Anxiety

One of the things that helped me with anxiety is that talking to someone that you feel comfortable with, just share what makes you scared, just share what makes you fear. I noticed that one of the biggest thing which is anxiety for me is that it's a mental issue. If I were put in the situation where I get anxiety, I would just, my mind just automatically thinks that, oh like it's this situation again, like I'm gonna be scared again. But like it's about that fixing the mindset. I know it's difficult, but for me when I try to get out of that thought and try to do my actions first, it really helped me overcome anxiety and just like by talking to others and getting a helpful tip, like that really helped me to move forward in my life.

Something that really helps me deal with and cope with my anxiety is exercise. Obviously, you know, exercise isn't going to cure anxiety. Sometimes medication and therapy and other things are necessary, but working out and really just getting those endorphins and those hormones that come from exercising really, really helped me in my anxiety. So I really exercise, a lot of it is for my mental health and especially for my anxiety.

When you're experiencing anxiety, it's all up here. All of your struggle is not because there's immediate danger around you, it's because your mind is reacting to the thought of possible danger, possible circumstances. So getting out of here can be really helpful, and there's a grounding exercise that I learned that I use in stressful situations, like at the end of a semester in school. I have to use all five of my senses. So I start with sight, and I just have to noticeably recognize five things, noticeably listen to four things, noticeably touch and really feel three, smell two, and taste one, and then I'm grounded.

An extremely important thing to remember with any mental health condition is that no two people are going to be alike. That was something that took me a long time to understand and I don't know that I still fully understand it because it took me a long time to accept that I experienced anxiety but it made sense to me when my doctor explained it because even though I don't experience trembling or panic attacks necessarily, I overthink a lot. I overthink what other people are thinking about me and I worry that they're thinking poorly of me or that they don't like being around me. So just remember that it's okay that your condition isn't like everyone else's.

So my wife has a lot of anxiety and one of the things that I've found that really helps her is if she thinks just a little bit less far into the future. I think a lot of times it's easy to, you know, be thinking, you know, several weeks and several months and years into the future and taking your situation and just pushing it out that far. But just because you have a bad day doesn't mean that you're going to have a bad life. So I think it's just something to remember. Anyway, good luck. Keep it up.

One of the things that helped me the most with my anxiety and as I learned to deal with it was a throwaway book or a throwaway journal. And what this is, is it's a journal that no one's going to read. It's not for your posterity. It's not for your kids to read or anyone. It's just for you and your thoughts. It's a place where you write down all the thoughts or the worries or the anxieties that you're scared what people would think if you had them. I think all of us get super self-conscious that our inner deeper thoughts are, we know we don't want other people to know. So what you do is you write them down in a journal, write out everything that's on your mind and then when you fill out that journal, you just burn it, throw it away, tear it up, rip it apart. But this helped me is I was able to put my thoughts down on paper. I was able to kind of take a step back and look at it, look at what I was thinking or what I was anxious about and get a better idea of what was actually going on and really separate myself from the situation to be able to clear my mind and move forward, not let it keep holding onto me as I was able to express those feelings.

A helpful tip for anxiety is that talking to someone that you know, or like you feel comfortable talking to, just talk to them about what makes you feel stressed and what makes you feel like you have anxiety. Just talking it out loud, it really helped me a lot. Whenever I struggle with anxiety, yeah.

Go outside, enjoy the sunlight, enjoy the wind, enjoy the water, enjoy the animals, enjoy the nature. Go find a hobby that pushes you to do something new and that can help you build successful eventful memories. When you start to live a more exciting, fulfilling, and enriching life and serving others, you will quickly realize all this anxiety is just causing you to waste your life away.

If you're struggling with anxiety, I would really recommend talking to people about it. It really helps especially in like social settings and things when I start panicking or feeling overwhelmed. If someone knows that I'm struggling with it, then they can usually pick up on how I'm feeling and help me get out of situations that are making me feel anxious. So I would really recommend talking to people and it's just nice to know that someone's aware too and you're not doing it by yourself.

Something that really helped me is being able to talk it out with someone. And so I really enjoyed going to see a therapist because they were removed from the situations that I was dealing with. And so it was really nice to be able to get a perspective from someone that wasn't personally involved in my life, but that still cared about me. And it was also nice just to get everything off my chest and just being able to confide in someone that wasn't someone that I saw every day or that I was super close with.

For anyone out there who hasn't dealt with anxiety but may have a child or a family member that is dealing with an anxiety, be patient but don't be afraid to ask them to help you, to help you to understand and let them know that you truly want to understand what they're going through so that you can be there to support them and to help them.

I think a big thing with anxiety is just like calling things as they are. I think with anxiety we often move way too far forward and get too stressed out too fast. So just saying like things that's not for me to figure out right now, maybe it does happen, like trying to be a bit more present helps a lot.

When you're getting anxiety, just the kind where you're feeling guilty and nauseous, sick to your stomach because of the anxiety that you feel, if you just chop up some ginger, put some honey on it, and eat it, it'll settle that stomach really fast. Most of the time when you're having nausea with your anxiety, it's because of a hormonal imbalance and not because you actually did something wrong. So if you get that settled down with ginger, most of the time you'll stop feeling guilty altogether.

Something I struggle a lot with is going to crowded places. That's specifically what my anxiety is about. I get incredibly anxious and have panic attacks whenever there are several people in front of me and I don't know what to do. However, something that has helped tremendously is using noise cancelling earbuds, especially when I go to places like the grocery store or malls where there's just going to be a lot of people regardless. There's a website called loop and they have incredibly helpful earbuds that are useful for these kinds of situations so I definitely recommend.

Think about the phrase, I'm willing to experience all that is before me. I think anxiety is not just fear, it's fear of fear. I'm going to be afraid, and that would be scary. And it's kind of scary. But if you are willing to experience all that is before you, and then then you're just, you're just one level of afraid. Like, let's just keep it to one level of being afraid and not layers and layers.

One tip I have for anyone who's dealing with anxiety is to know that it is totally okay to ask for help. That does not make you weird or mean you're troubled. Really everyone could use talking to a therapist. I talked to a therapist when I was in middle school and I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and I found it so helpful to just talk to someone who wasn't my family or my friend. I felt like I could talk to her and she gave me strategies and tips that helped.