8 Self-Care Activities to Eliminate Anxiety
If you are someone who experiences anxiety, you would be aware of how it negatively impacts your whole life. Nobody wants to be surrounded by worrying thoughts all the time. Thus, you might be interested in knowing, can self-care practice eliminate anxiety?
Self-care can reduce anxiety and its side effects to a great degree. A few self-care practices you can adopt to control stress include acceptance, confronting triggering situations, plus spending quality time with friends and family. A healthy diet, regular exercises, and meditation are helpful too.
Mental health is essential for a happy and relaxing life. If you do not look after it enough, it may alter your thinking, perception, and emotional compass. So, it's time to practice self-care to reduce stress and anxiety. Let's start reading!
Is Self-Care Helpful in Reducing Anxiety?
It is clinically proven that practicing self-care reduces anxiety, stress, and depression. It's a great technique to cope with and manage anxiety symptoms, as they can create a hurdle in your day-to-day task performance.
When you take time out for self-care, you try to improve your physical and mental health. If we specifically focus on mental well-being, self-care helps increase your energy and helps you in overcoming the negative impacts of stress and anxiety.
8 Self-Care Activities to Eliminate Anxiety:
There are a lot of different self-care practices that you can adopt to eliminate anxiety to a significant degree. We’ve listed a few of the best strategies you might want to incorporate into your lifestyle. Let’s give them a read!
1. Learn to accept:
One of the most effective ways to overcome anxiety symptoms is acceptance. In other words, when you learn to accept that not every thought that visits your mind is worth worrying about, you save yourself from unnecessary mental exhaustion.
Anxiety is often associated with a continuous loop of unwanted negative thoughts that makes you worried. When you practice acceptance, you sit back and observe your thoughts as they come without fixating too much on them. You tell it that okay fine I heard what you say, but I won't believe you or address you, so bye-bye!
2. Don't avoid but confront the situation:
People with anxiety often find it easier to avoid triggering situations. But the strategy doesn't work all the time and even worsens your anxiety. When you confront rather than avoid anxiety-inducing scenarios, you learn nothing wrong will happen. Or, if it results in a terrible outcome, it is not a big deal and is manageable.
By doing so, you are breaking the cycle of anxiety (fear-avoidance-dissociation) from reality. When you cut this link, you reduce the attached worrying and other symptoms of stress too. You can also practice imagining the whole situation and what's most likely to happen before coming face-to-face with reality. It helps!
3. Spend quality time with friends and family:
Studies suggest that spending some time with your loved ones can decrease stress and anxiety. When you are in isolation and loneliness, you feel this urge to talk to someone or pour your heart out. We, humans, are biologically designed in a way that we crave companionship.
So, when you are emotionally vulnerable and anxious, reaching out to friends and family can elevate your mood. Even if you don't want to open up about what's bothering you from the inside, which you should, by the way, you still can turn away from the draining thoughts.
Spending time with loved ones boosts your happiness and, in turn, makes you feel less stressed and worried. It works like magic!
4. Take a healthy diet:
Most of the time, we don't take our diet too seriously, but it has lasting effects on our physical and mental health. Research indicates the food and drinks we consume can impact our anxiety levels.
People who consume too much sugar and saturated fats suffer from higher anxiety levels than those who eat fewer sugar and fats. Thus, it means if you eat healthy fruits and vegetables that are nutrient-dense, you can improve your anxiety symptoms.
Similarly, reducing your caffeine intake is also a great way to manage anxiety. If you are habitual of having two cups of coffee daily, try scaling it back to just one or eliminate it from your diet. You'll notice how your mental health shows signs of betterment.
5. Practice physical exercise:
Keep your body in movement as it is super beneficial in coping with anxiety and stress. It doesn't mean you have to do vigorous exercises daily, but a good long walk of just ten minutes would be enough to de-clutter your mind and elevate your mood.
Exercise has many benefits, such as enhancing concentration, maintaining better sleep cycles, and lowering stress levels. Doctors always advise you to add physical activity into your routine to help overcome anxiety and depression.
6. Meditation:
When it comes to self-care, a powerful strategy you can adopt to ease your anxiety is by practicing meditation techniques. Only a few minutes of mindful meditation allow you to re-focus your energy and unload all the mental baggage. Moreover, you will also witness a significant reduction in your anxiety and the related symptoms.
You can also try deep breathing exercises plus muscle relaxation. As an outcome, you will feel much calmer and at peace, which, in turn, will decrease stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. Also, you can perform these exercises anywhere, in your room or garden, whatever you prefer.
Just take a deep breath, then exhale slowly through your nostrils. Keep repeating until you feel a difference.
7. Be close to nature:
Observing nature has a soothing effect on our minds. So, when you take some time out of your busy schedule and connect with nature, you will notice an improvement in your anxiety. Viewing a beautiful scene from your window or balcony, such as a cloud-filled sky, orange-hued sunsets, and star gazing, are different ways to elevate your mood.
It makes us feel pleasant and reduces anger, fear, plus anxiety, which is crucial for our well-being. So, please do not take this exposure to nature lightly and make it a habit to spend an hour or two absorbed in the tremendous beauty around you.
8. Get necessary treatments:
Many sources show that every year about forty million adults in the United States are affected by anxiety disorders. However, only a fraction of them takes it seriously and receive professional treatment. Anxiety is often also a symptom of other mental disorders, such as panic disorders, social anxiety disorders, and phobias.
If you feel that none of the self-care practices is helping you with your anxiety and you find difficulty functioning normally, better get treatment. Consult a medical professional and talk in-depth about all the symptoms so that they can determine what kind of treatment will work the best in your favor.