Spiraling Out Of Control: How To Stay Calm When Dealing With Anxiety

Sometimes, life can feel overwhelming, and it may seem like you’re spiraling out of control. It doesn’t usually help when emotions run high, and it can be hard to focus on what your next steps should be. The key is generally to recognize when anxious thoughts may be taking over your day-to-day life and focus on productive thoughts and actions to help you get through the moment. It can be helpful to recognize that you do have control, take deep breaths, face and challenge your feelings, and stay busy. A life assessment can identify any areas of your life that may require action or change. Working with a therapist can help you discover the anxiety management strategies that are most effective for you.

Addressing Your Anxiety: Recognize That You Have Control

When you feel like life is spiraling, it may seem as if you have no control, especially when things seem to happen with or without your influence. Sometimes, you may go through things you don’t want to experience because they bring unwanted feelings and remind you of a person or reality you don’t feel comfortable recalling. Other times, you may feel like you can’t get a break. While there may be times things happen that are out of your control, it can be crucial to recognize that this is okay, and you can still take control of the way you respond to these situations. Understanding ways to manage your anxiety and promote better mental health can help you feel more in control of your own life.

Take A Deep Breath

You can use breathing techniques to visualize yourself in a state of calmness. Keep the image you create in your mind and refer to it when you feel anxious. Then, as your mind calms, you might think the situation through, assessing the circumstances and creating an opportunity to establish a favorable outcome.

Face Your Feelings

Feeling some amount of anxiousness can be a normal human response. It can be okay to admit to yourself what you’re feeling and accept what is happening inside you. As you recognize and acknowledge them, the anxious feelings may decrease in intensity.

Challenge Your Feelings

It can be helpful to ask yourself questions to readjust your thinking. You may ask yourself if your thoughts are rational or if things could be worse. Try to assess your ideas and identify ways to handle the situation. 

Stay Busy

When you feel like your emotions are ready to spiral out of control, you might use productive mental health methods to release them, such as going for a walk to calm yourself or taking care of simple tasks, like washing the dishes or tidying your room. 

Try to avoid doing anything that may lead to harm to property or others, like punching a wall. Such actions may fuel your emotions instead of helping you resolve the matter. It can be vital to be careful driving as well. 

Other things you can do when confronting anxiety may include listening to music, relaxing your body by lying down and resting, and journaling to write out what is triggering such feelings. You may also wish to consider holistic remedies like acupuncture, which can provide relief by inserting needles into pressure points throughout your body.

Life Assessment: Are You Where You Want To Be In Life?

Understanding your thoughts, feelings, and dynamics with family and friends can be an excellent place to start when it seems like life is spiraling in the wrong direction. It may require spending more time learning about yourself and where you want to be. When things are not working well in your world, staying clear of substances can be especially important for getting back on track.

Sometimes, anxiety is influenced by being in an unwelcome position in your life. Maybe you’re struggling to accept something you wish you could go back and change. Perhaps you’ve been contemplating the next move to make, such as going back to school or changing your career. Maybe you’ve reached a point in your life where you recognize the inevitability of change, but you’re having a problem accepting it, or you have an ongoing problem with an important person in your life.

Anxieties may be keeping you from taking necessary action. Anxiety symptoms can make it challenging to make decisions and resolve problems. Maybe you have problems coping with anxiety, or you don’t realize how much control anxiety has over your actions. Whatever issues you’re experiencing, there may be ways to address and resolve them. It may take working with someone like a licensed therapist to understand your abilities and how to apply them in your particular situation.

You normally need to be willing to take action if you’d like to regain control. This may include doing things differently, such as learning healthy habits, releasing an unproductive idea you have about yourself, changing your social circle, or working with your doctor or healthcare professional regularly. Try to focus on what you can do to remedy the situation and determine how you may use your power to make positive changes in your mental health and life.

Live Life At Your Own Pace

When you feel like life is spiraling out of your hands, try to avoid comparing yourself to others. Instead, you might focus on living your life the best way you can, one day at a time. Sometimes, people don’t spend enough time recognizing what makes them unique. It can be okay to be different, and it may take time to accept that. Try to avoid rushing to get things done too quickly or thinking you need to accomplish something by a certain period in life. If you let your emotions spiral out of control, it often becomes more challenging to view things from a realistic perspective.

Use Therapy To Explore More Options

If you feel like life is spiraling out of control, have you considered working with a therapist or talking about your problems with a licensed mental health professional? It can be hard to move forward when you feel like you’re not in control, but there may be many ways to tackle these feelings and gain a clearer picture of your situation. Understanding how your thoughts and feelings influence your anxiety can be a significant step forward. One of the best ways to understand this may be by talking things through with a therapist. 

There are typically different types of talk therapy that can provide comprehensive support for anxiety. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which usually focuses on identifying and changing thought patterns contributing to your emotions and behavior, is usually one of the most popular approaches to therapy for anxiety. A meta-analysis that looked at multiple studies of the effects of CBT on anxiety found that CBT “had a large effect on reducing anxiety symptoms”.

Online Therapy For Anxiety

There will likely be times in life when you may feel stressed out and overwhelmed, but you don’t necessarily have to work through it alone. Connecting with a therapist often has advantages you can benefit from in the long term, and now it can be done from the comfort of your home. Many research studies show that online CBT therapy can be just as effective for anxiety and feeling out of control as in-person therapy. 

Connecting with an online therapist can provide convenient support when you need it most. You may schedule sessions that fit into your daily life and speak with a licensed mental health professional via online chat, phone call, or video call. Please don’t hesitate to reach out for the help you deserve.