways to Manage Anxiety

If you deal with overwhelming anxiety, you know it can affect your entire being. Your mind may be filled with fear and visions of future disasters. Your body will tense as your fight, flight, or freeze system kicks in. And you may feel spiritually depleted as the internal battle saps your energy.

Anxiety is a many-headed beast, and so any single technique for managing it probably won’t be enough. It takes a more comprehensive approach that addresses the many facets of our anxious experience. Over the past few decades, countless research studies have confirmed what common sense and ancient wisdom told us long ago: That our well-being depends on the simple practices of minding thoughts, facing fears, and being present.

1. Question the Story

If you start to pay closer attention to what your mind is up to, you’ll discover that it’s a reliable source of fake news. It has a strong Things-Won’t-Work-Out-for-You bias that comes through in every headline:

· You’re going to be late.

· Everyone will be disappointed.

· You have a disease.

· Your loved ones are in danger.

· This will turn out badly.

When we recognize anxious thoughts as stories, we can start to question whether they’re fact or fiction. Is your anxious prediction the only possible outcome? Or are there alternative endings that anxiety has not imagined?

2. Face Your Fears

Anxiety compels us to avoid the things we’re afraid of, and yet avoidance only leads to more fear. The more we avoid, the more we reinforce the story that the thing we’re afraid of is actually dangerous. For example, if we avoid certain social interactions because we’re afraid they’ll be awkward, we’ll strengthen our fear of those situations. Avoidance is also addictive and leads to more avoidance.

Nothing conquers anxiety so powerfully as facing what you’re afraid of. When you stop avoiding, you give your brain a chance to learn something new. Most likely you'll discover that your feared disasters don’t come true. What you find instead are manageable problems that you can handle.

3. Be Present

Anxiety is based on fantasies about an imagined future. For this reason, focusing on the present can be a powerful antidote to anxiety. When we’re fully in the present moment, anxiety doesn’t exist. How could it? Anxiety requires uncertainty about an unknown outcome, which can only be about the future.

Being truly present also means opening to our reality rather than resisting it. For example, if our train is running late and we might miss the start of an important meeting, we may tell ourselves our train can’t be late. But it very well can! Rather than fighting internally against our circumstances, we can acknowledge that they are the way they are. That kind of acceptance puts us in a stronger place to choose how we respond.

Things to remember about these practices

· Allow greater awareness and presence to help you recognize the mind’s stories.

· Mindfully open to uncertainty as you face your fears.

· Question your anxious thoughts to help you conquer avoidance.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/202002/the-3-best-ways-manage-anxiety

How do you cope with anxiety in your everyday life?

#Anxiety #MentalHealth #Practices