Are you seeking holistic anti-anxiety treatments without all the risky implications of pharmaceuticals? If you’ve seen any doctor for your anxiety, they’ve likely offered a chemical cocktail to help ease the angst you feel. Sadly, taking pharmaceuticals will only mask those anxious feelings. Your underlying cause remains inside, untreated, and unresolved if this solution is all your physician provides.
Anxiety is one of the most horrific conditions you will ever experience. It makes you feel and think things that aren’t true. It can make you a prisoner in your home, take you away from your friends and loved ones, and make things like eating out impossible.
There are many ways that anxiety creeps into your life. Some people have genetic ties from a family history of mental illness. Maybe your parents were constantly overthinking, and your nervous habits have been taught. Others find that they never battled such worry until they suffered from trauma.
Four Natural Anti-Anxiety Tricks
There are many ways you can combat the angst you feel. Using these anti-anxiety tricks can change your entire life. Four hacks many forget can be influential in managing anxiety disorders.
1. Hug Someone for an Instant Anti-Anxiety Boost
When you’re anxious and overthinking, physical touch may be just what you need to soothe those fears. There’s lots of scientific research that shows that hugs can be healing. Researchers wanted to see how physical touch impacted depressed and anxious people. The goal was to give daily hugs to people to help improve their symptoms. The results were remarkable, as they discovered that with just eight hugs per day, a person who was once struggling with depression could achieve mental stability.
Even more astounding was that the person could obtain psychological growth when they upped the number to twelve hugs. If you’re a parent, you know children run to you when they’re afraid. The child wants you to pick them up, hold them, and soothe their fears.
Adults are much like that child, but the approach is different. Studies prove there are excellent resolutions to anxiety when you engage in things like hugging or touching. Did you know an anti-anxiety hack can be as simple as putting your hand on your chest during an attack? It helps to fix the imbalance of stress chemicals inside the body.
Having your partner hold you when you’re scared can produce a powerful chemical reaction in the body that can stop panic in its tracks. Some of the best anti-anxiety tricks involve the power of touch.
2. Exercise Releases Anti-Anxiety Hormones
When you feel anxious, a chemical reaction occurs inside your body that causes these sensations. Humans have an internal fight-or-flight response, which helps to keep you safe from harm. When an external trigger brings worry, this system kicks into high gear to keep you from danger.
It’s called a stress cycle, which occurs in your nervous system. However, you must complete the cycle to bring resolve. Ironically, your panic has a start, middle, and ending point, and many times, it’s easy to get stuck in the center and not complete the cycle. This is where learning anti-anxiety tricks can be beneficial.
During the Stone Age, people had threats from wildlife. A neighbor sees a person in peril, they open their door to let them in, then close it to keep them safe. Closing the door symbolizes the end of the danger.
Psychologically, the person felt better because they ended the threat, but there’s a bit more to what’s happening. Could it be the exercise that caused things to deescalate? When they took off running to their neighbor’s house, they moved their body, which is a powerful anti-anxiety cure.
According to the National Library of Medicine, exercise increases the endorphins in your brain, which helps to make you feel calm. Thus, by running, you’re completing the cycle. Today’s society is unlikely to be chased by a bear.
You can have anxiety creep in while driving to work in the morning. You need to find a way to complete the cycle. So the next time you start overthinking and your anxiety hits its peak level, try moving your body.
Maybe all you need to do to stop the worry in its tracks is dance, do some jumping jacks, or take a walk around the block. Since you’re countering the chemical process by releasing endorphins to help combat the stress hormones, movement may be all you need.
3. Feel Your Anxious Thoughts Instead of Denying Them
If a doctor told you to feel your anxiety, you would probably think there’s nothing in this world you would rather avoid. You’re looking for anti-anxiety tips and not to be stuck in it. No one wants to face their fears, as it’s uncomfortable.
Is it possible to detach yourself from the thoughts and feelings driving your body into this state? What if you called it out rather than running from it? For instance, why not identify what it’s doing to you during the next panic attack? Try saying things like:
- “I’m overthinking, causing my chest to feel tight.”
- “I feel numb due to my anxious state.”
- “I feel like I can’t breathe from my worry, and it’s choking me.”
So you’re calling out the things this anxious state is causing you, and you’re detonating a bomb. You take power from this condition when you realize these temporary feelings will pass. Once you’ve identified your physical symptoms, it’s time to start the positive reinforcements. Try telling yourself these statements:
- “This anxious state is temporary and shouldn’t last but a few more minutes.”
- “I feel like I am dying, but I will not perish, as anxiety is something many people face.”
- “Anxiety is commonplace, and my overthinking and worry have caused this heightened state.”
A couple of powerful anti-anxiety tricks are taking place. First, you’re telling your psyche that this has occurred before and nothing terrible happened to you, so you’re shutting down the fear. Second, you’re not running from the attack; you identify what it’s doing and face it head-on.
These are essential things to do when you’re detached from your body and feeling overwhelmed by panic. When you identify it’s just anxiety working, you’ll react differently.
4. Taking Away the Fear of the Unknown
Consider this example. Linda was tired of feeling horrible. Each day, she awakened feeling worse than before. She was sure she had cancer or some other ailment and was dying. Her mind would race, and overthinking caused her to head down dark pathways.
Linda visited many doctors who would run a battery of blood tests. Sadly, everything was normal, and the findings didn’t help her sickness. She was frustrated because no one could diagnose what she felt. Linda felt super anxious in this vulnerable state and always awaited impending doom.
However, one day, a doctor listened to her and ran some tests that other physicians avoided. It turns out she had systemic lupus. Once she could identify her issue, she researched how to combat common problems with this auto-immune condition and was empowered.
Why was it so important to put a name to her disease? It’s a common anti-anxiety trick because knowing the crux of the issue stops your mind from racing. She ran through scenarios like cancer, blood clots, heart disease, and everything that would take her out because she feared the unknown.
The same happens when you try this anti-anxiety solution for your chronic worry. You need to call it out rather than giving in to those fears and making things worse. Tell yourself this is your anxiety.
When you put your feelings into words, you’re taking away the power from the attack. Studies posted by The National Library of Medicine show there’s a reason why you can regulate your emotions and stress by simply identifying the root cause. It all takes place in the amygdala part of the brain.
Putting your feelings into words disrupts amygdala activity, which helps your body regulate your stress levels and emotions. So when Linda finally got the diagnosis she sought for years, she could take control of the situation by identifying it was lupus, not cancer or another ailment.
Final Thoughts on Natural Anti-Anxiety Tricks
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America states that more than forty million people in the United States suffer from anxiety. While many reach for pharmaceuticals to dull the pain and ease their worry, there are many holistic approaches that people forget.
Dealing with anxiety is a mind-over-matter thing. Learning to put these thoughts and feelings into proper perspective is the key to getting relief from chronic overthinking.
