Beat Anxiety with These Top 6 Coping Skills
Experiencing anxiety sometimes is a normal part of life, with everyone feeling anxious at some point. However, people with anxiety disorders tend to feel anxious more frequently.
They may experience excessive anxiety, feeling intense emotions of fear and terror. People with clinical anxiety often get panic and anxiety attacks in everyday situations. They can start getting extremely anxious, even in the circumstances others may consider typical. As such, it robs their ability to react to a situation normally, affecting their performance and quality of life.
Recognizing that you have anxiety is the first key to learning coping strategies. Common symptoms of anxiety include:
· Continuously feeling exhausted
· Feeling too many things simultaneously
· Having a train of thoughts running through your mind
· Panting or heart beating abnormally fast
· Not being able to understand why you feel a certain way
Learning and developing healthy anxiety coping skills can help manage complex thoughts and emotions. Continue reading this piece for the top coping strategies for beating anxiety.
Top 6 Coping Skills to Beat Anxiety
Usually, people develop their ways of managing anxiety. However, you can learn practical anxiety-coping skills if you have not yet found a healthy coping mechanism.
Consider trying out different coping skills to find a few you can rely on when anxiety strikes. Turning to your favorite coping mechanism can help ease the stressful and painful symptoms, calming your mind and body. They can help bring comfort in the middle of an anxiety attack.
Different coping strategies work for different people. Here are the best skills to adopt for coping with anxiety.
Physical Coping Skills
1. Move Your Body
Physical movement can quickly help you calm down when you are uncontrollably anxious. Various research and studies reveal astonishing benefits of exercise on mental health illnesses, such as anxiety and depression.
Moving the body can adequately reduce stress levels to decrease the intensity of anxiety symptoms. Additionally, physical activity increases an individual’s ability to tackle adversity. Here are some ways to practice physical movement when your anxiety is high.
· Running or jogging
· Doing yoga
· Going for a walk
· Dancing
· Shaking your arms to dispel physical tension
· Doing jumping jacks or burpees
2. Walk amidst Nature
A significant amount of scientific evidence exists to prove the positive effects of nature on mental health. Being in a surrounding natural environment can instantly bring tranquility and peace, lowering stress levels.
Therefore, walking in a green space like a park can help shake off anxiety. If you feel anxious in a closed space, such as a building, consider going out in the fresh air to experience the incredible benefits of being in nature. You do not necessarily need to head to a forest to reduce the adverse symptoms of anxiety.
3. Do Grounding Exercises
Grounding exercises refer to activities that can help individuals be present in the moment. They range from formal exercises to quick strategies.
These exercises can be excellent physical coping skills to help you feel calmer and more present. They primarily focus on shifting your focus from the stressor to the surrounding physical environment. They can quickly distract you from anxious thoughts.
Here are some grounding exercises to try.
· Run your hands under cold water
· Gently shake your body
· Take a cold shower
· Focus on your breath
One of the most effective grounding exercises includes grounding yourself by focusing on your senses in sequence. It is called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique and involves the following steps:
1. Naming five things you can see
2. Naming four things you can feel
3. Naming three things you can hear
4. Naming two things you can smell
5. Naming one thing you can taste
Emotion-Focused Coping Skills
4. Journaling
Research reveals that writing down your thoughts and feelings can reduce stress. Often, anxiety attacks are a stress response to life’s various stressors. Lowering your stress levels helps reduce anxiety, bringing you back to the real world.
Journaling is an excellent way of reducing stress and, consequently, anxiety. It involves laying your anxious thoughts on paper, helping you see the situation as it is. Realizing that a problem is not as big as it may seem can help you manage your emotions better.
According to one 2018 study, journaling regularly can reduce anxiety symptoms.
5. Thought Exercises
Do you experience anxious thoughts frequently? Doing thought exercises offers an effective way to beat regular and frequent anxiety.
You can learn to train your mind to cope with anxiety in a stressful situation as you experience it. For instance, you can shift your focus from the challenging circumstance to a relaxing thought process by picturing something that brings you peace.
Defusion techniques are another effective strategy that focuses on changing how you perceive your thoughts. You may view your anxious thoughts as universal truths, which is not often true. Using the defusion technique helps you gain distance from the stressful situation to view it as an outsider would. It helps give a more precise idea and view of what is happening.
6. Meditation
Meditation is one of the most valuable coping skills to beat anxiety. It involves mindfulness and breathing techniques that help create a safe and calm mental space. Not forgetting, meditation allows you to view your thoughts from another point of view.
People meditate in different ways. For instance, some people incorporate breathing exercises and mantras. Meanwhile, others close their eyes to shut down their minds, getting rid of anxious thoughts.
Meditation may be beneficial if you experience physical symptoms of anxiety like a pounding heart or panting.
Bottom Line
Anxious thoughts can be overwhelming while getting anxiety attacks can be scary. Not to mention, living with chronic anxiety or anxiety disorders can negatively influence your quality of life. If you frequently experience anxiety, you may struggle with living your best life and using your full potential.
Physical and emotion-focused coping mechanisms can help you manage your emotions better and healthily. Some top anxiety coping skills include physical movement, surrounding yourself with nature, doing grounding exercises, journaling, practicing thought exercises, and meditating.