Anxiety is often helpful. It helps you protect yourself from real danger and act accordingly. But what about when it manifests itself all the time and poisons your existence? Here we help you understand your anxiety attacks and give you 3 anti-stress tips to adopt to fight your anxiety.
Anxiety: why does it appear?
Anxiety is the result of repeated exposure to stress. It is a worry, anticipation, about what could happen.
There are two distinct forms of anxiety:
Temporary or “normal” anxiety which announces an immediate work to which our body responds by fighting or fleeing depending on the situation like appliance repair,
Generalized anxiety or “anxiety disorder” which is a chronic form with incessant worrying for no specific reason.
Panic attacks, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, are exacerbated forms of anxiety and can vary in intensity and frequency from person to person. Its signs can appear at any time and do not cease to aggravate the already well-established psychological suffering.
During an episode of anxiety, such as an exam, a professional conflict, a late appointment, a traffic jam, or a disagreement with the next-door neighbor, everything becomes a tragedy, whether because of a real problem or a trivial trifle.
Where does this psychic disorder that promotes anxiety come from?
This can be hereditary or environmental, but post-traumatic anxiety (accident, attack, death of a loved one, psychological shock) is also mentioned. Food also plays an essential role in anxiety disorders (industrial and refined food, vitamin deficiencies, accumulation of toxins, lack of magnesium, etc.).
Beyond chemical treatments such as anxiolytics, which are most of the time prescribed by general practitioners, natural solutions exist to put an end to this mental disorder and the symptoms that accompany it.
3 anti-stress techniques to fight anxiety naturally
Practice abdominal breathing to naturally fight your anxiety
Nothing could be simpler; you might say than to breathe. Because it is a physiological mechanism and independent of our will. But do you really know how to breathe? There are two types of breaths: chest breathing and abdominal or stomach breathing.
While chest breathing under stress only fills 30% of the lungs and causes shortness of breath due to lack of oxygen, abdominal breathing goes through the lower body and allows the greater amplitude of the lungs for real breathing. It can, thus, help to calm your anxieties.
- In addition, it is a real relaxation exercise!
- Stretched out on the floor with your hands placed at your side,
- inhale through the nose while inflating the belly,
- block your breathing for a few seconds then exhale through your mouth, completely emptying your lungs and hollowing out your belly.
- Ten cycles should be enough to calm you down.
- Mindful Walk to Conquer Stress and Anxiety
Did you just “hook up” with your supervisor? Are you on the eve of an exam and panicking?
Walk! At the risk of surprising you, walking is one of the most beneficial stress relievers when we are at bay and everything irritates us. Choose a quiet and bucolic place. Walk slowly, concentrating on your strides and breathing.
Do your negative thoughts invade you? Do not try to avoid them. Return, as soon as you can, to the sensations you experience as you focus your attention on your strides, your breathing, the damp grass under your feet, the song of a bird, the rays of the sun slipping through the trees. …
Are you there? So, you walk in “full consciousness”. “Mindfulness” is a therapeutic aspect that has given rise to numerous scientific studies. In 2010, a team of renowned psychologists (C. Berghmans, C. Tarquinio, and M. Kretsch) studied the impact of the “mindfulness” therapeutic approach on mental health in students. The results only confirm the interest of using this therapeutic method to significantly reduce stress and anxiety and thus control them.
Be “anchored” to cure your anxiety
Nothing is going well, and you are on the verge of exhaustion?
Do you suffer from stress and anxiety and feel like you are “missing your pumps”?
You lack anchor. Anchoring is a brief therapy and one of the Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) techniques that allows us to observe and improve our perception of ourselves and of others. To be grounded is to be connected to the earth, just as the tree is rooted in the ground.
The deeper the roots, the more solid the “foundations” and the more “present”, confident, fulfilled one is. Clearly, it is living “here and now”, body and mind firmly in place and feet firmly attached to the ground.