How to Manage Your Anxiety

Living with anxiety is never easy, especially when you can't find relief. It's important to seek help if anxiety becomes more of a burden than you are able to handle. Seeking professional help is one plausible option, but it is not the only option. You can use a self-help method that will work if you stick with it regularly. Click through this slideshow to learn about the different self-help techniques you can use to manage your anxiety.

With changes in lifestyle and other things around us, we often tend to get stressed out or have anxiety attacks. Most individuals who suffer from anxiety attacks do not do much about them or anxiety in general. Stress tends to overtake their mind and it leads to certain mental disorders such as depression and other kinds. Managing anxiety is known to be simply an act of preventing the anxiety from overwhelming oneself. It is always difficult to cope with it or to live with anxiety, but if you manage it clearly, it would be very helpful since then you could live a quality life without any kind of regrets.

There is a huge difference between managing anxiety and curing anxiety. Managing it is when you have anxiety, but you are better aware of how to control it; basically, you have learned the tricks of controlling it. When you talk about curing anxiety, this would mean that the individual does not have anxiety or does not suffer from any aspect of the anxiety disorder. Here, the individual may suffer from anxious situations, but they no longer suffer from anxiety attacks. Below are certain ways in which one can look to manage their anxiety more effectively so that it does not overpower you:

• Ensure a healthy lifestyle: It is said that we are what we eat. Hence, it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This can include everything from healthy food, time to time sleep, and keeping the body active daily. The healthier the body is, the better it would work, and the better our mind and body work, the better one would be able to manage anxiety, or at least experience fewer of its symptoms. Anxiety is basically a mental disorder that is forged through years of experience, hence, suddenly sleeping more and eating healthier would not cure it all of a sudden. But yes, it would surely help to reduce the symptoms if you stick to your new, healthy routine; it would lead to a reduction in symptoms would automatically help you in managing anxiety attacks much better.
• Carrying out daily exercises: We all know how important exercise is for our overall physical health, but what some people may not know is that exercise is also helpful in calming our minds, from which most mental diseases are known to crop up. When an individual does not perform any exercise or physical activity, their ability to cope with stress tends to take a huge blow. Anxiety tends to worsen when we do not work out because our muscles are known to pent up the energy by converting them into physical stress, which then becomes mental stress. On the other side, when you do carry out daily exercise, you are not only reducing the extra energy, but at the same time, it helps to bring about a balance in one’s hormones. It also releases neurotransmitters that help in improving the mood, and it also improves breathing. Exercise is thus known to be one of the most powerful tools that can help in managing anxiety attacks.
• Keep a journal: Penning down what you think is something we all have done as a child and later in our teen years, but as we grow busier in life, we forget to pen down our thoughts or worries or something that has made us happy. Writing down our thoughts is known to be one of the most powerful tools to cope with stress. There are two ways in which it can benefit: first, it is one of the ways in which we can let out our thoughts, something wmost of us try to hold up inside. The second reason is that in a way, when we write down our thoughts, our brain thinks that it is now being put into a permanent place, so there is no need to remember it often or focus much on it.
• Look out for some changes or distractions: Carrying out any activities or distractions that you have a passion for or love to do is another way to trick your brain into shifting its focus from the issue to something else. This in turn makes you less anxious, and you are ready to face the issue with a relaxed mind. Our own thoughts are known to be one of the biggest enemies for us, and this is the reason why most individuals face stress or anxiety attacks. So, carrying out your hobbies or distractions is one of the ways to currently stop focusing on your thoughts and also give a break to yourself. This break helps the mind as well as the body to calm down and relax. Even if there is nothing to be done, just pick up your phone and talk to someone mostly about positive thoughts. This is one of the most powerful things and a good way to regain our own mental strength that we had earlier.
• Yoga or meditation: Yoga is an age-old method to calm the mind and the body. Here there is lot of importance given to breathing properly. This method helps to be slow down and remove any kind of negativity affecting our mind. Yoga is not something simple, though it may look quite simple, but it is very challenging to connect oneself.  It is basically an opportunity for the individual to slow down their lives and make it manageable. There are multiple breathing techniques in yoga which are known to be quite helpful in managing any kind of stress or anxiety. Meditation is one of the method to empty our thoughts and just focus on oneself. When the breathing is in control, then any kind of physical symptoms which are also associated with rapid breathing, an increase in the heart rate, or over supply of oxygen, may tend to a reverse. For this, you would need to sit quietly and patiently and breathe in through your nose to the count of three and then breathe out again to the count of three. Repeat this until you feel that your breathing is now under control.
• Talk it out: Many of us have a tendency to bottle up our thoughts and not speak about them to anyone else, due to which, this tends to increase and then leads to burdens on us. When we speak what is in our minds, it makes us feel lighter and at the same time the opposite person can also help in providing some solution for the problem or the stress. But here, it is important to confide in someone who is trustworthy, such as a close friend or family member. Someone who may not take advantage of your thoughts and manipulate you later.
• Listen to music: Music is known to be one of the proven solutions to calm down the mind and live in the present. You can download and keep a track of your favorite music or prepare a playlist of those songs which provide you relief from any stress or problems. Music has a soothing positive energy that is known to maintain calmness in the mind and build up positivity around us. Look out for music or songs that are gentle and soft.