“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.”
– Kahlil Gibran
Introduction
Imagine a world without anxiety? Confidence never being a problem for anyone. Speeches are perfect since there won’t be any fear of failure or messing up. What a beautiful world that would be. Now let’s come back to reality.
How bad is it? The amount of anxiety people have in this world? Firstly, it’s important to know the difference between anxiety and depression. Anxiety is excessively feeling worried and nervous. As for depression, it’s the excessive feelings of hopelessness, sadness & worthlessness.
I admit I know a lot of friends who have extreme levels of anxiety. Shockingly, a statistic states that out of 264 million adults worldwide, about 63% are female, and 37% are male. This is extremely unfortunate. Just talking through friends and seeing them go through it, it’s not a pleasant sight. With anxiety, when they are experiencing a problem/situation, since the mind is all over the place, they start thinking about other problems, and it’s like a spiral effect. So it’s like you will overcome the original problem, but now you are thinking about the new one.
So is there really a remedy for this? Well, let’s look at five healthy ways to deal with it.
1. Challenge Your Mind
As a firm believer in karma, I believe we are put in situations to test our mentality. In life, we’ve come across situations where at the moment, we believe we can’t do it. We have to remember that it is a test for our minds to overcome.
When we are in these situations, what do we tend to do first? We are fixating on the “worst-case” scenario. The mind is a powerful tool. You can be the most intelligent person in the world, but if you can’t overcome your emotional side, the mental usually follows suit.
Anxiety likes to make your mind overestimate the dangers of a situation and underestimates your ability to handle it. We need to remember that pain & difficult times are only temporary.
2. Being Physically Active
Multiple studies have shown that being physical helps reduce depression and even anxiety. You’re most likely unmotivated to start working out because it seems like extra work. We have to remember that not only does this help with physical health, but it also helps with mental health as well. Movement in the body decreases muscle tension & enhances your overall cognitive function.
There’s no “easy” way to treat anxiety; it’s a process. It’s not like we can predict when an attack will happen; it just happens. So the best thing we can do is help eliminate or lower the effects of it when it happens. I always believed this saying, “When you look good, you feel good & when you feel good; you do good.”
3. Positive Support System
This is very critical (if you are asking for my opinion, well, I guess that’s why you are here as well.) People are probably going to ask about medications. I believe that everything is in the brain. If you believe that the only way you can overcome your anxiety is through medication, then you’ll mentally become dependable on the medication to make you feel better.
Drugs and alcohol, to me, are only temporary solutions and, on top of that, harmful to you in the long run. There aren’t any long-term positive effects arriving from any of them except being dependable when you want to feel happy. The lack of healthful benefits from these two isn’t what you would call a win.
A positive support system will be staying in a positive environment. The best support system is your friends, family & significant other. These are the cornerstones that help give you balance in life. They are looking out for your best interests and want to see you succeed in life. Being around positive energy supports and encourage your development and provide comfort in challenging times, like when you are feeling anxious.
4. Learning Your Triggers
We all view & experience life differently. Which means how we view problems will be different than the next person. It will be helpful to keep note of the patterns in what triggers these emotions for you or notice early signs that you are about to experience some anxiety symptoms.
We all have to start somewhere. Taking this early step of keeping notes means you want to improve your life. Anxiety is notoriously known for causing negative thoughts in which creates poor self-assessments on ourselves and making it challenging to identify triggers due to our anxious reactions.
Being patient with yourself is crucial in these times. You have to be willing to explore things in your past to help identify possible triggers & how it’s affecting you every day. This leads to my last subject of the evening.
5. Go Easy On Yourself
Don’t forget… you are not the only one going through this! There is no shame in feeling this way when certain situations arise. As stated earlier, we all cope, interpret & handle situations differently.
Anxiety causes a lot of self-doubt and makes us think little of ourselves in the moment. When we are experiencing famous lines like What’s wrong with me?”, “Why am I feeling like this?” I’m sure we know these lines all too well.
As humans, it’s natural for us to be vulnerable & confused, especially during this state. People with anxiety are usually overthinkers, which makes sense when you look at the state an anxiety attack will put you through.
So breathe, relax; you are your own worst enemy.
Conclusion
“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
– Swedish proverb
Just a quick little reminder when it comes to things like anxiety. Whatever it is causing it, putting stress on your well-being, the heightened depression and worry, it will all pass. You will survive and move on as you have throughout the years.
You can have one bad day, but tomorrow is a new day to start fresh. Overthinking not only kills your mind but also breaks your heart and soul. It’s easier said than done, for sure, hence why it’s important to concentrate on your self-growth. If you don’t take the time to learn about yourself, it will be extremely difficult to overcome situations that stress you or trigger your anxiety attacks.
There’s no perfect way to eliminate it all, and growth is never linear. You will have days where you succeed & days where you will fall. That’s all a part of life.