By Ava Kesler
To preface, anxiety is any feeling of stress, fear, worry, or sadness relating to the future. You may be professionally diagnosed, or just simply relate to any of these feelings. Either way, the tips in this article can apply to you.
1. Breathe
I never understood the whole breathe in and out tips. If anything they seemed to make me more stressed.
What I found to help me was taking in the biggest breath I possibly could, and holding it in to the point of my chest almost hurting. Then just let it go, and with it, all the tension in your body. The problem with anxiety is that it often is interrelated with our physical condition in a continuous cycle. Gaining control of our feelings is tricky, but we can quickly and easily get our bearings on our body. This in turn, transfers towards our mood.
2. Exercise
Let's all be honest, none of us is going to actually get up from reading this article and go exercise. Our instinct when stressed is to do anything but that. The real point of exercising though, is that it releases the tensions in your body. It distracts you from the stress you're facing, and gives your body something to actually do.
A major part of anxiety is simply that it causes you to worry too much. Oftentimes this is extremely unproductive, so doing some kind of physical activity will release your mind from this burden.
So, I suggest you find some kind of activity that you are passionate about. If you're in a sport, this is perfect. Truly indulge in the activity. You'll find yourself feeling better even long afterwards.
Take the opportunity to exercise whenever you get the opportunity. Just stand up and do a few jumping jacks. It doesn't take much to get out of a slump.
3. Take a warm bath or shower
Sometimes all it takes is just a warm or hot bath or shower, some nice comfy pajamas, a fuzzy blanket, and a nice movie to rock you to sleep.
Take a nap, sleep in, just rest for a bit. It never hurts to just get a sort of reset.
4. Go out and socialize
Whenever I feel like doing nothing, all it takes is just being around new impressions and people in order to start feeling cheered up. It's refreshing to have your mind occupied with other events and activities. It can help you find some ground amongst a difficult time of anxiety.
5. Find a trusting friend to talk to
Bottling up our feelings is what often causes unhappiness. It takes some serious skill to be in touch with your own feelings to be able to truly express to not only someone else how you are feeling, but also to yourself. This is especially important, you cannot get anywhere without being honest to yourself first. Then talk it out to someone.
You might find that you reach a better conclusion about how you feel this way, and it can release a lot of the tension you’re holding in.
Overall these tips are the basic foundation of living a healthy lifestyle without any unnecessary anxiety. If you ever find anxiety getting in the way of your life, follow any of these tips to be set on the right track. You’re sure to see improvement in your mood afterwards.
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