How Does Anxiety Impact Me?
Anxiety can stop you from either enjoying life or pursuing what’s important to you. The racing thoughts, fast heartbeat, irritability, and negative thoughts about yourself can stop you from moving before you even take the first step. In this blog post we will briefly cover a few things you can do manage anxiety as it rises AND how to create lasting changes in your life.
Three Tips to Manage Anxiety.
- Monitor your breathing, and if necessary, alter your breathing cycle. Some call this mindfulness. I call it being present with your breath as this is all you are doing and not engaging in further non-judgmental or visual work. When paying attention to your breath, make sure that the inhales are through your nose and exhales are through pursed lips. Exhales are to be longer than inhales to stimulate the bodies innate relaxation response.
- Intentional Grounding Work. This incorporates finding areas that your body naturally or intentionally finding ways to make contact with stable structures, i.e. walls, trees, or the floor. While grounding, you simply bring your attention to notice how your body feels associated with this structure and notice the structures characteristics.
- Guided imagery can be a great way to calm the body’s nervous system. In this technique, you will find a quiet place and recall or create a calm place in your mind and notice what it is like to be there. Through this technique you take your mind away from the anxiety through imagery.
Remember – these techniques do not always work the first time(s). It takes practice. Stick with it. As you use these skills more and more your neural systems will become stronger overtime. Thus, the skills themselves will be more effect for you.
What if These Tips Don’t Work?
 The tips mentioned above are used to help you get through moments of anxiety. Working with a trained therapist near you to address underlying issues that influence anxiety may be needed. There are many effective anxiety therapies which include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Both have been shown to help reduce anxiety symptoms for the long-term. Depending on the severity of anxiety symptoms, anxiety therapy may occur weekly or once every two weeks.
If you or someone you know has a life ruled by anxiety, don’t hesitate to reach out. We offer 20-minute consultations to ensure we are a good fit. Click here to submit a form or call us at 720.295.6703 to schedule a consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.
