How to cope with anxiety

In the modern world, there is hardly a person who does not experience anxiety.

In general, this is a normal reaction of our body. Difficulties arise when anxiety becomes too intense, or a person experiences it regularly.

Then it’s worth turning to recommendations on how to cope with anxiety, says Olga Anishchenkova .

Foods that cause or reduce anxiety

The simplest thing you can do to deal with anxiety is to pay attention to the foods you eat. There are three main foods that excite the nervous system. These are alcohol, coffee, and sweets.

If a person is prone to anxiety, then any stimulating factors will add unpleasant sensations to the internal state. Therefore, if you tend to be often anxious or experience too much anxiety, you should temporarily stop consuming these products.

There are products that, on the contrary, reduce anxiety. Their composition helps to cope with anxiety states. These are bananas, salmon fish and spinach. If you eat them, a person will cope with unnecessary states easier and faster.

External stimuli that provoke anxiety

The recommendations for this point do not relate to psychological help, but nevertheless they are very helpful in coping with anxiety. It is important to understand the information flow that constantly exists around a person.

We live in a time when our mobile phone is always with us. And anyone can call us at will and get our attention. But when people have the opportunity to be in contact with us without any filters, it creates tension inside us. And nervous tension, in turn, provokes anxiety.

Therefore, if you know that anxiety, irritation, stress are what you are prone to, it is very important to do the following. First, turn off notifications in all information sources that you do not use regularly. This could be Skype, email, some news portals or applications.

Everything that is not urgent, everything that you should not immediately pay attention to, should be turned off. And then you will go to these sources of information at your own discretion. And therefore, you will save yourself from a large percentage of distractions of your attention and anxiety about this.

You should establish rules for how you interact with the outside world. For example, after 10 p.m., don't engage in work-related communication or turn off your work phone altogether. By the way, it's very useful to have a separate SIM card for work contacts and not use it when you don't need it.

Next, you need to turn on notifications only in those messengers in which you will receive messages from the most important people. Everything else should be without a signal. And then it will not be the information flow that controls your attention and keeps you in suspense, but you will control this flow.

Psychological causes of anxiety

What is anxiety? It is a state when a person, being in the "here and now", stops feeling himself in the present moment and is transferred to the future. And to an undesirable future. That is, being in the "here and now", a person suddenly finds himself at an exam, which he fails. And the picture of how this failure occurs begins to torment.

You can often see how a woman suffers if a man has not written at the usual time for communication. The woman already has a scenario in her head about how he says goodbye to her and ends the relationship. The same can apply to mothers. Mothers often see catastrophic films from the future. That is, nothing actually happens, but the catastrophe unfolds in their head.

Anxiety is an emotional wave that can overwhelm and which you may not be able to cope with, because certain hormonal substances will begin to be produced, which will simply flood a person at a physiological level.

There is a way to cope with this. As soon as you feel that an emotional wave is coming that causes anxiety, it is important to say loudly, persistently and confidently inside yourself: "Stop!" You can add your name. In my case: "Stop, Olya!"

Next, it is very important to think about what you will do if everything goes according to the negative option. You need to quickly organize a brainstorming session for yourself, during which you think through several scenarios for getting out of the situation.

For example, if I fail an exam, firstly, I will go and negotiate with the teacher, secondly, I will take an academic leave, study hard and work at the same time. Or, for example, I will save up money and go on a trip for a year, and in a year I will start studying again.

In other words, the situation of uncertainty that creates anxiety needs to be transformed into one that becomes mastered. And then, simply at the physiological level, anxiety will begin to subside.

Help from loved ones in dealing with anxiety

It is also important to teach those around us to help us at the moment when we can no longer cope with ourselves. You can ask your loved ones for help - husband, partner, friend, sister, etc. When they see that you are feeling bad, that you are overwhelmed by emotions, they should say something that can pull you into a different state.

You can say to your husband, "Honey, if you see that I'm starting to get nervous about the future, it's really important that you help me. Give me examples of situations where I've already dealt with this and tell me that no matter what happens, I'll deal with it and you'll help me."

His words might sound something like this: "Honey, you've already had a case when it was really hard to prepare for exams. You were sick and couldn't remember anything. But nevertheless, you pulled yourself together, took your medicine, passed everything perfectly, and then bragged that you were the best in your class. Even if it's hard, you had experience when you coped with it. And this time, most likely, you'll cope too, and I'll help you."

How to Deal with Anxiety About Unfinished Business

How else can we help ourselves? We can be driven into anxiety by important but unresolved situations. There is a very simple way to help ourselves cope with urgent tasks hanging over our heads.

They need to be marked for yourself in a notebook or in notes on your phone so that all these tasks are visible. This is a message to our brain that I see, I know about the problem and I will solve it.

And then you write down for yourself how many minutes you allocate to solving these tasks. For example: write a resume - 20 minutes, talk to a partner about new responsibilities - 30 minutes.

After that, you wait for the right moment. It could be waiting for a plane at the airport or a line at the dentist. You take out your notebook and start solving these problems.

Call, write, think about it. And then you begin to feel that even if you can’t solve an urgent issue now, you have the opportunity to do it. The anxiety goes away.

The last thing to remember is that after serious stress, it is important to rest and recover. Because anxiety arises especially readily in cases when we are not in a resource, have not slept enough, are tired, and so on. Therefore, if there was a stressful situation, it is important to give yourself the opportunity to recover. And then negative states will have less of an effect on us.

Earlier we wrote about what you shouldn’t do in a relationship.