How You Can Learn To Manage Crippling Anxiety

If you’re experiencing an overwhelming anxiety disorder, you’re not alone, as generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental illnesses in the U.S. Anxiety can have different severity levels based on genetic and environmental factors. For some, it can become a serious block in daily life.

With crippling anxiety, intense behavioral symptoms — or even physical symptoms like panic attacks — may occur. For this reason, understanding why you feel anxious and working toward managing it and its symptoms can be important for those who experience this severe form of anxiety.

What causes anxiety disorder?

There is no one specific cause linked to the development of an anxiety disorder. Instead, there are a variety of factors connected to this common mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Environment, genetics, experiences like a traumatic event, and brain chemistry can trigger anxiety disorders. This means that therapy for anxiety or other treatments, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), will depend on your unique situation.

• Stress. Stress can come from a variety of sources. Financial insecurity, loss of employment, academic worries, relationship troubles, and more can cause or generate stress. Long-term stress can lead to developing more serious crippling anxiety symptoms.
• Hereditary factors. Traumatic experiences from the past can significantly contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.
• Additional mental health conditions. Anxiety often co-occurs with other mental health conditions or may even develop as a part of another diagnosis. Anxiety symptoms can also be the result of medical conditions, substance use, or medication use.

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Managing anxiety symptoms

Understanding the causes can be critical to reducing anxiety symptoms in the long run. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Learning steps to manage stress and control symptoms, especially of crippling anxiety disorders, can be especially helpful on days of heightened anxiety. Understanding the types of disorders and the often severe symptoms of crippling anxiety can be important in finding the right treatment to help you reduce symptoms.

Breathe deeply

Breathing deeply during episodes of excessive worry may be one of the most effective relaxation techniques to treat anxiety in everyday life. This management method can not only ground the person experiencing anxious feelings, but it can generate calmness and the ability to disengage temporarily.

Deep breathing and controlling your breath can reverse-engineer the body's fight or flight response, which can be triggered during times of high stress. Even when you are not experiencing episodes of anxiety, deep breathing exercises can serve as a healthy form of meditation to reduce stress and prevent panic. Breathing deeply can also be great for unwinding and decompressing after a long day.

Get to the root of the problem

Learning what triggers your anxiety, or even where you may have first developed it, can be beneficial. Understanding how past circumstances, experiences, and events may have shaped your development of anxiety can help you reexamine certain aspects of it in a new way. For example, knowing that social situations trigger anxiety attacks may help you determine that you have a social anxiety disorder. 

Getting professional help from a licensed therapist can help you explore the roots of your anxiety, which can lead to learning coping skills for any intense feelings of stress.

Redirect your focus

Redirecting your focus can be a helpful temporary tool to supplement traditional therapy treatment. Focusing on recurrent thoughts of anxiety or physical symptoms may intensify them. While avoiding emotions isn't a great long-term solution to anxiety, spending time engaging and nourishing activities can help your mind focus on a new area and alleviate some of the immediate symptoms of anxiety.

Redirecting your focus could mean listening to music, going for a walk, drawing, painting, doing physical movement, etc. Reading an interesting book or watching a movie are also great ways of redirecting your focus toward something that can be more fulfilling for you. You can also invest time in positive social situations, appreciate major life events you experience, or work on cooking a more balanced diet. All these efforts can help you change your behavioral patterns in ways that can be useful and can greatly reduce anxiety.

Surround yourself with loved ones

One of the best ways to manage anxiety may be to surround yourself with a great group of people who care about you. Having a strong support system can make a difference, and when people understand you and your situation, they can offer help and perhaps put you at ease. 

Anxiety can be challenging to address, but with a caring support system, including a mental health professional who specializes in anxiety disorders, you may find that you don't have to deal with anxiety on your own.

Seeking support for anxiety disorders

We recognize the challenges that any type of anxiety can present. If you feel anxious, working with a licensed online therapist through a platform like BetterHelp can be a great way to explore the roots of anxiety, gain feedback, and learn skills for managing stress that are specifically tailored to you. It can be very helpful to have a safe place to explore and discuss what you're experiencing, and therapists provide just that.

BetterHelp's counselors are licensed and have years of experience in therapy and research-backed methods of helping with problems like anxiety. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most common treatment method for treating anxiety in talk therapy. Clinical studies prove that online CBT is just as effective as in-person therapy — and sometimes even more so. This greater level of effectiveness can stem from a few things. For example, people with anxiety disorders are often more comfortable opening up over online mediums than in face-to-face settings.