Tips on Tackling Anxiety

1. Assess whether the anxiety you are feeling is serving a function or whether it is free-floating and nonproductive.

Remember, anxiety in its most basic function, is there to help us.  Anxiety can help us focus, alert us to danger, give us information about a situation or a relationship that something is not quite right. Anxiety gets us ready for the basic survival functions of fight, flight, flee. With all that said, anxiety that is non-directional, and free floating can be detrimental to our health. 

2. Time management is key. 

Often times, we are experiencing symptoms of anxiety when we are over stressed. Learning to manage stress is strongly correlated with how we manage our very limited resource of time. Making sure to allot enough time to activities such as ‘down time’, ‘relational time’, exercise, ‘creative time’. We all know what it is to push hard to reach a deadline or for an important event, the problem is however, sometimes we get stuck in that “push” mode. It is unsustainable and your body is screaming for you to stop, recoup, and restructure your time. 

3. Exercise. Do it every day, for at least 15 minutes a day. Work up a sweat. 

So the bad news is that we feel anxiety in our body. People describe things like, upset stomach, tension, “feels like an elephant on my chest”, headaches, nausea, heart racing etc… Anxiety is very physical condition. But here is the GOOD news, because anxiety is expressed in our physical bodies, we have at least one key to the remedy. You do not need to have a full understanding/insight into your anxiety (although eventually this helps alot too) to start combatting it. Fifteen minutes of aerobic exercise will release tension, help regulate breathing and heart rate, and physically tire you out so that you can have a healthy appetite and sleep better. 

4. Develop a worry protocol.

I believe that worry generally falls within a couple of categories. One: concerns about the future (worrying about what might happen, considering all the disastrous possibilities etc). Two: rehashing the past (“I should not have said that… what does she think of me now?”…etc..) Three: some other nebulous topic that has some mixture of One and Two (finances, kids, spouse, work etc.) 

1. First step of the worry protocol, STOP. Get up and get out of your head. NOTICE that you have been worrying for xxx about of time. 
2. Write it down. Make a list of all the different worried thoughts you were having. 
3. Assess what are the points that you can address in the here and now, or at least in the relatively near future. 
4. Write down your plan to address the points that can be address. It is often mentally satisfying when you have a tangible, written down plan. This action alone often sends a message to your brain, ‘hey brain, you can stop worrying about this now because we have a plan.’
5. Now, IF you make it through steps A through D, and still feel a high amount of anxiety. I recommend that you proceed to your already created list of coping skills and distractions (refer to Tip #5). 

5. Develop a list of effective coping skills/pleasurable activities/distracting activities. 

This is a list that has been personalized to YOU. Coping skills are any activity that you find helpful helpful and effective. A coping skill can range from, taking a hot shower, going for a long walk in nature, talking to a friend, or journaling. I encourage everyone to develop a solid list of ideas BEFORE they are experiencing anxiety, because when we are in anxiety it is often much harder to brainstorm. 

Often people ask me about the difference between avoidance and using distracting coping skills. It is an important and worthwhile question. One, that I would encourage everyone to be brutally honest with themselves about. However, I will say this, I believe that if you follow Tips 1 through 4, then it’s not as likely that you are practicing avoidance. Sometimes, when anxiety is running unabated I believe that people need/are helped by practicing some coping skills/techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, and mindfulness exercises (UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center).