Simple changes to make to manage your anxiety
Understand what anxiety is and how it affects the person
You can’t learn how to manage anxiety unless you learn what it is. Now anxiety can come in many different forms. We'll stick to general anxiety which is one of the more common forms of anxiety people experience (alongside social anxiety).
To diagnose anxiety, you need to experience these symptoms:
The presence of excessive anxiety and worry about a variety of topics, events, or activities. Worry occurs more often than not for at least six months and is clearly excessive.
The worry is experienced as very challenging to control. The worry in both adults and children may easily shift from one topic to another.
The anxiety and worry are accompanied by at least three of the following physical or cognitive symptoms (In children, only one of these symptoms is necessary for a diagnosis of GAD):
Edginess or restlessness
Tiring easily; more fatigued than usual
Impaired concentration or feeling as though the mind goes blank
Irritability (which may or may not be observable to others)
Increased muscle aches or soreness
Difficulty sleeping (due to trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, restlessness at night, or unsatisfying sleep)
Now, before you go diagnosing yourself as most people on the internet do. Don't. Most people experience some form of these symptoms every day in their life. It may be related to stress, burnout, trauma, or maybe even an unhealthy relationship. However, when it starts to significantly impact roles in your life (work, parenting, spouse, or even hobbies), then it's more likely anxiety.
Identify the triggers that cause anxiety
This step involves understanding what is giving you anxiety. You may be thinking “if I knew what was giving me anxiety, I wouldn't have this problem”. Which is wrong. Most people have the ability to identify patterns of times when they're most anxious. But they don’t. Identifying those patterns can help you learn what it is that is the catalyst for the anxiety.
For example, if I'm always anxious at school… I know something at school is triggering anxiety. The next step would be creating a scale of anxiety and noticing patterns of when it is at its highest and when it is not. (1 being the least amount of anxiety. 10 being the most).
If I can identify patterns or triggers for anxiety then I can create an effective plan for managing anxiety around those times.
And if you are always anxious fear not. Then you are just more in need of overall anxiety management coping skills.
Create a plan to manage anxiety symptoms
This is what you came here for. This is where all of the coping skills that you read on the internet for anxiety management are put into place. Now, this involves understanding your anxiety hence the previous step. Let's say you're using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique that I previously wrote about (you can read that here). Now that you know the technique and the times when you were most anxious, all there is to do is actually use the coping skills at the appropriate time.
Continuing the previous example. If I identified that I am most anxious in science class. Let's practice some coping skills before or during that class. I like to call that proactive and reactive coping skills. Which I can write a longer post on in the future. But essentially when you were using coping skills either before you're feeling anxious or after.
Engage in activities that reduce anxiety symptoms
The last part of this is consistency. You don't want to only use these coping skills when it's sink or swim. You need to consistently practice these coping skills and activities that you enjoy if your body knows how to calm you down when it actually needs to. You wouldn't put your money on a team to win the super bowl if you know they have not practiced. So, if you want to start betting on yourself. Practice.
