DIFFERENT WAYS TO MANAGE ANXIETY // 4 Things You May Be Missing That Help Beat Anxiety

There's an endless amount of tools that we as professionals help teach our clients to deal with anxiety. Journaling, breathing, meditating, relationships, sleeping, eating. There's so many ways to cope with anxiety. You just have to find what works for you. But there's four things that I tend to think are pretty important in general, no matter who you are, no matter what you're dealing with, that will give you a jump start. If you're not already doing these things or, or you've never addressed your anxiety and you're just getting started. What's going on? Welcome back to my channel. There's four techniques, tips, hacks, ways, whatever you want to call them, to help beat anxiety, that no matter where you are in the process, if you're not implementing these, I highly encourage you to do so. There are four things, again, among all of the other coping skills. But, but these are four things that I work with all of my clients on if they struggle with anxiety. So no matter where you're at in your journey, if you've never asked for help and you're just starting or you already have coping skills, if you've never done any of these four things, they might help add to your repertoire. So there's four things that I want to teach you and encourage you to look at if you haven't already. The first important, again, step, tool, hack, whatever you want to call them, is to educate yourself. How do we work on what we aren't educated about? How do we work on what we're not aware of? Are you having a panic attack or an anxiety attack? Are you dealing with stress and anticipation, or is it actually anxiety? Has it been happening for a long time or is it due to an acute stressor in your life, like a loss or financial issues or struggles at your job? These are all important factors in educating yourself, but also, what's a panic attack? What's an anxiety attack? What is anxiety? If you have a diagnosis, what is the diagnosis and what does that look like? Oftentimes we have anxiety about what we don't know about because we don't understand what's happening. So educate yourself. I'm not saying you have to go into rabbit holes or read the DSM and really understand all of the nitty gritty that goes into the diagnosis, but have a general understanding. If you have anxiety, what does that mean? If you have panic attacks, what are they, what are the triggers, and what are the mental and physical symptoms of panic attacks? Whatever you're struggling with, one of the ways to start to beat anxiety is to understand it, understand where it's coming from. Because again, a lot of our stress and anxiety comes from not even knowing what's going on. So the more you can understand what's going on, the more you can understand yourself, the more you can arm yourself with the tools to do something about it. The second big thing is to acknowledge what is happening. Awareness is huge. I give this example all the time. I would venture a guess to say most of my clients have heard this example, but it's true, and it is very accurate. When we don't acknowledge something, when we stuff something, when we try to ignore it or not address it, or we're just gonna hope it goes away if we just put it over here to the side, it is like a beach ball being held underwater. It's eventually going to pop up a on one side or the other, and you're going to have to deal with it. So acknowledge what is going on. If you're struggling with anxiety, what kind of tools do you have in your tool belt? Use the education that you're getting to acknowledge what's happening and grow your awareness, but don't stuff it away. Yes, there's probably moments in your life where you're doing something. You might be at work, you might be giving a presentation, or on a phone call or. Or in public, and you can't necessarily do something right then and there. But that doesn't mean to not address it at all. If something can't happen in the moment, it doesn't mean that it gets stuffed away forever. So don't let yourself try to just push things off to the side, not grow your awareness around them, not just acknowledge them thinking that they're gonna go away. It's just like holding a beach ball underwater. It's gonna pop up eventually, so you might as well, as soon as you can. Or in the moment, if it's possible. Acknowledge what's happening. Recognize you're feeling anxious. Use the language that your therapist has given you so that you can then employ the tools and figure out how to manage it. The third really important thing that we need to do when we're trying to beat anxiety is to learn to breathe. I know it sounds so. So basic and simple and like, okay, Lori, that's not anything I haven't heard before. But here's the trick. When we're upset or mad or anxious, what do we do? We tend to, right, we physically tense up. We suck in oxygen because that is our body's automatic response to try to breathe and get oxygen to the system. But we're tense and, and we can't get oxygen to this system. So learning how to breathe is really important because when you're anxious, there are stress hormones that are being released and running through your body that need to be calmed down and settled because those hormones are released because your brain thinks you're in danger. That's what anxiety is. That fight or flight thing is, oh my gosh, we're in danger. Let's get ready to fight or run away. So your body is responding. So what we want to do is y use oxygen. Oxygen is one of the easiest ways to hack the nervous system and calm things down. So learning how to breathe, whether you use something like square breathing where you inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four and hold for four, and you do a few cycles of that, or you put one hand on your chest, one hand on your belly, and you pay attention as you're breathing in and out, which hand is rising. You want your hand on your belly to rise. You want to be breathing from your belly, from your diaphragm, because that's what's expanding, that's how we're getting the most oxygen. Or if you're physically tense or anxious, tense everything up even more. And then physically relax your body and then take a nice deep inhale and exhale and do that a few times. One, we have to physically relax our body in order to get the oxygen that we need to calm the nervous system to feel less anxious. So breathing seems like this really simple thing. Not a problem, it's a no brainer. And I don't want to say we're doing it wrong, but we're missing the reason as to why it works and why it's important and why you need to use it in a way that's actually going to be effective. And if you're super tense, super anxious, and you're like, that's not doing anything or it's not doing much. But if you can really tense your body and then get it to relax or shake things out, or get your physical body to relax and then take a deep inhale and exhale, now your body's getting what it needs. So oxygen's important, breathing is important. Yes, it's really basic. But make sure you're using it in a way that your body's going to use it efficiently and that when you need to breathe, if you're freaking out or anxious or having a panic or anxiety attack, you can breathe in a manner that's actually going to do what you need it to do, which is to calm your body down, calm the nervous system down. The fourth way to beat anxiety, deal with it, hack it again, whatever you want to call it is to move your body. I get it. Easier said than done. When you're stressed out, when you're super anxious, when you're really upset, the last thing you want to do is go work out or go for a run. You don't necessarily have to do something like that, but move your body, get up. A lot of times when we're anxious, we, we try to white knuckle it or we don't move around or we are anxious and we sit in the anxiety and we don't get up and move around and try to move it through our bodies. So again, I know that there's probably times if you're in a test or on a plane or doing something that you can't get up and move around, but more often than not you might actually be able to, it might need to. Shaking your arms around and just being able to shake a little bit of your body or rolling your ankles or your wrists, moving your body in any way that you can is going to help move those stress hormones through your body and it's kind of like flushing the system. Then like step three, you move your body and you're breathing and now you have a double whammy. But if it's jumping jacks, if you go for a walk, if you, if you stand up, if you shake it out, if you have a dance party, find a way to move your body. We hold so much tension in our physical body. And one of the big things that happens when we're really anxious is that we tense up. To sit in it and literally stew in those stress hormones is not good. So make sure if you're feeling anxious the minute you can, the minute you realize it's happening, that you get up, you stand up, or you go for a walk, or you do whatever you can to physically move your body. Because also a lot of anxiety is pent up energy. So the last thing you want to do is just be sitting in it. There are endless ways to cope with anxiety. Journaling the way we eat, how we sleep, our relationships, managing your stress, meditation, hypnosis, and the list goes on and on and on. But those four things, the education, the acknowledgement, the breathing and the moving your body are some of the most basic things that sometimes one or a few or all of them were forgetting. And we're not doing, but we're doing things like journaling and all of the other things. But if we can get back to these basics and, and you can use them in your life, it might help amplify all the other efforts that you're making. Don't forget to subscribe. And I will see you back here next Wednesday with another video.