7 Coping Skills To Help Manage Anxiety Symptoms
Anxiety symptoms can make daily life challenging, but there may be many coping skills you can employ to keep anxious thoughts and feelings in check. Several potentially effective strategies can include talking yourself down, speaking with a friend or family, assessing your options, taking notice of your feelings, monitoring your thoughts, taking deep breaths, and practicing mindfulness. In some cases, however, these interventions may not be enough to keep anxiety at bay. If anxiety symptoms are negatively impacting your life, please don’t hesitate to reach out for professional help. You can connect with a licensed therapist online or seek out a mental health professional in your local area.
Anxiety coping skills to try
While the words “stress” and “anxiety” are often used interchangeably, anxiety in psychology generally refers to a group of mental health disorders that typically involve intense and excessive feelings of fear, worry, and nervousness. Common symptoms of anxiety disorders include feeling overwhelmed, experiencing poor sleep, and unhelpful thoughts that affect overall mental well-being. The feelings can interfere with daily activities such as job performance, schoolwork, and relationships.
Anxiety disorders can be common. In the United States, it is estimated that more than 40 million people over 18 may live with an anxiety disorder. If you have one or believe you may be living with one, you may need to follow a more comprehensive treatment plan with the help of a licensed mental health professional.
Whether you feel stressed from the challenges of everyday life or feel anxious all the time, you can try several things to alleviate the discomfort. These tips may be enough to get you through most of your anxious moments or act as helpful short-term or complementary coping mechanisms.
1. Talk yourself down
Trying to talk yourself down may not work for all people, and it may not work all the time. However, if you’re worried about a minor situation, you might consider asking yourself, “What's the worst that could happen?”
You may conclude that the worst that can happen isn't all that bad. In fact, the situation at hand may give you the strength you need to power through your feelings and do what's scaring you. The more often you face your fears, the more power you may have over those fears.
2. Talk to someone
If you start to feel anxious, you might benefit from talking about it with someone you trust. Talking to someone else can help in many ways. Saying what you're worried about out loud can relieve some of your feelings, and communicating with someone else can help you get a different perspective on things. You might join a support group relevant to your particular challenges or talk to a mental health provider in addition to friends or family.
3. Assess your options
If you've determined that the worst that can happen is actually quite bad, you might ask yourself what you can do right now to improve things.
When things feel difficult, it can be easy to focus on how things may go south in the future. This can distract us from actions that we could be taking in the present moment to fix the situation. It can be helpful to focus on what you can do right now instead of how things might play out later. You may be able to find a solution to your problem or at least a way to make the worst-case scenario not so bad.
4. Breathe
When we are in a stressful situation, our breath tends to become rapid and shallow. This usually isn't the most effective way to breathe because it may not allow your brain to oxygenate properly. When you feel like you’re unable to control your breath, even if you actually can, you may experience a panic attack.
Still, we can control our breathing, and it can be very calming. When you are worried, your autonomic nervous system typically ramps up your breathing. You can counter this by breathing deeply and returning to the present moment.
5. Take notice of your feelings
If you are having a panic attack, try to notice how you feel mentally and physically. Panic attacks can be scary, but most of the time, they aren't actually dangerous. Knowing what a panic attack feels like for you and what to watch out for may help you better handle the next one. You can also gradually increase awareness of anxiety triggers and unhelpful thoughts, steering them toward positive ones to potentially stop a panic attack in its tracks.
6. Monitor your thoughts
7. Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is generally about understanding how your mind works and keeping focused on the present rather than worrying about things that have already happened or may never happen.
One of the main tools of mindfulness is meditation. Mindfulness meditation usually consists of trying to think of nothing by focusing on your breath. When a thought distracts you, you might take notice of it and then return to focusing on your breath. This can help you learn to notice your thoughts so that you can correct negative thinking before it causes or contributes to anxiety in the first place. You can also engage in mindfulness by fully being present in a particular moment, such as watching the sunset, focusing on a specific exercise routine, feeling the breeze on your skin, or taking in how your food tastes and smells.
You can do mindfulness on your own, but it is also something that more and more therapists tend to be incorporating into their practices.
Do lifestyle changes help with anxiety?
Research shows that lifestyle changes along with coping techniques may help to tackle stress head-on. A systematic review suggests that stress management techniques like mindfulness may help reduce symptoms effectively, which may help you to improve sleep and stay healthy overall. You can also limit alcohol and other substances that can potentially worsen symptoms.
Mastering coping techniques may help you manage your symptoms. However, if you feel like you frequently have high anxiety levels or that it keeps you from living the life you want, it may be time to talk to an expert.
Is it occasional anxiety or an anxiety disorder?
Occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. You might feel anxious when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, or making an important decision. However, anxiety disorders involve more than temporary worry or fear. For a person with an anxiety disorder, the anxiety does not go away and can get worse over time.
To differentiate between occasional anxiety and an anxiety disorder, consider how often and intensely you experience symptoms. If anxiety triggers constant negative effects in your life and coping skills work only to a limited extent, you may be experiencing an anxiety disorder.
Getting professional help for anxiety disorders
The best place to start is usually with your doctor, who will likely do a physical exam and run some tests to rule out any underlying physical conditions. They may refer you to a mental health professional for an official diagnosis.
Treatment for anxiety disorders may consist of psychotherapy and prescription medication, although some research shows that psychotherapy is usually more effective. Online therapy may be an option if you’re interested in therapy as a treatment for anxiety or other mental health disorders. You can also use online therapy to manage anxiety symptoms without a diagnosis.
Online therapy can have many benefits for people with anxiety. All you typically have to do is fill out a questionnaire, and you can be matched with a therapist within days. An online therapist can then provide support for anxiety symptoms and show you how coping skills work to manage anxiety. Some people report that they feel more comfortable with online therapy because the distance and safety of being behind a screen in your own home can make it easier to open up and talk about difficult things.
Research also shows that online therapy can be effective at treating multiple types of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorders, phobias, and OCD.
Online therapist reviews
“Michelle is an incredible therapist to work with. She is nurturing, fully present with me, approachable, and has helped me to step back and dissect my mind and thinking patterns. I felt comfortable with her immediately. She has equipped me with strategies that have challenged me in the best of ways. Working on getting rid of negative cognitive patterns has relieved me, even in situations that seemed too much to personally handle. Her reframing, and her teaching me to reframe, has helped me to relieve some of my anxiety. I feel grateful for my time with her, and highly recommend her!”
Michelle Lesagonicz, LCSW - (More reviews) |
“Trisha is a great person she’s compassionate, caring listens to you and provides many different tools and literature to help with my anxiety would recommend to friends and family from where I started over six months ago to where I am now it’s because of Tricia very appreciated thank you!”
Patricia “Tricia” Taglialavore, LPC - (More reviews) |
Takeaway
If you’re in search of ways to manage your anxiety symptoms, you might try the following:
- Talking yourself down
- Speaking with a loved one
- Taking deep breaths
- Assessing your options
- Taking notice of your feelings
- Monitoring your thoughts
- Practicing mindfulness
A licensed therapist can help you discover the coping skills that may be most effective for you. One way to find a mental health professional who can meet your needs may be through an online therapy platform.
There are multiple coping mechanisms to try for occasional feelings of anxiety. Everyone is different, so you may need to try a few different things to find the one that works for you. Some things you can try include:
- Talking yourself down and considering what is the worst thing that can happen
- Talking to someone you trust about what is worrying you
- Assessing your options about what you can do to improve things
- Breathing exercises
- Noticing your feelings to pick up on when your anxiety is increasing or when a panic attack may be coming on
- Monitoring your thoughts to determine if your mind is saying things that aren’t true or dwelling on something that you can’t change
- Practicing mindfulness to stay in the present moment instead of focusing on what has already happened or what may not occur
What are the 4 Rs to overcome anxiety?
Some people may refer to the four R’s of anxiety as relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue. These R’s come from a form of treatment developed by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a psychiatrist and researcher in the field of neuroplasticity, who originally developed the technique to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Relabeling refers to taking whatever you’re struggling with and relabeling to help you recognize what you’re facing so you may gain a deeper understanding of what is happening inside of you.
Reattributing in this technique can mean reminding yourself that you are not your anxiety. It can help you gain power over your thoughts and the anxiety you’re dealing with.
Refocusing can mean putting your anxious thoughts aside and moving on with your daily life. You can achieve this through various methods, ground techniques, meditation, or physically removing yourself from the situation. A preliminary randomized controlled trial also found that online positive affect journaling can affect mental distress in people with anxiety.
The final step, revaluing, involves thinking about your experience. Was there any truth to your anxious thoughts? Use this step to confront some of the negative urges and thoughts you are dealing with.
Some natural ways to try to calm anxiety may include deep breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, yoga, mindfulness meditation, and grounding exercises. Taking care of yourself on a regular basis by getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, and ensuring you get enough exercise may also help you manage your anxiety in the long-term.
What is the 5 things technique?
The five things technique to reduce anxiety can be another name for the 54321 technique, where you focus on breathing and acknowledge five things you see around you, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
The four A’s of coping with elevated anxiety symptoms are avoid, alter, accept, and adapt.
Avoid means avoiding things that can worsen anxiety whenever you can by planning ahead. To do so, you can try to identify triggers and then figure out how to avoid them. For example, if you get anxiety on your commute to work because of ongoing construction, plan another route that is less stressful. If you’re always rushed when you go to the deli next to the office for lunch, pack a meal instead so you can sit down and enjoy your break.
Alter means attempting to change and improve your situation. Some things you can try include taking care of small problems so they don’t turn into larger ones, communicating your feelings to avoid misunderstandings, managing your time more efficiently, or stating your limits in advance.
The third A is accept. Sometimes, we don’t have any choice but to accept things the way they are. For example, general medical patients worried about physical health may have to learn how to manage their challenges long term. To help you do so, you can try talking to a friend or family member, practicing positive self-talk, or learning from your mistakes.
The final A is adapt. Thinking that you can’t handle things can be very stressful, which is why adapting your expectations can be helpful. Some things you can do include adjusting your standards, redefining success, and keeping the big picture in mind.
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