What can help reduce anxiety?

Hi Joy,

Thank you for your question, anxiety can feel so awful and when recovering from surgery and an infection, I imagine it must be making it difficult to get the rest that you currently need to heal.

To help tackle anxiety, it can be helpful to know what's going on in your body. Feelings of anxiety come from our brain's 'fear response', which is basically where our brain feels like we are under threat and is pushing us to do something about it. You have likely heard the term 'fight or flight' and this is a simple way of explaining the fear response. Our bodies are either gearing up to fight off the threat or run away from it. Adrenaline is released, giving a big surge of energy - this is what causes symptoms like a racing heart, shakiness and feeling restless. If we have a physical threat to fight off or run away from, this is incredibly helpful and serves us well but when the 'threat' is coming from our own thoughts or stressors, we're just left with a lot of nervous energy that feels very uncomfortable. It's our brain's way of trying to shield us - unfortunately, particularly for those suffering from anxiety, the brain can get it wrong a lot of the time. 

To ease feelings of anxiety, we're basically looking to reverse this process. We want to show our brain that it is alright and does not need to shield us from our physical environment. 

This is where mindfulness comes in handy. Mindfulness is all about tuning into the environment around us and when we're going through anxiety, it's a great way to bring our brains into a more grounded reality so that it doesn't keep producing the fear response. 

There are some handy tips and techniques for mindfulness on this webpage: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-and-treatments/mindfulness/mindfulness-exercises-tips/ 

To help combat anxiety, it's important to be able to recognise its triggers too. Keeping a mood diary can be helpful for this. A mood diary is where you keep a log of your moods throughout the day. Everytime there is a change in your mood - whether you feel better or worse - you make a note of it, and also make a note of what was happening around those mood changes. For example, you may log that at 2pm you started to feel anxious and this anxiety happened after checking social media. In this example, you may be able to come to the conclusion that checking social media creates feelings of anxiety. It's particularly helpful to log this over a period of time so that you can notice patterns between certain triggers and moods. 

The more that you recognise your triggers, the more you can either avoid them (if possible) or tackle them. Tackling them is a hard thing to do, but over time it shows your brain that the trigger is not a threat and so the brain does not produce such a strong fear response to that trigger. An example of tackling a trigger could be somebody with social anxiety making a 5 minute phone call, or a person with a fear of dogs walking by a dog park. Just note that tackling triggers is not something that can be done quickly or it can lead to feelings of panic - it is best to take your time and gradually build your tolerance to triggers. 

Talking helps too, and this is where therapy can be so helpful for anxiety. Sometimes, talking about our anxieties makes them feel 'smaller' and more manageable. It can be a space to explore potential solutions to the anxiety without fear of judgement. It can also be helpful to get the perspective from somebody else - sometimes anxiety is good at clouding our judgement and makes it hard to see the reality of situations. Another person's perspective can be helpful to see through this fog that anxiety creates. 

I certainly hope that this response helps in some way, and I thank you again for your question and for reaching out for support. I wish you the best in your recovery and encourage you to seek further support if you continue finding your anxiety difficult to manage. 

All the best,

Siobhan.