Daily Interventions For Better Well
Mental health issues can affect all of us at times, even without a diagnosed mental illness. This is especially true with high-functioning anxiety because to the outside world everything seems great you excel at work and can take care of all of your responsibilities at home but on the inside youre a bundle of stress and pressure.
Remember, anxiety is a future-oriented mood state where the brain experiences fear when it feels you cant control the future. This is why high-functioning anxiety symptoms include being organized and having a good work ethic, because your brain tries to control the future by being highly perfectionistic. This is great because you get stuff done, and you do it well! At the same time, its a struggle when things arent always in your control, so you then may have racing thoughts, racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, and a feeling of being overwhelmed most of the time.
Fortunately, you dont have to get rid of the qualities of hard work and attention-to-detail in order to relieve the pressure. Try the strategies outlined above, like limbic system retraining, CBT, diet, and probiotics, in order to improve your mental health.
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How To Stay Calm And Carry On
If you feel like your anxiety level is getting too high, there are a few things you can do to lower it and feel calmer in your day-to-day life. Waterman shares a few.
- Exercise regularly to relieve tension, release endorphins and maintain physical health.
- Practice mindful meditation daily.
- Challenge any irrational thoughts that are creating anxiety with evidence from reality.
- Give your irrational thoughts or judgments a more accurate and neutral or even positive spin.
- If you find yourself in a heightened anxiety state, practice belly breathing and fully focus on your breath until the physical sensations of anxiety decrease in your body.
- If possible, start working on the problem or task that is creating the anxiety. Break down the solution into small steps that can be worked on one at a time. This will increase the likelihood that you will follow through with the task or work on the problem.
- Ask others for help with a problem thats causing your anxiety. Or ask them for feedback on your thoughts to help determine if they are rational or irrational.
Try 6 Meditations To Help Reduce Anxiety
Looking for more meditations to help you feel calm? The Headspace app offers subscribers several courses and single meditations on topics related to anxiety, including:
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Managing Anxiety 10-day course. Cultivate a new perspective on fear and anxiety.
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Unemployment Anxiety single meditation. Recognize and release stress about job loss and the future.
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Letting Go of Stress 10-day course. Enjoy a healthier mind by developing your awareness of stress and learning how to reframe negative emotions.
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Stressed single meditation. Notice what you’re holding onto and how to drop the preoccupying storyline.
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Why can’t I sleep? single meditation. This exercise will help you practice calming the mind and body during the day, so you feel more ready for sleep when bedtime comes.
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Difficult Conversations single meditation. The prospect of a difficult conversation can drive feelings of anxiety and fear, but by lesseing habits of reactivity and developing a calmer, more patient mindset, you can both listen and express yourself more clearly.
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Ways To Deal With Anxiety
Everyone has feelings of anxiety, nervousness, tension, and stress from time to time. Here are 5 ways to help manage them:
Social Anxiety Disorder: More Than Just Shyness
Are you extremely afraid of being judged by others?
Are you very self-conscious in everyday social situations?
Do you avoid meeting new people?
If you have been feeling this way for at least six months and these feelings make it hard for you to do everyday taskssuch as talking to people at work or schoolyou may have a social anxiety disorder.
Social anxiety disorder is a mental health condition. It is an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others. This fear can affect work, school, and your other day-to-day activities. It can even make it hard to make and keep friends. But social anxiety disorder doesnt have to stop you from reaching your potential. Treatment can help you overcome your symptoms.
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Look For Times When You Dont Have To Be Perfect
People with high-functioning anxiety often strive for perfection in all areas of their lives, even when they dont need to. If you have to do everything perfectly, thats surely taking a lot of time. What are you giving up because of that? Bufka said. I try to help people figure out whats good enough and how you decide when something has to be just right. For example, surgery has to be just right. But my kitchen doesnt have to be spotless.
Its hard to get outside your thoughts and figure out where good enough is acceptable. It can help to change your point of view. What would you say to a good friend in your situation? Or, how would you judge a good friend? If youre anxious because your house or children arent perfect, ask yourself what you would think if you walked into a friends house would you judge it as messy or think the children werent well behaved?
How To Reduce Anxiety
Feelings of anxiety â uneasiness, dread, fear, or an inexplicable sense of impending doom â can be deeply unpleasant. Whether anxiety presents itself as an upset stomach, heart palpitations, a nervous tension that colors everything, or even a panic attack, the discomfort and distress can be extremely challenging.
Weâre not talking about general, everyday anxiousness here, but clinical anxiety â the kind that can be all-consuming and, sometimes, debilitating. When classified as a disorder, anxiety is âpersistent and excessive worryâ where individuals can lose rational perspective and âexpect the worst, even when there is no apparent reason for concern,â according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
Chronic or severe symptoms may be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder , which affects close to 40 million adults in the US and, according to the World Health Organization , 1 in 13 globally. Thankfully, there are effective therapies and medications as doctors and healthcare professionals determine the best treatment options that are right for you.
With the right skills and lifestyle changes, we can better regulate our emotions and train our brain to view life with a more balanced, less fearful perspective. Hereâs how to relieve anxiety naturally, and with awareness.
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Practice Good Sleep Hygiene
Try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day weekends included.
Your routine before going to bed also matters. Consider giving yourself wind-down times. For example, 20 minutes with no devices. Instead, you could read a book or take a bath.
Avoiding potential triggers, like watching TV or scrolling the news on your phone, is key.
Creating a sleep routine will help you fall asleep faster and reduce the chances that youll lie awake, worrying about unfinished tasks or the next morning.
Prolonged Exposure To Stress
Stress is a normal part of life. However, prolonged exposure to stress can lead to anxiety. This is becoming the body becomes used to the stress hormone cortisol and overproduces it. There are also many other hormones that are affected by stress, which can lead to anxiety. If youre constantly under stress, your body may start to feel like its in a state of fight or flight.
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Is Anxiety Bad For You
A little anxiety is fine, but long-term anxiety may cause more serious health problems, such as high blood pressure . You may also be more likely to develop infections. If youre feeling anxious all the time, or its affecting your day-to-day life, you may have an anxiety disorder or a panic disorder.
Offer Support But Dont Take Over
Avoidance is a core feature of anxiety, so sometimes we may feel pulled to help out by doing things for our avoidant loved ones and inadvertently feed their avoidance. For instance, if your anxious roommate finds making phone calls incredibly stressful and you end up doing this for them, they never push through their avoidance.
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More on Anxiety
How stressed and anxious are you? Take the quiz.
A good general principle to keep in mind is that support means helping someone to help themselves, not doing things for them, which includes virtually anything that stops short of actually doing it yourself. For example, you might offer to attend a first therapy session with your loved one if they set up the appointment. Or, if theyre not sure how to choose a therapist, you might brainstorm ways of doing that, but let them choose.
An exception might be when someones anxiety is accompanied by severe depression. If they cant get themselves out of bed, they may be so shut down that they temporarily need people to do whatever is needed to help them stay alive. Also, sometimes loved ones are so gripped by an anxiety disorder that theyre in pure survival mode and need more hands-on help to get things done. In less extreme circumstances, however, its best to offer support without taking over or overdoing the reassurance.
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Causes Of Anxiety Fear And Panic
There are many different causes of anxiety, fear or panic and it’s different for everyone.
When you’re feeling anxious or scared, your body releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol.
This can be helpful in some situations, but it might also cause physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate and increased sweating. In some people, it might cause a panic attack.
Regular anxiety, fear or panic can also be the main symptom of several health conditions. Do not self-diagnose speak to a GP if you’re worried about how you’re feeling.
The Link Between Anxiety Symptoms And Depression
Many people with anxiety disorders also suffer from depression at some point. Anxiety and depression are believed to stem from the same biological vulnerability, which may explain why they so often go hand-in-hand. Since depression makes anxiety worse , its important to seek treatment for both conditions.
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If Someone Has A More Serious Anxiety Problem Avoid Stigmatizing Them
What can we do for folks with more serious issues? People experiencing things like panic disorder, depression mixed with anxiety, post-traumatic stress, or obsessional thinking may fear that theyre literally going crazy. Helping them may feel beyond your ability.
You can still be supportive in many ways. When someone is experiencing significant anxiety, its helpful to reassure them that your overall perception of them hasnt changed. Theyre still the same person theyre just suffering a temporary problem situation that has become out of control. Theyre not broken and who they are hasnt changed. To the extent possible, you can help the person stay connected to positive aspects of their identity by participating in or encouraging their interests and hobbies.
Sometimes, individuals who have chronic anxiety problems arent interested in changing. For example, you might be friends with someone who has agoraphobia or an eating disorder, but their condition is long-term and stable. In these cases, you can be accepting of that person so that they dont feel isolated. Being matter-of-fact about their limitations without excessively shaming them or insisting they should pursue becoming normal is often the best strategy.
How To Deal With High Functioning Anxiety
People with High Functioning Anxiety have a stressed brain and can use little tricks to make themselves feel better. They have a chronic state of anxiety that can leave them exhausted, burned out, and cause sleep disorders and health issues.
It is a great challenge for these people to ask for help as they want to handle everything on their own. Hence, taking the first step to resolving this issue is a very big deal for people with this issue. The following section provides some tips to handle high functioning anxiety.
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Observe Other People Instead Of Yourself
If youre highly anxious, you probably often focus on how youre being perceived and evaluated. If you can stop just a little bit and observe, you realize most people arent paying that much attention to you. Most people are thinking about their own things, Bufka said. You can also observe how other people react when they make mistakes.
Anxiety And Depression: What Are The Possible Links
Although clearly not identical emotional states, mental health research suggests that depression and anxiety often coexist because they can be caused by the same or similar factors. According to an article published May 2020 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, those overlapping causes can include:
- Genetic Factors Genetic factors contribute to 40 percent of the predisposition to depressive and anxious symptoms, with 60 percent being attributed to environmental, noninherited factors. Especially with anxiety, more so than depression, there often is some family history, and so therefore we think that there may be some genetic predisposition to this, Connolly explains.
- Environmental Factors Also referred to as social factors, these include experiences like trauma or neglect in early childhood, and current stressors such as relationship difficulties, unemployment, social isolation, and physical illness. People who have post-traumatic stress disorder , an anxiety disorder, are particularly likely to also develop depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health .
- Pain Chronic pain, and particularly disabling pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome , low back pain, headaches, and nerve pain, are closely linked to psychological distress, including both anxiety and depression, notes Harvard Health. In fact, they say, research suggests that pain shares some biological mechanisms with anxiety and depression.
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