Anxiety: 5 techniques that will help you.

Anxiety is a normal and natural feeling that every person experiences at some point in their lives. However, sometimes excessive anxiety can get in the way of living a healthy and happy life. And overcoming increased anxiety is not so easy. In such cases, fairly simple exercises will help you relax and feel relief. To find relief from anxiety, the exercises below can be done anywhere, anytime. The main goal is to quickly relax and calm down

1. Relaxing breathing.

During an anxiety attack, your heart rate and breathing speed up, you may experience excessive sweating, and sometimes even dizziness. At such times, controlling your breathing can help relax both your body and mind. To take control of your breathing during an anxiety attack, follow these steps:

• Sit in a quiet place. Place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. When you inhale deeply, your stomach should move more than your chest. You should inhale slowly through your nose and exhale through your mouth. It is necessary to repeat the exercise at least 10 times, or until you feel that the anxiety is decreasing.

• Сoncentrate on breathing: take a deep breath, and then exhale 2 times longer than the inhalation (it is important not to think about what causes negative emotions);

• Inhale air quickly through your nose several times, then exhale for a long time through your mouth.

These exercises can be performed daily as a preventive measure or used as an emergency aid.

In general, it is very useful to master belly breathing. Usually a person breathes through the chest, quite shallowly. Observe what happens to your chest and abdomen during breathing. Normally, when you inhale, the abdomen should expand due to the fact that air fills the lungs and the diaphragm tenses, moving down. When you exhale, it rises, the stomach retracts, and the lungs push out the air. A more correct name for such breathing is diaphragmatic. More often, the opposite happens - when people inhale, they tighten their stomach. As long as you focus on practicing this habit, you will definitely become calmer.

2. Exercise "Blacklist"

Every anxious person has their own set of fears (fear of the elevator, fear of not being able to cope with something, etc.). To complete the exercise, you need to make a list of your fears, and then opposite each item write the opposite, positive statement.

For example: “I can’t handle the job I’m asked to do—I’ve done difficult assignments before, so I shouldn’t worry about it.”

It will also be useful to remember your own positive experiences in overcoming difficult situations. And the main thing is to resurrect those feelings that you experienced. The brighter the “picture” is, the easier it will be to behave more confidently and fearlessly.

3. Method of switching emotions

Performed directly during an increase in anxiety. It is known that an emotion can become less intense at the expense of another, more pronounced one. To “switch off” the wave of growing anxiety or anxiety that has already begun, you can apply any cold object to the skin.

Try to switch to your surroundings: carefully examine and describe objects, phenomena, people, noticing small details.

Or you can just pet your favorite cat or talk about the weather with your faithful dog. Animals will always be happy to have a portion of communication with their owner, and their calmness and devotion will definitely help you calm down too.

4. Mediation techniques

It is known that meditation is a great way to relax, take your mind off dark thoughts, relieve tension and eliminate anxiety. In addition, it helps to increase self-confidence and develop the ability to cope with one's emotions.

The main rule of meditation is regularity. Even 1 or 2 missed classes can negatively affect the result. Also, remember that the environment while performing the techniques should be quiet and calm.

The main benefit of this technique is that during its implementation the body relaxes and rests, switching to a certain frequency of brain activity. To explain it very simply, during meditation a person rests in a comfortable position, sitting or lying down, while concentrating not on thinking about a plan of action or analyzing events, but on the sounds of nature or slow, pleasant music. Sitting in the lotus position and periodically making the sounds “O-ommmm...” is not at all necessary.

5. Positive attitude

To set yourself up for change and get rid of anxiety, you need to add simple joys to your life:

• communicate with nice people, do what you love, sports, walk more in the fresh air;

• develop the ability to live “here and now” (let go of the past and don’t look too far into the future);

• try not to conflict, don’t communicate with toxic people, watch less TV (especially news broadcasts).

Feelings of anxiety have a negative impact on many different aspects of life. If you do not fight this painful feeling, it will only intensify, which is why both mental and physical well-being will rapidly deteriorate.

Do not be afraid of fears and anxieties - these are emotions given to humans by nature for survival. If you learn to cope with them, life will become easier and your health will improve. And remember - if you have a solid “why”, then you will overcome any “how”. I am sure that everyone who has firmly decided to get rid of anxiety knows perfectly well why they need it.