Coping with Anxiety Attacks

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Coping with Anxiety Attacks

Friday, July 10th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Anxiety is a response to a situation that an individual feels threatened or frightened by. As a result the bodies inbuilt survival instinct gets triggered in preparation to stand and fight or to run away. This is known as the fight or flight response. Anxiety can be overcome by learning how to control this instinctive response so that you are not overwhelmed by it. This fight or flight response should not be activated in response to non threatening situations where you should be in control. Your body is physically reacting in preparation for a life or death struggle that is totally inappropriate to what is actually occurring.

You are not ill if you suffer from anxiety. You are simply responding inappropriately to stimuli in your environment or even your imagination. This is something that you can unlearn. If you understand your anxiety and what causes it, then it will become a lot easier for you to cope with it. Anxiety is often connected to something specific such as a place, person or situation.

Try to identify what is causing your anxiety by starting a journal. Make a note in your journal every day to record your anxiety levels and what you were doing at the time. You should record the level of your anxiety by rating it on a scale from 1 to 10. Did you avoid any situations because your feared they will have made you anxious? If that was the case then make a note of the things that you avoided. You should also make notes about what you were thinking in the periods leading up to your anxiety. By doing so this will help you to identify whether your anxiety was caused by your negative thoughts. After you have been keeping your journal for a while you should have collected enough information to help you pinpoint potential causes for your anxiety. So make sure you read through your journal from time to time.

Anxiety is not something that you have to live with. There are lots of stress reducing things you can do to help you reduce your anxiety. You can find yourself a relaxing hobby. If you have something to focus your attention on it helps you to forget about the stresses in your life. You might like to read a book or to take up art or photography. You could try taking up yoga, meditation, Tai Chi or Qi Gong. These are all great ways to relieve stress. Don’t ignore the effect that your diet has on your anxiety. Try and eat a balanced healthy diet. Try to get some extra sleep if you aren’t getting enough. Why not treat yourself to a reflexology or a massage treatment. You should also try not to drink too much caffeine containing drinks such tea and coffee as it has a stimulant effect than can make you more prone to anxiety. If you are finding it difficult to unwind then you could get yourself one of the many available relaxing hypnosis MP3 downloads.

When you find yourself in a situation where you are preoccupied with anxious thoughts then you should try to distract yourself away from what you are thinking. The best way to do this is to become more aware of what’s going on around you instead of what’s on your mind. Look around you and pay attention to the details of what you see and pay attention to the sounds and smells. As you become absorbed in the outer world you start to pay less attention to your inner world and you will forget about your anxiety.

For more advice on dealing with anxiety you could try one of the anxiety self help guides that are available online.

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