5 Simple Tips for Anxiety

Ready to ditch your anxiety?

Here are 5 really simple tips for anxiety that may help you!

It seems that when it comes to coping, everyone has their own tips for anxiety sufferers. From small-scale tips like “take a bubble bath” to big-time “get a prescription for anti-depressants,” there are plenty of ideas out there for dealing with varying degrees of anxiety. Here are five real-world tips that you can use to lower the stress level in your own life.

Anxiety Tip #1: Get Some Rest

Most of those offering tips for anxiety will give you this advice in one form or another. Some may tell you to get enough sleep at night. Others may suggest you take “power naps” during the day. Yet others will advocate for rearranging your entire schedule around the times of day when you are at your peak. The fact of the matter is that all of these tips are helpful when it comes to managing anxiety. That’s because stress and anxiety feed their own cycle.

When you’re feeling anxious, it becomes harder to sleep. Perhaps your mind simply won’t “turn off” when you lay down at night; or maybe you have so much to do that you’re staying up way too late and getting up way too early. When this happens, your body and brain both become overextended. That leads to clumsiness and even poor decision making. Of course, both of these things are going to slow you down and add to your anxiety level more and more each day.

Anxiety Tip #2: Get Real

When we get so caught up in the stress and anxiety of daily life, we sometimes forget to stop and take a realistic look at the situation. Our adrenaline is pumping and our nerves are buzzing, and everything takes on an extreme level of importance in our minds. “I have to finish that project today.” “I can’t let so-and-so down.” “I’m the only one who can take care of that task.”

Instead of getting yourself more agitated, take a few minutes to really think through all of the things you “need” to do. Then, assign each one an importance on a scale of one to ten. For example, how imperative is it that your project be finished today? What would truly happen if you didn’t get it done until tomorrow? Next week? What you are likely to find is that most of the items on your list are not nearly as urgent as you’ve been making them in your mind. From here you can prioritize to take care of what really needs to get done. Don’t forget that you can sometimes delegate tasks to other people, too.

Anxiety Tip #3: Get a Pen and Paper

Like the previous tip for anxiety, this one has to do with recognizing what you really can and cannot do. Take a piece of paper, and divide it in half. You’re going to use this to list out all of the things that are causing you anxiety. On the left, write those things that you can change, such as “the dishwasher needs to be emptied” or “the car needs an oil change.” On the right, list the stressors that you can’t directly change. This might include, “my mother is ill” or “the weather is gloomy.”

Simply creating these two lists can help to reduce some of your anxiety by both allowing you to realize that there are things you can do to solve some of your problems, and helping you to accept the things that you simply cannot change on your own. Try not to get into a mindset that makes you think that all of your stress factors are out of your control, because many of them are not. In fact, the more you look at the list, the more you may realize that you have the power to change things you didn’t think you could.

Anxiety Tip #4: Get Healthier Habits

It seems like physical fitness types are always offering tips for anxiety that include getting more exercise. On the other hand, it also seems like a lot of people put finding time or motivation to exercise on the list of things that are stressing them out. In truth, getting some good exercise may very well be exactly the thing you need to help reduce your anxiety levels. Physical activity releases endorphins that make you feel better both during and after exercise.

This same philosophy applies to what you eat. Many people turn to unhealthy foods when they’re stressed or anxious…in fact, dieting is a huge cause of stress in and of itself. In reality, those unhealthy foods are probably “feeding” the anxiety. The same is true of caffeine. Many of us think we “need” it to deal with stress, but it actually increased levels of anxiety in the body.

Anxiety Tip #5: Get on Schedule

One of the problems with anxiety is that it tends to sit in the back of our minds just nagging quietly but insistently. Some people find that they can shut this voice down the rest of the time by giving it a chance to speak loud and clear all at once. What this means is that you can give yourself permission to really sit down and worry about your concerns at a given time. For example, you may decide that you’re going to give your anxiety all of your attention for an hour right after lunch on Tuesday. Until that time, you can give yourself permission to ignore that nagging voice.

When Tuesday afternoon rolls around, sit down with a pen and paper or your computer keyboard and write out your concerns. You might want to review the tips for anxiety listed above and put them to work at this time.

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