When it comes to managing anxiety, taking care of your mental health is just as important as caring for yourself in a physical sense. However, there are times when caring for yourself physically can be more straightforward. For instance, eating healthy, exercising, and drinking more water are some of the basic ways to take care of your health.
However, when it comes to mental health and managing feelings of anxiety and different anxiety disorders, it isn’t as clear-cut. This is because it can be difficult to understand what your mental, emotional, and physical needs are when it’s a more abstract feeling or mental disorder.
To understand how to better care for yourself and to manage anxiety, here are some helpful things you can do.
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Regular Psychotherapy Like Counselling
The first thing to do if you have trouble with feelings of anxiety and even anxiety disorders, spending time in psychotherapy like counselling can be incredibly helpful. If you navigate to this site, you might be able to find the right program to apply for.
When you go to counselling for anxiety, several treatments might be used. For a quick understanding, here are some of the most popular forms of therapy that are helpful for anxiety.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
- Exposure therapy
- Exercise
- Mindfulness
- Hypnosis
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Medication
Another way to cope with anxiety is through medication, but this can only be done if you go to a psychiatrist. This is because only a psychiatrist will be able to write you a prescription for anxiety medication. Psychologists and councillors can’t write you a prescription but they can refer you to a psychiatrist who can. By seeing a psychiatrist, they can also determine whether medication will be an effective choice and if other treatments that don’t include medication.
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Avoid Unhealthy Anxiety Management
Unfortunately, there are also unhealthy anxiety management practices that you might end up adopting. Understanding what these unhealthy activities are will help you know what activities to avoid. If you find yourself leaning more toward the following:
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Abusing Medication
- Reckless Behaviour
- Gambling
If you find that you’re leaning toward these unhealthy coping mechanisms, it might be best to start avoiding them before it becomes a problematic habit. This way, you could opt for better anxiety management strategies.
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Try Exercises That Are Effective For Anxiety
Another thing you could do is to try exercises that can help with anxiety. Some exercises can help reduce the risk of depression and improve sleep. For targeting anxiety, you could try these exercises below.
- Breathing exercises
- Taking a walk
- Grounding exercises
- Progressive muscle relaxation
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Eating Healthily
As mentioned before, eating healthily can all help with physical health. But this can also help with managing one’s anxiety because poor diet can aggravate someone’s anxiety. To help your body better cope with anxiety, try these types of food.
- More protein during breakfast
- Complex carbohydrates
- Balanced and healthy meals
At the same time, there are certain things to avoid since they can affect your nervous system and even your sleeping patterns. Namely, caffeine and alcohol should be limited so that you can avoid jitters, anxiety, and sleeping problems.
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Journaling
Journaling is also another fantastic way to improve how you can cope with anxiety. This is because it’s an outlet for releasing worries, rereading your thoughts to help reflect, recall your strengths and more. If you feel like you have intrusive thoughts, anxious emotions, and you don’t have anyone to talk to about it or feel uncomfortable doing so, writing about it would be a great exercise for self-expression and anxiety management.
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Find Distractions
When you’re having problems with anxiety, it’s easy to feel like you’re too focused on the thoughts or feelings that trigger anxiety. When this happens, it might be better to look for distractions like doing hobbies that you enjoy. For example, you could read a book, do art, play video games, and more. This way, you can use the nervous energy on some other things that you enjoy.
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Talk To Someone You Trust
Another great solution is to talk to people that you can trust with your thoughts and your emotions. This could be your friends, partner, or family who understands your struggles with anxiety. However, it’s important to be understanding and patient with one another’s boundaries to make sure that the conversations are healthy.
Conclusion
Anxiety and anxiety disorders can affect our everyday lives so it’s important to find ways to help manage the thoughts and emotions that could trigger them. At the same time, therapy and counselling would be the primary choice for expert help, advice, and treatments for anxiety.
