Anxiety Reference Blog

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Y'all ever wash your hands until your wrists bleed to flex on people who are ~omg so OCD~

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Practical Tips for Coping with Anxiety

According to Dr T.A. Richards, we can stop thoughts that lead to anxiety by consciously replacing them by more rational thoughts like the following:

When Anxiety is Near:

1. I’m going to be all right. My feelings are not always rational. I’m just going to relax, calm down, and everything will be all right.

2. Anxiety is not dangerous — it’s just uncomfortable. I am fine; I’ll just continue with what I’m doing or find something more active to do.

3. Right now I have some feelings I don’t like. They are really just phantoms, however, because they are disappearing. I will be fine.

4. Right now I have feelings I don’t like. They will be over with soon and I’ll be fine. For now, I am going to focus on doing something else around me.

5. That picture (image) in my head is not a healthy or rational picture. Instead, I’m going to focus on something healthy like _________________________.

6. I’ve stopped my negative thoughts before and I’m going to do it again now. I am becoming better and better at deflecting these automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and that makes me happy.

7. So I feel a little anxiety now, SO WHAT? It’s not like it’s the first time. I am going to take some nice deep breaths and keep on going. This will help me continue to get better.”

When Preparing for a Stressful Situation

1. I’ve done this before so I know I can do it again.

2. When this is over, I’ll be glad that I did it.

3. The feeling I have about this trip doesn’t make much sense. This anxiety is like a mirage in the desert. I’ll just continue to “walk” forward until I pass right through it.

4. This may seem hard now, but it will become easier and easier over time.

5. I think I have more control over these thoughts and feelings than I once imagined. I am very gently going to turn away from my old feelings and move in a new, betterdirection.

When feeling overwhelmed

1. I can be anxious and still focus on the task at hand. As I focus on the task, my anxiety will go down.

2. Anxiety is a old habit pattern that my body responds to. I am going to calmly and nicely change this old habit. I feel a little bit of peace, despite my anxiety, and this peace is going to grow and grow. As my peace and security grow, then anxiety and panic will have to shrink.

3. At first, my anxiety was powerful and scary, but as time goes by it doesn’t have the hold on me that I once thought it had. I am moving forward gently and nicely all the time.

4. I don’t need to fight my feelings. I realize that these feelings won’t be allowed to stay around very much longer. I just accept my new feelings of peace, contentment, security, and confidence.

5. All these things that are happening to me seem overwhelming. But I’ve caught myself this time and I refuse to focus on these things. Instead, I’m going to talk slowly to myself, focus away from my problem, and continue with what I have to do. In this way, my anxiety will have to shrink away and disappear.

Source: http://www.anxietynetwork.com/helpcope.html

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How to Stop Over-Thinking

1. Set aside a specific time to think about what is on your mind.

2. Find somewhere you can be quiet and alone, and write down what is bothering you.

3. Allow yourself 20 minutes to think about it – including identifying your feelings, trying to better understand the situation, and thinking through possible ways of dealing with things.

4. Decide to set the problem aside for now, and move on with your day.

5. Any time related thoughts enter your mind say “Stop!” and deliberately distract yourself.

6. Repeat Steps 1-3 at another set 20 minute period in the day. Do not allow yourself to ruminate in between these set periods of time.

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How to Avoid Over-Thinking

1. When you feel bogged down and you can’t clear your mind, do something physical or get some exercise.

2. Set a time limit for your “thinking time” then make yourself move on to doing something else.

3. Interrupt the thinking process or distract yourself by diverting your attention onto something very different.

4. Stop discussing what concerns you with everyone you meet as you’ll just end up confused, and you won’t know what to do.

5. Accept that uncertainty is part of this life, and we don’t have all the facts, or know what’s further down the road.

6. Throw yourself into a project, a hobby or some work. That will force you to refocus on something else instead.

7. Let your mind go blank and just relax for a while. It will help you see more clearly when you start to think, next time.

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Errors in Thinking that Create Anxiety

1. All-or-nothing thinking: Looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground (“If I fall short of perfection, I’m a total failure.”)

2. Overgeneralization: Generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever (“I didn’t get hired for the job. I’ll never get any job.”)

3. The mental filter: Focusing on the negatives while filtering out all the positives. Noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right.

4. Diminishing the positive: Coming up with reasons why positive events don’t count (“I did well on the presentation, but that was just dumb luck.”)

5. Jumping to conclusions: Making negative interpretations without actual evidence. You act like a mind reader (“I can tell she secretly hates me.”) or a fortune teller (“I just know something terrible is going to happen.”)

6. Catastrophizing: Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen (“The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!”)

7. Emotional reasoning: Believing that the way you feel reflects reality (“I feel frightened right now. That must mean I’m in real physical danger.”)

8. ‘Shoulds’ and ‘should-nots’: Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do and beating yourself up if you break any of the rule

9. Labeling: Labeling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings (“I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser.”)

10. Personalization: Assuming responsibility for things that are outside your control (“It’s my fault my son got in an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.”)

Source: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_self_help.htm

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Tips for Managing Intense, Negative Feelings

1. Try to figure out what is causing you to feel so awful, ashamed, or down.

2. Talk to someone you think will understand.

3. Identify and accept the feelings that you have (They’re not right or wrong … it’s simply how you feel right now.)

4. Express your feelings in a safe, non-threatening way.

5. Related to this, think of ways to manage them effectively so that you don’t feel quite so bad, and so completely overwhelmed.

6. Try to get some space, or a change of scenery.

7. Avoid being with people who demand too much from you (especially those who drain you emotionally.)

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How to Cope with Guilt Feelings

1. Try and work out why you feel so guilty. Make a list of all the things you feel guilty about. Try and work out which item sparks the strongest reaction. That’s probably the item to focus on.

2. Rate it on a scale of 1-10. That will help you to assess how bad it really was – as sometimes we feel guilty about stupid, minor things.

3. Think through what you can do. Think of actions you can take to try and make things a bit better – even if deep down you know that you can never make things right. It will bring some relief, and will strengthen your resolve to do things differently another time.

4. If your guilt is “false guilt” (so you just generally feel guilty), consider working with a counsellor. You may have developed a shame based personality - so you basically feel worthless and inadequate.

5. Forgive yourself. You can’t turn back the clock. What’s done is done. But you can start again and try to be a different person. Let it go, don’t think about it. The future is what counts.

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Beating Anxiety

There are some easy tools that anyone can use to cope with their feelings of anxiety. They include:

1. Learning more about anxiety: This will help you to understand what is happen when you start to feel increasingly anxious. First, remember that we all feel anxious at times. It can help us to prepare for and cope with hard tasks – such as sitting an exam or teaching a class. However, it leads to problems when the danger isn’t real yet our body is signalling a high state of alert.

2. Learning strategies that help us relax: The two most common strategies for relaxing and unwinding are calming down our breathing and muscle relaxation. The former involves taking slow, gentle breaths (breathing in through the nose, pausing for a few seconds, then breathing out slowly through the mouth, again). The latter involves learning how to tense and relax the different muscles - and then repeating this until our stress levels fall.

3. Actively challenging our anxious thoughts: When we’re anxious and tense we often see the world as a threatening and hostile place. This usually reflects faulty, negative thinking where we jump to conclusions or expect the worse to happen. This is out of proportion, exaggerated thinking which is unrealistic – and makes us feel uptight. A strategy for helping is replacing faulty thinking with a more realistic and accurate approach. This necessitates us challenging our automatic thinking so we see things in a clearer, less distressing way. Of course, it takes practise and effort to shift our change anxious thinking – but it’s worth the effort in the end

4. Facing our fears: One of the best ways of dealing with our fears is exposing ourselves to what makes us feel afraid. For example, if you avoid being with people as this leaves you feeling anxious then the best way forward is to simply face your fear. You could make a list that goes from “least to most scary” - and then reward yourself each time you move a level up the list.

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Tips for Cultivating Calmness

1. Try and develop a calm morning ritual instead of starting the day off in a stressful rush.

2. Notice how you tend to automatically respond to a stressful or irritating person or event.

3. Decide to not take things personally; be the kind of person who it’s hard to offend.

4. Develop an attitude of gratitude – and decide to be thankful for the little things in life.

5. Develop healthy ways of coping with stress (as stress is an inevitable part of life.)

6. Single task instead of multitasking (as it leads to fewer mistakes in the end.)

7. Make more time for quiet and reduce the constant noise.