Learning how to deal with anxiety is an extremely important subject from the perspective of happiness.
Anxiety is a severe negative emotion, which makes us feel that things are not going to be alright. You may be anxious about losing your job, or someone you love. If you don’t have a job, you may be anxious about not finding one. You could be anxious about never finding love. Anxiety comes from different sources, all making us feel that we are not capable of handling the problems life throws at us.
Therefore, in most cases, anxiety is not positive. It makes us fearful, scared; it may make us sweat or palpitate. Anxiety makes us nervous and stops us from taking positive action, which could actually improve our situation. Therefore, we must learn how to deal with anxiety.
Life is uncertain, and things happen which are not positive to us. People die. They lose jobs. So many relationships break. Lack of money affects billions of lives around the world.
The true definition of anxiety is the feeling that we will either be in pain in the future or if we are in pain right now, we will not be able to solve the situation.
How to get rid of anxiety and feel better
I am not a psychologist but I assure you that I am writing this article with a definite feeling of anxiety, right now. Something recently happened which affected my happiness, and has thrown me in an uncertain situation.
So, I do feel anxious and vulnerable right now. The action I am taking, being a writer, is to understand my feelings and writing about how to feel better.
Let us start by understanding how do we feel anxious
The heartbeat feels rapid and the palms begin to sweat a bit. Although it is hot here, the heat doesn’t appear to be the reason for the sweat. Anxiety makes us feel that we will not be able to get out of the pain that we are facing.
It may cause some of the below fears:
I can’t find a good job for myself
I think my business will fail; I am not capable of running it
- I may lose my job
- My boss will not be happy with me
- My partner would be furious
- I am not worthy of love. She/He will leave me
- What if I never find love again
- I am not worthy of my friends
- Nobody really loves or cares for me; I am all alone
All of these are fears are negative and will tend to paralyze us. In order to deal with anxiety, we need to address each of these fears, and talk to ourselves in a rational way.
How do we deal with anxiety, then?
The goal is to feel better about ourselves, that is positive. Anxiety is not serving the purpose. Whatever the situation we are in, anxiety is making it worse and therefore, we need to break out of the mental situation, and feel better.
1. How to deal with anxiety immediately- Sit in a quiet place and breathe
Allow yourself to sit and breathe. Focus on your breath and not your thoughts. When we are anxious, we tend to lose control over our normal breathing and our heart beat gets faster, indicating nervousness. Therefore, to get control over your anxiety immediately, sit down in a quiet place, cross your legs and breathe.
2. How to deal with anxiety immediately- distract yourself with something you enjoy
In order to feel better from anxiety immediately, you want to distract yourself from the thoughts that are bothering you. So, do something that you enjoy, like ice cream, watching a movie you haven’t watched in a long time, or listening to music.
We feel better when we do stuff that we enjoy, and so, when you distract yourself from the thoughts that are bothering you, you will feel better, for a while.
3. How to deal with anxiety immediately- Sleep
Sleep tends to heal everything. If you are feeling overwhelmed and not in a position to do anything, like breathing or distracting yourself with some activity, sleep for a while. Put some comforting music or fragrance if it helps you sleep. Pamper yourself, you are alive. You are just trying to deal with a difficult situation. It is okay.
4. Exercise to get rid of anxiety immediately
You cannot have a bad workout. No workout is a bad workout. I know, it is hard to work-out when you are feeling anxious because you are not in a position to push yourself mentally. However, if there is one activity I would suggest you push yourself for, it is exercise. Go to a gym, or if the weather is great, go for a run.
Once you are back, you will be in a better mental state to think about what is causing you anxiety, and take some meaningful actions to ease your anxiety.
We looked at some ways to get rid of anxiety immediately. Now, let us look at different sources of anxiety and long-term strategies to deal with anxiety.
5. How to deal with anxiety from relationships
Let us consider a few scenarios here:
- Perhaps you are anxious about love. You may be in a relationship and are anxious that that relationship may break, for whatever reason. That is a legitimate cause of anxiety. Talk to your partner openly and ask clear questions about what’s bothering you. You need to be clear if your partner has the same vision for the relationship in mind, like you have. You need to align your visions. The anxiety here is being caused by lack of clarity and clarity, which would come from honest conversation, would help alleviate it.
- You could be anxious about toxic people in your life. These toxic people could be a part of your immediate family, and could be causing you harm. Try sharing what’s happening with someone else in your family that you trust, and have a positive relationship with. They may help you in giving you a perspective about what’s happening or even confronting the person who is causing you stress and anxiety. Not doing anything about the situation would only make it worse.
- If you are anxious about not finding love after a series of failed relationships, give yourself a break, and think about what’s causing your relationships to fail. You could also consider talking to a friend, who is in a successful relationship, and what’s making it work for them.
Seek help, always
You see, if there’s anxiety being caused because of relationship issues, you could consider seeking help from family, friends, or a therapist who could navigate the right path for you.
Whatever you do, after you have calmed your mind with some breathing and relaxation, take massive action on what’s causing you anxiety. It is likely that the process will take some time, but you will be in a better and happier place.
6. How to deal with work anxiety
Work anxiety is real thing. There are so many factors that could cause anxiety at work, like the below:
Lack of alignment between your manager and you
This is perhaps the greatest source of work-related anxiety and would constantly bother you, because you cannot get away from your manager at work. Talk to your manager clearly about what’s causing this lack of alignment and take steps to overcome it. It is highly important that you and your manager see things the same way. Otherwise, they can cause you grievous mental harm.
Potential Layoff
if your company is restructuring and people are being laid off, you may be anxious that you could be next. Admit to yourself that you are anxious about the situation. The first step to dealing with anxiety or with anything else in life is to be honest with yourself. Make a plan about how you would deal with the situation in case that were to happen with you. Look at your financial situation, and confide in your family, if layoff were to happen.
Overwork that’s affecting your health
If you are overworked and are not able to take care of yourself at work or otherwise, it would cause you anxiety. Have a chat with your boss about how to divide work, or perhaps hire another resource, who could help share the workload.
Loneliness at work
If you feel you are lonely at work, and have no friends at work, it could cause you anxiety. Acknowledge the situation and that it is causing you anxiety. Then, ask someone who you could confide in, that you are facing this problem, or access any mental health resources, which your company might have. They may help you with some tips on how to improve your work relationships, and feel connected so that you don’t feel lonely. Here are some of the things you can do to make workplace conversations better:
- Check with them about their families and friends
- Have a 5 min chitchat session before starting work conversations
- Treat others as human beings and not only colleagues since everyone is trying to go thorough life happily, just like you are, and work is only a part of their lives
By taking some of these steps, you could work on some of the things that could be causing you anxiety at work and make you feel better at work.
7. How to deal with social anxiety
You could feel awkward around others in different social situations because of some experiences you have had in your childhood or growing up years. You could feel social anxiety because of several reasons, some of which could be the below:
- Past experience where social relationships led to pain
- Fear of judgment by other people
- Fear of failure- that people may not walk to talk to you
- Fear of embarrassment
I had no confidence growing up as a child and was perennially underconfident. Now that I am writing about social anxiety, I feel my entire childhood and the beginning of my adulthood was spent socially anxious.
The good news that is you can take steps to get over social anxiety, although it may never completely go away. Consider taking the following steps:
- Start with confiding in someone you trust about your anxiety.
- Make small conversations with people you trust
- If your anxiety is about specific situations like dating or interviews, consider role playing before the actual situation
- Be okay with failure- it’s a part of life. Not everyone would want to talk to you, and it is okay.
8. If you think you have an anxiety disorder, seek a medical professional
The tips offered in this post are for people who feel anxiety at work, or in personal or social situations. However, there are times, when the situation gets worse and out of control. In those situations, consider talking to a therapist or a medical professional who would help you diagnose your situation and offer tips on how to deal with the disorder.
In Conclusion-
A personal note: Life is hard and there is no way we will not experience anxiety. At some points in our lives, it will be stronger than other times. If you aren’t born with a silver spoon, you will have to build your life.
In the course of building your life, you will face several failures- you could lose your job, which I have many times, people will leave you, family will hurt you, and you will go through several types of unexpected painful situations.
Life is hard. Anxiety is a feature. When life hits you, and you fall down, you will have anxiety whether you will get up. I am telling you- get up and fight back, with anxiety, fear et all.
Why do I write this blog?
The purpose of this blog is to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share the post with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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