Anxiety

[Humpty]

Please give me any tips on how to control anxiety i actually call it the dragon 

[livi_mivi]

Hey Humpty, 

Thank you for reaching out, I'm sure there are many people on the forums that have some great advice for you. 

For me personally, there were times were I was feeling anxious and I couldn't work out where the feeling was coming from. I found that identifying the triggers were the first step in being able to control the anxiety. I would do my best to minimise these triggers or if plausible, completely avoid them. For example, I found that coffee would really exacerbate my physical symptoms of anxiety so I stopped drinking it/heavily reduced my intake. For things that I couldn't avoid or didn't want to (e.g. going to work, catching up with friends), I put a lot of focus into techniques that would help reduce my anxiety. I found deep breathing, journalling and meditation to be helpful for me. Anxiety has so many physical symptoms so learning how to calm the body down when you start to feel them coming on or when you are experiencing them can help to calm the mind down. Meditation and breathing taught me how to be in the moment and ground myself. Finally, I think the biggest thing that helped me was seeing a psychologist. It's sometimes really hard to identify your triggers and thoughts because they can become so automatic and unconscious, so the psychologist really helped me to identify and challenge my thinking. 

I hope some of these are helpful for you! 

[Humpty]

Thankyou so much for them great tips i certainly will give them a go 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[Beeee]

Hello Humpty,

Thank you for reaching out on the forums. Asking for help is the first, and hardest step!

livi_mivi has already given some great advice, identifying triggering events, thoughts and feelings is a great way to understand your anxiety. Journalling is one of the best ways to identify these triggers. If you can journal each day, describe the moments you felt anxious, what happened before, during and after? Reflect on these journal entries and try to find the common patterns. 

Confronting things that make me anxious in small steps has been helpful for me as well. For example, earlier this year I was very anxious about getting out the house before 12pm. I started tackling this by leaving the house a little earlier each day, 11am, 10am, 9am, then 8am and completing a small errand each time like getting a coffee or simply driving to the station and back. Now I'm leaving the house at 9am, multiple days a week so taking things in small steps can be very effective. 

I've also found, in the moment, breathing or distraction to help reduce overwhelming feelings of anxiety. For breathing, I use an app called 'Breathing' and follow the guided breathing techniques. Sometimes though, I prefer distraction so I stop focus inward and making the anxiety worse. Distraction can be anything that you enjoy such as music, TV, reading or talking to a friend. 

Hope this helps, 

Beeee

[Humpty]

Thankyou so much Beee that is some great tips that i will be sure to try i have found my work is the trigger i go back next week so will see how i go with all these great tips 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

[blues23]

I have tried hot showers they seem to help at the moment , I take long walks that helps a bit ,  trying to get back in the garden if the weather ever improves and yeah just try to take each day as it comes try not to sweat the small stuff