You can manage your anxiety, firstly by accepting that anxiety has an energy and is a process, rather than something which arrives from now-where, it builds up, we build it up.
Once we accept this and learn to become more aware, get to know the signs and how to respond, then you can manage your anxiety better and create less worry.
Anxiety begins in our thoughts, and as we’re mostly the engineer of our own thoughts, you can therefore manage those thoughts, and subsequently the feelings and emotions which manifest in how we behave as a result.
Increasing Anxiety Awareness
Knowing when we’re actually creating anxiety, is the best way to manage your anxiety.
Being more aware of each thought and whether the thought is a positive thought, or an anxiety creating thought, will help you to manage your anxiety levels.
If you identify that a thought, or way thinking is unhelpful, or contributing to anxiety, then ‘reframing the thought’ to something more positive will immediately help you to manage your anxiety. If you do this each time you become aware that your thoughts may be counter-productive, you will be interrupting the energy anxiety requires to effect you.
Where anxiety lives
Being more aware of where your anxiety lives in your body can also help you to manage your anxiety. When I suffered with anxiety many years ago, my anxiety felt like a football in my stomach.
We’re all unique, some people will feel it in their shoulders or back, others in their necks, a lot of people experience it as headaches or aches and pains.
Regardless of where in your body you feel it, being aware of the subtle changes in your body, will help you to manage your anxiety.
Start by knowing the feeling when you’re not anxious, then you will know how it should feel when everything is ok, or when its easier than at other times.
How to de-stress
If you feel stressed and do nothing to manage or reduce that stress, chances are it will turn into anxiety if left to its own devices.
Deep slow breathing is the best place to start with de-stressing and a great way to manage your anxiety, follow this simple steps:
- Sit upright in a comfortable chair
- Place your feel flat on the floor, with your hands on tor lap
- Close your eyes if you feel comfortable
- Focus on your breathing, feel and listen to your breaths
- Take a long slow breath in, fill your lungs
- Hold that breath for a couple of seconds
- Slowly exhale the breath until you have expelled all the air in your lungs
- Find a comfortable rhythm to the breathing, it should feel relaxing and comfortable
- Repeat this way of breathing if it feels comfortable
- Continue breathing like this for 3-5 minutes
- Focus on how your breath feels, the feel of your hands on your lap and your feet on the floor
Starting and ending your day with breathing exercises is a good way to manage your anxiety, to give yourself a good start and end to each day.
If you have time, repeat the breathing exercises as often as you can each day, this will reduce your core stress and anxiety levels and help you manage your anxiety more effectively.
Paul Parkin – online counsellor and coach for life
June 2018
