Like a monster from under the bed, stress and anxiety are stealing the peaceful night-time of million people around.
Anxiety may also be sabotaging your confidence, turning your stomach into knots, and impacting your general wellbeing.
Stress is a normal part of life. Stress warns you that you're encountering problematic situations, and is designed to motivate you to take action to reduce that stress and make your life better.
Without stress, you wouldn't feel any motivation to make your life better. You would take risks without regard for the consequences and make decisions that affect the course of your life without any critical thinking to ensure it's what's best for you. In small amounts, stress is actually a good thing.
When that stress starts to become unreasonable – when that stress starts to affect you every day, causing you to feel sick, anxious, unhappy, or fatigued – then your levels of stress have become a serious problem.
Here are some key points to fight stress and anxiety:
- Remember: stress and anxiety shall pass
The first step to overcoming negative feelings is to recognise that you are experiencing a very common emotional state. Although it's uncomfortable, the negative feelings will pass. Fighting anxiety can make it even stronger. Paradoxically, accepting that you are feeling anxious helps activate the body's natural relaxation response.
- Learn how to self-soothe
When we are faced with an anxiety-inducing situation, our body's sympathetic nervous system automatically triggers physiological changes. Our breathing quickens, adrenaline is secreted, and our heart begins to race. This is a natural survival mechanism, but when the threat is imagined, fighting it is unnecessary and very uncomfortable.
The most commonly utilized strategy is breathing by contracting the diaphragm, a horizontal muscle in the chest located just above the stomach cavity.
- Check your diet
What we eat and drink largely impacts our emotional state. Foods most associated with exacerbating anxiety are ones containing caffeine and alcohol. Studies have found that the stimulating effects of caffeine can cause anxiety, trigger panic attacks, and increase feelings of nervousness and irritability.
- Get moving
You need to stay active. People think of exercise as a physical fitness technique. But exercise is much more than that. It plays a key role in stress reduction because it burns away many of the stress hormones while releasing chemicals that improve mood.
- Get more sleep
Most people feel a little grumpy after a rough night's sleep. Disrupted sleep is common in many emotional disorders and it's difficult to know which started first, stress or poor sleep.
