How to manage your Anxiety?

Anxiety is the basis and starting point of all mental disorders. Learning to manage it is essential to maintaining balance in your mental and emotional health.

 

To begin managing anxiety it is important to understand that it has four main components. Strong emotions of anger, sadness or frustration, negative thoughts, physical reactions (headache, stomachache, muscle spasms, sweating, being cold) and toxic responses or maladaptive behaviors, yelling, hurting others feelings, ignoring, slandering, consuming psychoactive substances, self-harm, isolation, etc. Behaviors can be varied and are not limited to those mentioned. These four components are the main ingredients that create anxiety and all four must exist at the same time to define anxiety .

 

Before learning what to do to manage anxiety it is important to know that there is a healthy level of anxiety recognized as motivation. The motivation to carry out day-to-day tasks that generate well-being in our family, social and individual environment. For example; studying for an exam, scheduling our children's birthday parties, carrying out tasks or completing assignments. Once we have carried out these tasks, the anxiety disappears and there are no resulting negative behaviors.

 

Anxiety is not healthy when the four components mentioned above exist and persist for a long period of time. In the case where anxiety persists and does not disappear when tasks have been carried out, a person experiencing these symptoms will no longer be functional and their social, family and work environment will be affected.

 

How can you manage anxiety?

 

Once you have learned to identify anxiety, you must follow these four steps.

 

1. Identify that you have anxiety and stop what you are doing for a maximum of 15 minutes.

 

2. Use mindful breathing to calm the Central Nervous System. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds.

 

3. Change your negative thoughts to positive thoughts. It is very important that you carry out this step, otherwise, with your negative thoughts, you would be telling your central nervous system that it should be activated again.

 

4.Identify something that helps you personally. Write, talk with a friend, go for a walk, listen to music. etc.

 

Changing our habits is the most difficult thing to do to take care of our mental health. Remember that implementing these four steps requires perseverance and dedication so that you form the habit and as soon as you recognize your anxiety, you can implement them immediately. Anxiety is not something that is cured or removed but is managed according to your level of anxiety and the emotional traumas you have, you will be practicing and perfecting these techniques for a long time, probably throughout your life. It is also important to mention that the emotional component should be handled through psychotherapy since it is related to traumas or negative experiences that happened at some point in your life or in childhood.