Treating Anxiety | Coping Skills for Anxiety
Anxiety can be really difficult to cope with. It affects your body, your mind, your overall well-being. When ignored, it just gets worse. It's important to develop some coping skills to have at your disposal for when anxiety comes up. Read on to learn all about coping skills for anxiety.
When I discuss coping skills for anxiety with clients, I often hear that they already "tried" something and it "didn't work." The thing is, coping skills are not there to fix it or make anxiety go away. They are there to help some one cope or deal with the anxiety. Overtime they can also lessen the amount of anxiety felt and even decrease the intensity of it.
The other important piece of coping skills is that it's important to "practice" them outside of an anxiety "attack" or a high level of anxiety. That way, they are more readily available when we need it.
First, let’s talk a little bit more about anxiety and how it may come up.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is your mind and body’s response to stressors. Some level of anxiety is normal- for example taking a test, starting a new job, it's okay to feel some anxiety around that. When anxiety becomes intense and persistent about everyday situations and starts to interfere with our lives, then it can become a problem. Physical symptoms also come up in anxiety including fast heart rate, feeling on edge, muscle tension, sweating, rapid and/or shallow breathing, feeling nauseous, etc.
How to Treat Anxiety
It's important to take steps to cope and lessen anxiety as anxiety rarely just goes away on its own. Instead, it often will keep getting worse until you start to address it.
Many common reactions to anxiety end up making it worse. Some of these reactions include trying to avoid what is making us anxious, trying to control everything in an attempt to "prevent" negative things from happening, and using alcohol or other substances as an attempt to "relax" or "check out." The problem with all these attempts to control our anxiety is that they end up only adding to our anxiety and increasing it.
Natural Ways to Treat Anxiety
While therapy is an important aspect of anxiety treatment, there are other "natural" and lifestyle changes that can be made to help with managing anxiety. Developing and engaging in healthy habits is an important tool for managing stress and anxiety.
Here are some "natural" and important ways to take care of yourself:
Creating and engaging in a consistent and healthy daily routine, including getting enough sleep and eating consistent and healthy meals.
Engaging in exercise or physical movement daily. This can just include going on a walk or doing some yoga poses or stretches.
Creating boundaries around work and personal life, including taking breaks, how long you'll work each day and how often and when you check email.
Drink more water and cut down or eliminate caffeine use.
Cut down or eliminate alcohol use, other substances, and/or cigarettes (take note, this may temporarily increase anxiety as your body adjusts).
Cut back on screen use in the evening and try to eliminate them in the bedroom such as not watching TV or scrolling on your phone while in bed.
Coping Skills for Anxiety
Coping skills are tools and strategies to engage in to help yourself deal with uncomfortable and distressing emotions and situations, including anxiety. There are many different coping skills and techniques for anxiety available, some are going to work better than others. It's important to try different ones out and see what "speaks" more to you.
Some categories that coping skills for anxiety can fall under include:
Self-Soothing
Distraction
Opposite Action
Emotional Awareness
Mindfulness
Crisis Planning
Let's look at each one and some strategies and tools that can be helpful.
Self-Soothing
Self-soothing is to find ways to comfort yourself. It can be helpful to identify ways to soothe yourself through your five senses.
This can be:
Hear: Listen to soothing music, a guided meditation, ocean or nature sounds.
Touch: A soft blanket, stuffed animal, stress ball or fidget toy.
Smell: Use a diffuser with calming or uplifting essential oils such as lavender, grapefruit, and sweet orange. Light a scented candle, put on scented lotion (this also includes your touch sense).
Taste: Suck on hard candies, eat a mint, chew gum, drink some herbal tea.
See: Look at pictures that make you happy including nature scenes, puppies and babies (this is backed by research).
Distraction
These coping skills are about taking your mind off of the items that are increasing your anxiety. It's important to note that while distraction can be helpful in the moment to deal with high stress and anxiety, it's not a long-term solution. In order to treat anxiety, the underlying conditions do need to be address, which can be done in therapy.
Some examples of distraction type coping strategies include:
Reading a book
Engaging in a puzzle, crossword, sudoko
Sewing, crochet, knitting, needle-work
Art- painting, drawing, coloring (check out the adult coloring books)
Playing "categories"- think of a category such as "objects with wheels," then name as many objects under that category.
Opposite Action
Opposite Action includes engaging in something that is opposite of how we feel. So if we feel stress, upset, frustrated, we can engage in something that is uplifting and positive.
This can include:
Watching a funny movie or TV show.
Putting on upbeat music and dancing to it.
Call a friend just to chat.
Look for and/or write out motivational statements/affirmations.
Get out of bed, go for a walk or a drive (switch up your current environment).
Emotional Awareness
Emotional Awareness is identifying, learning about and expressing your emotions. For many people, emotions aren't really discussed while growing up and many are discouraged from being expressed. Emotions can be really confusing. Becoming more aware of and more comfortable with the wide-range of emotions we all have is an important aspect of our healing.
Some ways to develop more emotional awareness include:
Journaling- you can write out how you are currently feeling or identify specific emotions and explore your thoughts on them and how they feel to you.
Art- paint, color or draw out how you are feeling. Mood tracker- print out or bookmark a feelings wheel and each day identify how you are feeling.
Say out loud how you are feeling and give yourself permission to feel it. Many times we try to push away, minimize or feel that we "shouldn't" feel a certain way. Feelings come and go. They are part of the human experience. It's important to give ourselves the space to feel whatever comes up for us.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness exercises are about being in the present moment, becoming aware of our thoughts, feelings and sensations and withholding any judgement about them. Check out this blog post for more information on Mindfulness.
Here are some ways to engage in mindfulness exercises:
Meditation
Grounding Exercise using your 5 senses.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Yoga
Mindful Walk
Crisis Plan
Sometimes our regular and go-to coping skills aren't enough and we may find ourselves in a place of crisis or just feeling so overwhelmed that it's hard to think clearly on what we need and what we can do. It's important to develop a Crisis Plan that you have readily available that can easily guide you to positive and appropriate action steps.
If you are ever feeling suicidal, that you are going to hurt yourself or someone else and that you cannot keep yourself safe, it's important to get help immediately by calling 911.
Some other resources for a Crisis Plan include:
Identifying Warning Signs- write out if there are certain thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors that tend to precede an anxiety attack or downward spiral.
Identifying Some Coping Skills- make a list of some readily available coping skills to try out. Many times in the midst of an anxiety attack, it can be hard to think of them, so having them written out can be helpful. Some helpful ones may be Grounding and Breathing Exercises.
Identify 2-3 support people that we can call.
Crisis hotlines-
National Suicide Hotline: 988
LGBT Hotline: 888-843-4564
Domestic Violence 1-787-3224
Creating an Anxiety Toolbox
Creating a plan for how to manage your anxiety is really important. Having coping strategies readily available to you can be really helpful. I like to encourage clients to create an "Anxiety Toolbox" where they can gather any supplies, keep a list of exercises to try, and have their Crisis Plan available. That way in a moment of feeling overwhelmed, it's readily available.
Other ideas to create a toolbox can be:
Create an uplifting music playlist on Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora etc. with your favorite songs that just make you feel good and even want to dance to.
Favorite Quotes/Mantra's notebook. Every time you come across an inspiring quote or a mantra you like, write it down in your notebook.
A list of feel-good or funny movies or shows you like to watch.
Art supplies- coloring books with pencils, paints, etc.
Puzzle books- crosswords, sudoku, and actual puzzle
Photos of self with family and/or friends during happy times
Soothing items (candle, soft blanket, stuffed animal)
Hard candies and mints
Herbal tea packets
Anything else that you enjoy or that brings you comfort!
Having some anxiety is a part of life, however anxiety can quickly become out of hand and really start to interfere with our life. It’s really important to learn and implement healthy coping strategies for anxiety to help us navigate the difficult times.
Therapy is another great resource for addressing some of the deeper underlying causes of anxiety. If you are interested in my therapy services and live in California, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Taking that first step can be really difficult and it can make a huge difference in your life.
Anxiety does not have to take over your life- there is help available!
