Anxiety often begins through what we think, and through our reactions to our environment. Oftentimes, a clear, present, and identifiable threat starts us experiencing fear. In contrast, anxiety occurs in the absence of immediate peril. In plain, when a sense of dread or discomfort washes over us, though we are not in danger, at that moment, we feel anxious. For instance, when we worry about the safety of a loved one far from home, anxiety arises. Feelings of anxiety arise from a stress response. From permitting avoidance behaviours and aggressive impulses, to having a hard time falling asleep, leaving home, anxiety can diminish our capacity to complete many of the activities of life. In this, how to calm your anxious mind stands crucial. It boasts of Ideas that help us to regain control and find confidence again.
Pathways Of Anxiety
Further with, our anxiety often arises from associations, not logic or cause and effect. Hence, triggers need not make logical sense. This example illustrates it. Mary presenting a teddy bear to her grandson running happily towards her, did not envisage him falling. He split his lips open on the driveway. Now, whenever he sees a teddy bear, he becomes fearful of it, as he associated the perfectly harmless teddy bear to the pain of the injury.
Again, we produce anxiety when we interpret perfectly safe or neutral sensations or situations as threatening. For instance, having applied to several colleges, a high school senior looked at the mail, and glimpsed an envelope from one of the colleges. From imagining that it contained a rejection letter, he created some anxious moments before opening the envelope. However, it turned out that he had been admitted with scholarship. As well, we can initiate anxiety from worries or distressing thoughts or images. This can happen when we have concerns about the safety of a child left with a babysitter though the child is perfectly safe.
Here Spotlights How To Calm Your Anxious Mind
1. Engage In Active Rather Than Passive Responding
This is especially constructive if you tend to produce freezing or immobilisation instead of the more active fight or flight responses under stress. In this situation, you are particularly at risk to become withdrawn and avoidant. This condition can spiral into crippling tendencies like a fear of experiencing the fear that arises in situations in which you feel unable to escape. The end result is you shrinking your world in a misguided attempt to protect yourself. To escape this fate, engage in active rather than passive responding. Find something active you can do. Calling someone on phone qualifies here.
Also, start social activities that involve enjoyable interactions with others than can distract you from your worries and curb the tendency of freezing, avoidance, and immobilisation.
2. Practice Muscle-focused Relaxation
In a state of anxiety, tension in our muscles often builds up, as they are activated in preparation for responding. Frequently, under anxiety arising from stress, we clench our teeth or tense our shoulders, neck, back, jaw or forehead muscles for no apparent reason. Constant muscle tension leaves us tight and exhausted since it uses energy.
Continuing with, to reduce muscle tension, we need to discover which areas of our body tend to tighten up when we are anxious. More, check whether your shoulders are loose, low, and relaxed, or tightened up towards your ears. Tension often features as a tight or strained feeling. In contrast, relaxation shows as a loose and heavy feeling. Along with, if you discover that your hand is tense, make a fist of the hand and clench it tightly while counting to ten. Then, let that hand relax by dropping it limply into your laps or into another surface. Frequently, to tense and release muscles helps to create a feeling of relaxation in the muscles. Clearly, how to calm your anxious mind draws from this relaxation technique.
3. Think The Word, “Relax” Or “Peace” As You Practice Diaphragmatic Or Abdominal Breathing
To practice this technique is to breathe more from the abdomen than from the chest. This kind of breathing helps turn on the relaxation response in the body. The movement of the diaphragm, the muscle under the lungs, beneficially massages the liver, stomach, heart, and many internal organs. Effective diaphragmatic breathing starts our stomach expanding as we inhale, and retracting as we exhale. As we focus on breathing deeply, in a manner expanding our stomach, to fill our lungs with air, our chests shouldn’t move much at all. For greater effect, think calming words like “relax” or “Peace” As you breathe.
Alternatively, you can imagine that with each exhalation you are breathing out stress; each inhalation, breathing in clean air. You can imagine that stress is coloured black or red, and that you are breathing it out, and filling yourself with stress free colourless air.
4. Expose Yourself To Situations That Contradict The Association Between A Trigger And A Negative Event
Oftentimes, our emotional memories are formed and recalled outside of our awareness. Hence, many of their influences occur without our conscious knowledge. In plain, a variety of sensory experiences, including seemingly irrelevant cues that we may barely notice in a situation, like a sound or smell, can trigger or create anxiety. In this, the harmless smell of a cologne can trigger a fearful response for a rape survivor, as the smell is associated to the rapist.
However, when we expose ourselves to situations that contradict the association between a trigger and a negative event, we gain over new learning that competes with those that lead to fear and anxiety. As a result, we have more control over our anxiety. In plainer terms, repeated exposure to seemingly threatening situations without anything negative occurring teaches us that the situation doesn’t warrant a fearful response.
Furthermore, when we expose ourselves to objects or situations we fear, and let the anxiety response run its course, peaking and then lowering, without escaping the situation, we begin to pair a previously feared situation with safety. We learn that triggers that previously evoked fear and anxiety are actually quite safe. This learning helps to plant in notions of how to calm your anxious mind.
5. Become Aware Of And Modify Your Interpretations During Stressful Situations
When we experience a situation or event, it is our interpretation of the situation that leads to an emotional reaction, not the situation or event. Thus, altering our interpretations can help us reduce our anxiety. For instance, if your friend fails to show up for a dinner date, you can interpret it as an opportunity to spend time alone with yourself, not a show of disrespect to you. In this way, you keep down feelings of anger.
6. Differentiate Between Thoughts About Events And The Events Themselves
Having thoughts does not mean that the thoughts are true, that whatever we are thinking is going to happen, or that we are going to act on our thoughts. Thoughts are thoughts, and does not equate to reality. What we think is not reality. On this account, we don’t need to respond to the thought of an event in the same way we would react if the event actually happened. On a personal note, doing so makes you anxious, and obscures you to ideas of how to calm your anxious mind.
Putting a construction on, Jane having trouble contacting her boyfriend, worried that something bad had happened to him. She conjured up images of him in an accident, and thoughts that he was contemplating leaving her. Accommodating these possibilities upset her. Clear from, she reacted to the thoughts she was having as if they were actual events. In consequence, she made herself anxious. Later, she discovered that her boyfriend forgot his phone at home.
All in view, it is helpful to remind ourselves that our thoughts don’t determine what happens. This keeps us from accepting unsubstantiated or unproven thoughts or feelings as true. Hence, to conclude that a situation is dangerous, ensure that you have actual evidence of a threat.
7. Acknowledge An Anxious Thought Without Buying Into It
On this wise, become an observer of your thoughts, not a believer of everything they say. “Hmm…interesting. I see that I’m having the thought that I’m never going to get my college degree. There is no reason to put faith in this thought. I better replace them with more constructive thoughts.” Following from, we can greatly reduce our anxiety by being aware of anxiety-igniting thoughts, and reducing the time we spend contemplating such thoughts. The mere existence of a thought does not suggest that it is true.
8. Watch Out For “Musts” And “Shoulds” In Your Thinking
We set ourselves up for stress and worry by telling ourselves we “must” accomplish something or that something “should” happen according to a certain plan or schedule. In plainer terms, the words “must” and “should” make it seem as though a rule is being violated if our performance is less than perfect or events fail to unfold as planned. A better way, replace “I should…” with “I’d like to…” This approach means that we are not creating any rule that must be followed. Buttressing further, we are simply expressing a goal or desire, that may or may not be met. It spotlights kinder and gentler, and helps you to pluck up more ideas of how to calm your anxious mind.
9. Replace A Thought, Not Erase It
Attempting to erase or silence a thought is not an effective approach. The harder we try to stop thinking about something, the more we think of it. Reasoning from, reminding ourselves not to dwell on a thought, starts us thinking about it. Consequently, we activate the circuitry storing that thought, making it stronger.
Alternatively, we can interrupt a thought by specifically telling ourselves, “stop.” This is often termed “thought stopping.” For this approach to be effective, for us to keep the first thought out of our mind, we need to replace this thought with another preferred thought. For instance, if you keep worrying that you will encounter a snake as you work in your garden, tell yourself, “stop.” Then, think about something else that is pleasant; a favourite song, ideas for a loved one birthday present. 10. Change The Anxiety Channel By Distracting Yourself
Distraction is an effective way of managing anxiety. For instance, instead of thinking about the stress of an upcoming dental appointment, change the anxiety channel by playing with your kids, pet or partner. In line with, cultivating a sense of playfulness and humour is crucial in coping with life’s challenges. Playing games, joking, and engaging in silliness offer the best distractions. As we steadfastly focus on pleasing, playful or humorous thoughts, we strengthen them, and make them easier to activate.
10. Replace Worry With Planning
Frequently, when we continue to think about a negative event, we lengthen our emotional reaction to the event. In consequence, we maintain negative emotions for longer than they would have lasted. A more constructive way, plan, instead of getting stuck in worrying or ruminating. To plan is to come up with possible solutions if we anticipate that a situation will actually arise. This planning enables us to move on to other thoughts and get on with living. We can activate our plan if the situation actually arises. With this, you press ahead to other constructive concepts of how to calm your anxious mind.
11. Engage In An Activity That Is Incompatible With Negative Mood States
These activities include watching amusing programmes, reading thought-provoking articles, playing games, listening to uplifting music, singing. To enjoy these activities helps us to engage ourselves in positive emotional responding. Good to note with, the activities replace negative thinking, and lifts our mood and energy. An improved mood helps you to cultivate more ideas behind how to calm your anxious mind.
Also, we can use positive forms of imagery to boost our mood and energy. To put a construction on, imagine a pleasant location in elaborate sensory detail. All sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensation feature relevant here.
12 Employ The Power Of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is taking on a non judging attitude, an openness to what is happening that puts you in the role of a peaceful, detached observer, not someone struggling with anxiety or it’s physical symptoms. Illustrating with, the next time you feel anxiety, focus on your bodily experience. Furthermore, bring back your wandering attention to the experience of anxiety in your body. Allow yourself to feel the flush of adrenaline; its intensity, affected body parts, sensations. Be aware of any impulse to say something or to leave, without acting on them. Notice incoming thoughts without analysing them.
Accordingly, accepting our anxiety as a normal process, letting ourselves experience it as it moves through us, helps to calm it down. The acceptance of our experience counts as the ultimate antidote to anxiety.
Conclusion
How to calm your anxious mind, permits ideas that keep you from the constant struggle to fight anxiety and make it stop. As we practice more of acceptance, we calm down our anxiety, and prevent it from exerting control over our lives. Also, devising new constructive ways of thinking and interpreting our experiences help us to live a more anxiety resistant life.
