Create An Anxiety Scale
As mentioned above, most panic attacks are unprecedented and can happen at any time. This means you have little to no time to react and get yourself back to normal. However, most attacks occur gradually and follow the same pattern.
If you can map out this pattern, youll recognize when youre getting a panic attack and therefore take practical steps to remedy the situation.
Heres an example of an anxiety scale:
- 0 Relaxed and calm: youre at peace and naturally relaxed.
- 1 Slight anxiety: you feel slightly nervous and more aware and alert than usual.
- 2 Mild anxiety: your muscles are tense and tingly, and you feel butterflies in your stomach.
- 3 Moderate anxiety: your heartbeat and breath are increasing, and you feel slightly uncomfortable.
- 4 Marked anxiety: muscle tension increases, you feel more uncomfortable, and youre now wondering if youre able to stay in control.
- 5 Mild panic: your heart beats faster and irregularly, you feel dizzy, and youre afraid youre losing control.
- 6 Moderate panic: your heart is palpitating, you have difficulty breathing, and you feel disoriented.
- 7 to 10 Full panic attack: youre experiencing terror, youre afraid of dying, and youre now exhibiting panic attack symptoms.
Your anxiety scale could vary depending on specific factors. However, this is the raw format and progression of an anxiety attack. Recognizing what stage youre in and what follows next will help you understand what to do next.
How Do I Get Help
Talking therapies
Talking therapies, like counselling or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, are very effective for people with anxiety problems, including Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which takes you through a series of self-help exercises on screen. Visit your GP to find out more.
Medication
Drug treatments are used to provide short-term help, rather than looking at the root of the anxiety problems. Drugs may be most useful when they are combined with other treatments or support.
Support groups
You can learn a lot about managing anxiety from asking other people who have experienced it. Local support groups or self-help groups bring together people with similar experiences so that they can hear each others stories, share tips and encourage each other to try out new ways to manage themselves. Your doctor, library or local Citizens Advice bureau will have details of support groups near you.
How To Know If You Need Help Overcoming Fear And Anxiety
Sometimes, its not possible to manage your anxiety problems by yourself and thats okay. If youve tried the above steps with no luck , reach out to a coach or counselor.
As mentioned earlier, learning how to manage fear and anxiety is a natural part of life. The fear response was evolved to help us. But it becomes maladaptive when it interferes with your ability to function.
Your anxiety symptoms may be more than you can manage alone if:
- You often feel overwhelmed
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Imagine The Positive Outcome
If fear is imagining the negative outcome, then joy and happiness would be imagining the positive outcome in the future.
So instead of, Oh, Im gonna lose my job and gonna be broke, think, Im finally getting rid of the job I was not happy in, and now I can find creative ways to make even more money.
A lot of people worry about the markets going down but guess what, it always comes back up. And even when it crashes, it gives you an opportunity of a lifetime to invest.
Similarly, not only markets but any catastrophic event in our lives, we comes back up too. Anyone who is above 80 years of age has seen three recessions, two wars, 9/11 and a lot more. Still, they are among us happily living their lives.
You also have survived everything that has ever happened to you. The thing you have to realize in any situation of fear and anxiety is, just like everything, youll survive this too.
If you have the belief that you can survive anything that can happen to you, then theres nothing left to be afraid of.
Slowly Expose Yourself To The Things You’re Afraid Of So They’re No Longer Unfamiliar To You
If you’re trying to get comfortable with negotiating, speaking in public, or other scary activities, psychologists often recommend exposure therapy.
Rehab Institute of Chicago neuroscientist Katherina Hauner has found that it can dramatically improve the way people relate to their fears.
“It is usually done in a series of hierarchical steps, starting with a relatively low level of engagement with the feared situation, and increasing the level with each step,” she told The Huffington Post.
“For exposure therapy with a dog phobia,” she says, “we might start with just looking at a very small puppy from many feet away, and eventually work our way up to petting a very large dog.”
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A Few Times Every Day Recognize That At This Moment You’re Doing Ok
Neurospsychologist Rick Hanson says in his Psychology Today column that our human instincts of survival make us constantly unsettled and fearful, protecting us against ever completely letting our guard down.
But it’s mostly a lie, according to Hanson. Your brain is automatically telling you something bad is going to happen, which may be true in the future, but not right now. By reminding yourself that you’re OK right now, you can more easily settle your fear and build well-being.
Thought Journals / Thought Records Are Incredibly Valuable Anxiety Exercise For Kids And Adults
Thought diaries or thought records are a perfect approach to addressing the negative cognitions often associated with anxiety disorders. In the Tools , clients are asked to write down their thoughts and anxiety periods, the situation in which they had the thought, the symptoms, and emotions associated with the thought or anxiety/worry episode.
They also track and become aware if, and how they attempted to cope, and the actual outcome of the event. Journaling and keeping track is incredibly valuable for helping clients become aware of the specific situations that cause them anxiety or worry. They find out which techniques work to help them calm their worries.
Normal anxiety is intermittent and is expected based on certain events or situations. Problematic anxiety, on the other hand, tends to be chronic and irrational. It often interferes with many life functions. Avoidance behavior, constant worry, and concentration problems may all have their origin in problematic anxiety.
Thats why we designed a tool to let anxious people compare normal anxiety with their problematic anxiety. How do they feel? How do they think? How do they react?
Exercise 15 will help to distinguish normal anxiety from problematic anxiety and help them learn that their anxiety is often irrational.
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Focus On Your Breathing
Breathing is more important than you think. Usually, anxiety begins with short breaths. The short breaths cause a number of negative reactions in your body which quickly become an anxiety attack. The key to overcoming those fast outbreaks of anxiety is to control your breathing.
Fortunately, deep breathing is not complicated. Once you have recognized that you are becoming fearful, stop and focus on your breathing. Take a breath in, and then slowly let it out. Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale. This isnt just some psychological trick deep breathing forces your body to physically calm itself.
What Is Fear And How It Affects Us
Fear is one of the most powerful emotions that we can experience. It is deep-rooted in our genes, and is a primal instinct that we share with all of the animal kingdom. Why? Because fears purpose is to keep us alive. Even though our dangers are far less today than they were in our caveman days, it still serves a purpose.
When we perceive danger:
- Your heart races.
- You become on high alert.
- Your body releases glucose in case your muscles need the extra energy to fight or run.
- Your muscles become tight.
- Hormones flood the body to help you stay focused and ready to handle the threat.
You can see how instantly our bodies can become ready to deal with fear and danger in seconds. The emotion of fear and the effects on the body are powerful but are not sustainable. Our response to fear is only supposed to be temporary. If we stay in a constant state of fear, you can see how our bodys response can begin to work against us instead of for us. We cannot, and are not, built to be on high alert at all times, to constantly release fight or flight hormones into our bloodstream, or sustain an elevated heart rate. Yet, in all of natures wonder and intelligence, it did not install a built-in fear off switch for human beings, and many of us walk around with that switch turned to the on position almost every waking moment.
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How To Get Rid Of Anxiety Forever
The last important step to get over anxiety and fear is exposure.
Exposure is a technique well known in behavior therapy to treat anxiety disorders. It involves exposing the anxious person to the anxiety source or its context without the intention to cause any danger. Doing so is thought to help them overcome their anxiety or distress. Numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in the treatment of disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder , and specific phobias.
Is It Real Danger Or Apparent Danger
We have seen in previous paragraphs how an apparent danger can lead to unhealthy anxiety or an anxiety disorder. The first question of the method is to know if it is healthy anxiety or unhealthy anxiety.
In order to differentiate them, the following questions can be of great help:
- Is there some kind of real risk or danger itself?
- What Im afraid of can be harmful?
- How many euros, years of life or human lives can these damages amount to?
- Can this prejudice be something serious or fatal?
- If it is, can it be repaired or is it irreversible?
- If it can be repaired or is it reversible, do I have the means, capacity or contacts to carry out this repair? How many hours of work or euros will it cost?
- What are the odds that this threat will actually occur? 1 out of 10? 1 out of 100? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 10,000? A lower probability?
- Is it rather an apparent danger?
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S For How To Overcome Your Fear And Anxiety
Managing fear and anxiety isnt always easy. However, you can build your skills in managing your emotional response. Developing self-awareness is a great first step in overcoming your fears and anxiety.
Here are 7 steps to learn how to overcome fear and anxiety at work:
1. Notice how you feel
Not everyone is good at talking about their emotions. Being able to identify your anxiety is a helpful first step. What sensations clue you into your emotional state? Do you have trouble breathing, sweaty palms, or a stomachache? Practice reading that as a physical cue instead of being carried away by it.
2. Own the fear
Have you ever been on the verge of tears and tried to stop them from coming? Its extremely difficult. Trying to ignore your fearful thoughts is just as hard. Stop wasting emotional energy trying to be okay. That energy is better used to reach out for help.
3. Breathe
Even though take a deep breath is probably not what you want to hear, theres a reason why it works. Deep and mindful breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system. Breathing, mindfulness meditation, and other relaxation techniques deactivate the bodys stress response.
4. Check in with yourself again
How are you feeling now, and what is the next best step to take? Should you take a walk? Do you need to remove yourself from your current situation or reach out to someone? This is an interim measure to give yourself a chance to choose the response that best serves you.
7. Get back in the arena
Evaluate Your Life Wholesomely
One aspect of your life can easily spill into other spheres. For example, when youre stressed, it affects your health, diet, and work. The same goes for driving anxiety. In many cases, the cause of this anxiety is hidden in other spheres of your life.
Evaluate other aspects of your life to see if there are any correlating or causative factors. Stress, for instance, can lead to sleepless nights, feeling lethargic, and inability to concentrate. This can, in turn, impact your ability and confidence to drive.
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Break Up With Caffeine
A cup of coffee, chocolate, or an ice-cold Coke might help you feel better. But if caffeine is your go-to drug of choice, your anxiety could worsen.
Caffeine gives the nervous system a jolt, which can boost energy levels. But when under pressure, this nervous energy can induce an anxiety attack. Now, the idea of giving up your favorite caffeinated beverage might raise your heart rate and induce anxiety as you read this, but you dont have to stop cold turkey or give up caffeine completely. Its all about moderation.
Rather than four cups of coffee a day, scale back to one or two normal-sized cups a day normal as in 8 ounces, not 16 or 32 ounces. Give it a test run and see how you feel. As you wean yourself, slowly introduce other beverages into your diet such as decaffeinated herbal tea, which can calm your mind and nerves.
Accept The Unknowns In Life
Fear is an emotion we feel when we have no control over your lives and the future poses a series of unknown threats. It is important in life to accept that you do not know your future and you do not know what can happen in your life. You should work towards planning your futures and develop plans and skills to achieve the futures that you want. But to overcome fear of the unknown is an important step for you to move away from anxiety in life.
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Strategies To Overcome Fear And Anxiety
You know what its like to be afraid of something, whether it be thunderstorms, a trip to the dentist, a stranger at your door, or losing someone dear to you. Fear is a normal reaction that warns our bodies to be careful. Anxiety is a type of fear, dealing more with worry and the future, rather than fearing something that is present.
When fear and anxiety become a pattern in our lives, they become a problem. If your plugged drain in the kitchen sink is a problem, do you ignore it? Of course not. You call a plumber or try to fix it yourself. When fearfulness causes harm to your physical and mental stability, and you find yourself avoiding things that might create more fear, dont ignore it. When anxiety becomes a debilitating thing that leaves you cowering and sick, dont try to push it away.
Learn how to overcome fear and anxiety.
The following 6 steps may be your ticket to getting rid of fear and anxiety disorders in your life.