Anxiety is a normal emotion that everyone experiences. Anxiety can be triggered by stress, fear, or uncertainty. It can make you feel stressed, tense and worried about the future.
The good news is that you can learn to manage your anxiety by being more mindful of your thoughts, feelings and emotions. Mindfulness is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, but what exactly is it?
“Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention on purpose in a present moment and non-judgementally,” says Dr. Sarah Wecklein, a licensed psychologist with the Center for Healthy Living at Mercy Health Partners. “It can be defined as being aware of the present moment without judging it.” In other words, mindfulness means not thinking about past regrets or future worries. It’s about living in the moment and enjoying what you’re doing right now.
Here are 7 mindful ways to overcome anxiety:
- Be aware of your thoughts and feelings
- Accept your feelings without judgment
- Practice relaxation techniques such as meditation
- Challenge negativity with positive affirmations
- Picture your ideal life with visualization
- Connect with others in meaningful ways
- Do something new and exciting each day
You can’t change your thoughts and feelings if you aren’t aware of them. The first step to overcoming anxiety is to be mindful of your thoughts and feelings. This means that when you start feeling anxious, you notice it right away and focus on it instead of ignoring or denying them. When you feel anxious, ask yourself: What am I thinking about? How do I feel?
Accept your feelings without judgment
Mindfulness allows us to experience the present moment without attachment or aversion. This means that we don’t attach ourselves to our thoughts or emotions and we do not try to avoid them either. Mindful people are able to see their thoughts and emotions as simply transient experiences that come and go in their minds.
It’s important to accept your feelings, no matter how negative they might be. You can’t control what you feel, so why waste time trying to fight it? Negative emotions are normal and a part of life. It’s important to learn how to accept them in order to move forward in a healthy way.
Mindfulness is about acceptance without judgment — accepting your feelings without making excuses for them or trying to suppress them in any way (which is impossible anyway). Mindful people do not try to control their thoughts or emotions; instead, they observe them as transient experiences that come and go naturally in the mind.
Practice relaxation techniques such as meditation
Meditation has been shown to have several benefits for those suffering from anxiety. A study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that meditation helped participants improve their quality of life and lower their level of stress and anxiety. Another study published in the journal Psychiatry Research found that meditation helped participants decrease their response to negative stimuli and increase their ability to focus on positive stimuli.
Meditation can help you feel more relaxed and at peace with the world. It can also help you become more mindful and aware of your daily activities. Using mindfulness helps you focus on what you are doing in that exact moment, thereby transforming the movement into a form of meditation. This meditation can help you decrease your anxiety by making you feel more present and aware of what’s going on around you rather than worrying about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future.
Meditation also teaches us how to accept things as they are and not fight against them. An anxious person often has a very negative view of things and sees them as being worse than they actually are. By accepting things as they are, we can learn to cope with our anxieties better instead of fighting against them because they’re never going to go away completely anyway.
Meditation is also great for helping us relax after a stressful day so we can fall asleep at night more easily without worrying about everything that happened during our day.
Challenge negativity with positive affirmations
When you’re feeling anxious, it’s easy to get caught up in negative thoughts. You might think about all the things that could go wrong or feel like you’re not good enough. These thoughts can make you feel even more anxious and stressed out. The good news is that there are ways you can challenge these negative beliefs. One way is through positive affirmations.
What Are Positive Affirmations?
An affirmation is a positive statement that you repeat over and over again to promote change in your life and ease your distress. They are useful in managing anxiety because they help reframe your negative thoughts and focus on ideas and behaviors that lead to change.
For example, you can tell yourself: “I see the positive side, the glass is half full!” or “I’m ready to handle what the world throws at me today!”
Picture your ideal life using visualization
Visualization is the art of seeing your future self attaining what you want. You can watch yourself enjoying the rewards of a small success. Visualizations can be a fun way to relax or to calm yourself before doing something you are worried about.
Visualization is one of the best ways to reduce anxiety because when we imagine our goals as already accomplished, we increase our confidence and certainty that we will achieve them in real life. And then this confidence gives us more motivation to take action towards reaching our goals.
Connect with others in meaningful ways
A social support system is an important way to build relationships for your mental health, but what exactly does it mean? Essentially, everyone needs a network of friends or family that will support you in times of need.
Whether you are facing a personal crisis or you just want to spend time with people who care about you, these relationships play a critical role in how you function in your day-to-day life.
Social support can help reduce anxiety by providing emotional support, information and resources when needed. For example, if you are feeling anxious, you can reach out to family or friends for advice or moral support. This can help make you feel more empowered and less anxious.
Do something new and exciting each day
One way to relieve feelings of anxiety is to do something different and exciting. This can help distract you from your worries, and give you an enjoyable experience that will lift your mood.
There are many different activities that people find enjoyable and distracting, such as:
- Going on a walk in nature or along the beach
- Visiting an art gallery or museum
- Going to see live music or a play
- Taking up a new hobby like knitting or baking (or even just watching TV)
The good news is that there are many ways to reduce stress and anxiety in your life. A study found that spending time on a new or fun activity every day can lead to improved psychological well-being. The researchers recommend doing something fun every day for at least one week — even if it’s just for 10 minutes, in order to see results.
Self Care Impact offers Anxiety Therapy
We hope you will join us in exploring how your life would be different if you had more control over your thoughts and emotions. We hope you will consider accepting things as they are and embracing your imperfections, resulting in a more peaceful environment in your life.
Let’s figure out what triggers your anxiety and find some mindful methods that help you deal with life in a non-anxious, healthy manner. Please contact our Client Care Coordinator for your complimentary 20-minute phone consultation today and read more on the Anxiety Page on our website.
Self Care Impact Counseling envisions a new age of counseling for adolescents, adults, couples & groups that makes a REAL difference with core values of GROWTH | BALANCE | COMPASSION | INNER HARMONY.