Best Anxiety Affirmations to Use When You’re Having an Attack

With the right affirmations for anxiety, you can ease your anxiety attacks before they even turn into one. But how do affirmations work with anxiety and how do you use them? Rest be assured; we’ve got you covered with the best anxiety affirmations to use when you’re on the verge of an attack.

Easing Anxiety Attacks with Affirmations

Anxiety affirmations allows you to ground yourself. It’s the process of self-talk; repeating positive phrases that instil the message in your brain that you are calm and in control. Despite being incredibly simple, affirmations are a useful tool to have when anxiety strikes. Studies have even shown that many professionals believe affirmations to be useful treatment and an important part of recovery.

Anxiety Affirmations Challenge Negative Thinking

The key to learning how to manage anxiety is to learn how to change your anxious thought patterns – and you guessed it, it starts with anxiety affirmations. When you begin to feel anxiety rises, your mind instantly triggers thoughts such as, “Oh my goodness. I’m having anxiety!” or “Retreat! Abort. Panic is coming!”. Sometimes, those anxious thoughts can even extend into negative self-talk such as, “I’m such a loser. I can’t even do [insert task] without freaking out,” or “I hate myself. I can’t live a good life.”

Having a set of anxiety affirmations in your little toolkit can help you combat these thoughts. Instead of feeding into the anxiety, you can repeat things such as, “I am calm and I am in control,” or “I feel the fear and I let it pass.” Of course, it can be hard to remember positive affirmations when you’re in the midst of an anxiety attack, so I always recommend having a set of affirmations in your purse or in your desk.

Anxiety Affirmations Break the Cycle

The longer you experience anxiety, the more the anxious thought patterns get embedded into your brain. Yes, they are patterns. With every anxiety attack (without the use of helpful anxiety tools), you are programming your mind to react to that situation. Fortunately, you can break the cycle by acknowledging when you’re experiencing anxiety simply by using coping techniques, such as affirmations, to rewire your brain through plasticity.

For example, without affirmations and other coping techniques, you feed into the fear because you don’t have anything to pull yourself out of it. This reconfirms to your brain that Situation A results in panic. With the best affirmations for anxiety, you can lessen the fear and counteract it. This forces your brain to go, Hmmm. Situation A isn’t as scary. I don’t need to release an abundance of fear and panic.

Affirmations Can Serve as a Distraction

Affirmations for anxiety also serve as a distraction. They give you something else to focus on, which takes your brain away from the panic. Similar to the previous example, without affirmations and other coping techniques, you have nothing else to do but to feed into the fear. With affirmations, you can pull them out and repeat the words to yourself or recite them from memory. This immediately begins to take your focus away from the attack, which in turn, ends the attack faster.

Anxiety Affirmations Rewire the Brain

Science has shown that our brains can be rewired by our own thoughts. Thus, changing your thoughts can change your brain to be more positive and less panicky. This is precisely why positive thinking is so imperative. Your mind will always believe what you tell it. If you are constantly affirming that you’re having a panic attack or that you will have a panic attack, your brain is likely to make that happen. On the contrary, when you tell yourself repeatedly, “I’m calm,” your brain will also make that happen. This is the power of affirmations. They can rewire your brain and change your life.

The Best Affirmations To Use When You’re Feeling Anxious

Let’s dive into the good stuff – the best affirmations to use when you feel anxiety and fear rising. The following anxiety affirmations are short and sweet, making them easy to remember and to recite as needed:

“I am calm and in control”
“I feel the fear and let it go“
“I am not defined by my anxiety”
“I let my anxious thoughts flow in one ear and out the other”
“I am okay”
“I am getting through this anxious moments, just as I have done a million times before”
“I am strong and resilient”
“I choose to feel calm and peaceful”
“I’ve survived this before, I’ll survive now”
“I am free from my anxiety. I am in control”
“I’m in charge of my breathing, and I can slow it down”
“I can do this”
“I am above stress of any kind”
“I am familiar with these feelings and they do not scare me”
“I am surrounded by people who understand”
“I am supported, loved and cared for”
“I have the techniques and tools needed to persevere”

How to Use Affirmations for Anxiety Relief

You can use affirmations for anxiety in many ways and it’s important to chose whichever one feels most comfortable for you. The only rule is to repeat the affirmation (ideally 10 times or until you feel it resonating) any and every time you’re feeling anxious.

You can do this silently to yourself or out loud. Some people choose to read their anxiety affirmations instead of reciting them and others choose to write them down.

The choice is entirely yours; just remember to repeat to rewire your brain.

There are hundreds of anxiety affirmations available online and just as many online affirmation programs and apps that send daily affirmations to you while on the go. If you’re still finding it difficult to overcome those anxious moments, it may be time to talk to a professional about coping techniques.

Take a look at BetterHelp, my favourite online counseling for anxiety, and see what type of services appeal to you. Help is available and you do not have to suffer alone, in silence, or at all. Combine online therapy with the best affirmations, and you can learn powerful ways to remain calm and to regain control of your life and happiness.

Originally published on anxiety-gone.com.

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