7 Essential Strategies for Calming an Anxious Mind (Part 2)

Approximately 18% of people struggle with an anxiety disorder every year.
Of all the mental health challenges, anxiety is the most common, but it is also highly treatable.
Yet, only 37% of people struggling with anxiety will seek treatment.
And what makes this particularly unfortunate is that there are a number of scientifically-supported strategies which can be used to help cope with feelings of anxiety.
RESOURCES & LINKS:
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Emotion Regulation in Daily Life Is Associated With Well-Being: journals.sagep...
Optimism Mediates the Protective Role against Anxiety: www.academia.e...
Modelling habit formation in the real world: onlinelibrary....
The relationship between nature-relatedness and anxiety: journals.sagep...
The Benefits for Mental Health of Living with Nature: academic.oup.c...
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When people think about anxiety, there can be the thought that anxiety isn’t really an issue unless someone is dealing with anxiety attacks.
However, what’s more common, and at least as debilitating in the long run, are consistent low-grade anxiety symptoms that never seem to dissipate very often.
These symptoms can present shortly after waking and remain for the better part of the day, sometimes spiking in response to a stressor.
Habitual feelings of anxiety can be uncomfortable and distressing. If left unchecked, it can create what feels like a chronically anxious mind, constantly focused on worries and interfering with the quality of your daily life.
So, to recap, the first strategy for calming an anxious mind is to change your physiology, as this will help to interrupt the pattern of shallow breathing and tight muscles.
And three of the best ways to do this are to take slower, deeper breaths, use a form of muscle relaxation, such as autogenic training or progressive muscle relaxation, and prioritize exercise.
With all of these strategies, even doing them a little during your day can be beneficial.
Second, it’s important to use the right self-talk.
One form of self-talk is relaxing self-talk, which can help calm the mind, instead of filling the mind with more anxiety-provoking thoughts.
Next, I’d encourage you to make problems the correct size.
Your brain’s job is to keep you safe, not to keep you calm.
Because of this, there is a tendency to make problems bigger than they deserve to be.
So, be mindful of catching anxious thoughts quickly, making them the correct size and assigning them the appropriate amount of worry. Then develop a plan to cope with the thought.
For my fourth strategy, I encourage you to weave mindfulness into your day.
Mindfulness has proven physiological effects on calming the mind and body and has been shown to be effective, even in small doses.
Consider weaving mindfulness into different parts of your day.
It’s a very versatile technique that can be used whether sitting, standing, lying down, or even moving.
Fifth, it’s important to take make peace with acceptance.
For the situations in life you cannot influence, you are left with one option to help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.
And that is to recognize that many things in life are simply beyond our control and become better at making peace with that.
Fortunately, many things of things tend to work out.
Next, it’s important to be optimistic.
This doesn’t mean you walk through life blindly and are optimistic about everything.
Instead, it is about evaluating thoughts and situations in ways where there can be an optimistic bent.
And doing so can help rewire the brain in a way that helps reduce anxious feelings.
And for my seventh final strategy, I encourage you to be in nature.
Science is overwhelmingly in favour of all of the benefits for reducing feelings of stress and anxiety when in nature.
Even simply viewing nature provides benefits, so prioritizing even relatively small amounts of time to be in nature or enjoy a view of nature can help reduce anxiety.
I hope you found these strategies helpful for helping to calm an anxious mind.
If you’re experiencing challenges implementing these steps, please get in touch with us @ www.drsullivan...
Thank you for watching, and be sure to watch part 2 of my video about How To Cope With Feelings of Guilt, which will be released shortly.
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