Have you missed out on opportunities and got stuck in a rut because of your anxiety?
Are you tired of asking yourself how to stop being anxious?
But have you ever wondered what anxiety exactly is?
For starters, there is a difference between stress and anxiety or tension. Anxiety refers to feeling a sense of dread about something in the near or distant future, overthinking everything you say, convincing yourself everyone hates you. It involves imagining the worst-case scenario of every normal situation you encounter. Anxiety isolates people, traps them in their minds, and takes over their lives if it is allowed to persist.
In the following points, we highlight various ways to live with and recover from anxiety and answer, “How do I stop being anxious about everything?”
How to stop being anxious about everything?
1. Know what you’re going through
Before seeking treatment or recovery, you must first ensure you have anxiety. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 31.1% of adults in the USA suffer from any anxiety disorder once in their life. This indicates that anxiety is not uncommon and there is no reason to hide the fact.
You can read descriptions of other people’s experiences with anxiety, how they recovered and what made them anxious in the first place. You can also look out for any warning signs and symptoms. Anxiety is present in some amount in everyone’s life, but clinical or severe anxiety overtakes or threatens to overtake other parts of your life. You obsess over worries and negative thoughts and can’t change these feelings easily.
2. Don’t pretend to be okay when you’re not
Many people with anxiety are good at hiding and, like in smiling depression, may appear socially successful. But they are battling fatigue, stress, and a fear of failure below the surface, which can impact mental health in the long run. Long-term anxiety can increase the secretion of stress hormones and the frequency of symptoms such as headaches. It has also been found to be related to dizziness and depression.
Sharing your concerns and thoughts with a loved one helps reduce the toll of anxiety on you and makes them more aware of your life. You can also take the help of support groups in-person and mental health websites online. Loved ones and friends are important for maintaining prosperous mental health.
So how to stop being anxious about everything? Share your concerns with loved ones, and don’t pretend to be okay when you’re not. If you feel like anxiety is overwhelming or making it hard for you to function, access the following helpline from NAMI.
3. Let go of the things you can’t control and focus on the things you can
We are often anxious about external events we have no control over. You can observe your thought process and notice these patterns. It is of no use to worry over things that you cannot control. Understand that there is no emergency right now.
Take a different perspective on the issue you’re thinking about or on your anxious thoughts themselves, this will help you better understand them, and you’ll also know what to do to deal with them. You can use journaling techniques to record your thoughts and understand yourself better.
A counterintuitive way to learn how to stop being anxious is by accepting your anxiety. While it may not make sense initially, it works for many people going through prolonged or daily stress. You can also avoid toxic positivity or holding in mind an idea of how you “should” feel, as this leads you to be more anxious about your anxiety.
4. Take care of your physical health
Anxiety can also be caused or aggravated by biological factors and often manifests through symptoms in the body. Physical anxiety symptoms include body tremors, panic attacks, difficulty breathing, increased heart rate, cold or sweating, skin tingling, and numbness. Signs of anxiety setting in can include muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, restlessness, and irritability. So, how to stop being anxious?
Proper diet and exercise are vital to keeping your body healthy. Here is our list of anti-anxiety foods. Following healthy self-care practices for the body can have long-term health benefits for you and will also help distract you from anxiety about long-term concerns.
Sleep is another essential component of daily life that affects and is affected by anxiety. While anxious, you may often choose not to sleep, but this will have harmful effects ahead in your life. You can master your sleep and morning routine to better deal with your anxiety. For a guided sleep meditation giving you more quality sleep, click here.
5. Set practical goals
You can look for and develop a sense of meaning or life purpose. This keeps you engaged and provides grounding in your values, reducing your attention to everyday worries and concerns. It will also offer self-satisfaction and help you be happy in life.
Many people suffering from anxiety adopt planning as a defense mechanism and become “control-freaks,” planning out every detail of their near and distant future. You can counter this tendency by taking small risks in safe environments, such as with loved ones, and slowly reducing anxiety through risk exposure.
While making long-term goals is effective, they can also look overwhelming and be more cause for concern than optimism. To supplement and move forward toward your long-term goals, you can divide your tasks into smaller chunks and take them step-by-step. You can also use the SMART technique for this. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. These qualities are optimal for goal setting and help make goals more practical. Read this post to learn about recovery goals for mental health.
So how do I stop being anxious about everything? You can develop a sense of life purpose and set SMART goals for better implementing the purpose. You can also avoid planning too much and try to take risks in safe or controlled environments to reduce anxiety over time. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate changes. Overcoming this condition or any other significant mental health disorder takes patience, time, and effort. The results don’t show soon. As the famous saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
6. Engaging your senses
Eating, drinking, smelling, touching, or hearing can also help reduce anxiety as you stop thinking of the future and start being in the present moment. This is why meditation is a helpful recommendation for those suffering from anxiety. Many count to 100 or create a different line of thought/imagination, such as imagining what a color tastes like.
So how to stop anxiety thoughts? Engage your senses and get grounded in the moment. You can also switch to healthy coping mechanisms for anxiety like self-care, deep breathing, anxiety-reducing exercises, natural remedies, and mindfulness to help rejuvenate yourself and distract from the stress.
You can be more optimistic and understand your negative bias to change your thinking patterns. The best way to do this is by starting a morning routine and developing a sense of order in your lifestyle.
How to deal with anxiety when it’s happening?
Here are solutions through which you can learn how to remove anxiety thoughts and how to stop being so anxious about everything while the feeling takes place.
It is best to identify anxiety before it settles in. However difficult, you can get better at doing this through the practice of mindfulness and self-validation. These practices also make you more aware of the negative inner monologue inspired by anxiety.
Self-validation is a practice from therapy that involves viewing your thoughts and feelings without bias, judgments, or any feelings that “should” be a certain way.
Consider taking a mental health day off from work and other responsibilities if these symptoms persist after a long period (6 months).
You can calm your mind by relaxing stimuli like chamomile tea, acupuncture, or undergoing CBT or other forms of therapy with a licensed professional.
So how to stop getting anxious about everything and deal with anxiety immediately? One consequence of clinical anxiety is anxiety attacks. It happens when anxiety increases over time, becoming overwhelming to the point it starts feeling like an attack. These attacks are often confused with panic attacks, despite being different. Panic attacks are episodes of sudden fear for no apparent cause. To deal with anxiety attacks, slowly breathe in and out and direct all your attention toward your breath. This will remove your attention from the overwhelming sense of dread or fear you may be feeling at the moment. You can also use mantras for anxiety to ground yourself.
Conclusion
Anxiety isn’t just feeling nervous or stressed. It involves many symptoms affecting physical and mental health and well-being. Navigating anxiety can be challenging for anyone, and you should be proud of taking the first step toward a complete recovery. Now that you’ve learned how to stop being anxious, recovery is the next step. Here is a list of short-term mental health goals to help you pursue the same.
Subscribe to Your Mental Health Pal for more advice on how to stop anxiety thoughts, premium products catered to your mental needs, and treatment options for recovery.