Fighting anxiety: 5 guidelines to reduce tension

Anxiety is a vicious cycle that is difficult to get out of. We are facing a psychological disorder that is a true pandemic in today's society.

But, What exactly is anxiety, what symptoms does it present and how can we get out of this situation?

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a mental state of anticipation, in which we experience nervousness and restlessness. It is an unpleasant sensation that puts us in tension. Anxiety is a normal response of our body, which interprets that we must be alert to an event close in time, but some people they are hijacked by anxiety and report a series of symptoms and signs (psychological and somatic) annoying.

The feeling of anxiety is particularly difficult to describe, it cannot always be related to a specific origin (an exam, medical results, etc.) and feeds on the consequences it generates (such as postponement of tasks pending).

Fighting anxiety and its causes

Therefore, it is difficult to face it, although not impossible. These five guidelines for fight anxiety

They can be of help to you in mitigating their adverse effects and understanding their nature a little better.

1. Learn to be your own boss

Anxiety is a unpleasant feeling that most of us want to avoid. The problem is compounded when we decide to compensate for the state of anxiety by resorting to stereotyped and repetitive forms of behavior. These are behaviors that usually start unconsciously, are partly automatic and can be more or less simple (stretching or pulling hair, patting leg, etc.) or something more complex (taking trips to the fridge and eat something).

In addition to the adverse effect that these behaviors can have on our body, such as obesity or hair loss, getting carried away by them has the disadvantage that makes us enter a vicious circle: as they are so associated with periods of stress, they act as a reminder that that feeling that you want to avoid is there. Therefore, to combat anxiety it is convenient to recognize these stereotypical patterns of behavior and stop them.

2. Fighting anxiety is fighting the "I'll do it tomorrow"

The anxiety periods may have been triggered by day-to-day elements that are related to work, obligations, and decision-making. For this reason, combating anxiety also means recognizing the situations in which this feeling can give rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the negative mood itself invites you to throw in the towel ahead of time.

Anxiety is one of the forms that fear can take of starting to do something that may go wrong and that, as a consequence, is postponed time after time in a process called procrastination. Paradoxically, these postponements are what make anxiety have a reason for being, since thanks to them the obligation that generates stress is still there.

3. Divide your day to day into small pieces

Surely you have realized that, from the moment you start a task that you are lazy to do, it becomes more and more enjoyable and manageable. Something similar happens with anxiety: to keep your attention away from what causes tension, start an activity it is much more effective than thinking about starting the same activity.

And it is that the fact of being aware that anxiety acts as a burden when doing things that we want to do is in itself a anxious source. If you want to make sure that what needs to be done is done without anxiety acting as a brake, there is nothing like breaking more complex tasks into short sequences. If you have to write a report, for example, the first task can be as simple as turning on the computer and opening a text editor. The following sequence should start from there and also be very short (write the first paragraph, etc.).

4. Take your time

The flip side of combating procrastination is making sure we make good use of the time we give you. we dedicate to restSince spending all day doing things to try to distract our attention can be exhausting. If we don't know the source of the anxiety, this coming and going of distracting activities can act as a reminder that we are anxious, and if the origin of the anxiety is in the pending obligations, it can generate a feeling of guilt. That is why it pays to be methodical with rest periods and make them allow a better orientation towards the objectives.

In addition, breath control exercises that are included in activities such as meditation, Mindfulness or the Tai Chi They are very useful to reduce the levels of stress that start all the anxiogenic machinery. Take a while to relax Although the body asks otherwise, and ensuring that these moments do not last longer than necessary to adjust the hormonal levels well are two basic guidelines to combat anxiety.

5. Don't try to make the anxiety go away

From a biological point of view, anxiety is the result of complex neuroendocrine dynamics which no one would want to have to deal with without the help of the subconscious processes that regulate them. Therefore, it should be clear that you can only combat anxiety indirectly. As much as you try to ignore the feelings of tension and fear, they will not go away just because our conscious mind asks it nicely.

In fact, trying to mentally suppress these biological processes is nothing more than a way of recognizing that this problem is there. For anxiety to stop being a problem, you have to fight its symptoms by creating newbehaviour standards. The solution is not in the privacy of the mind itself, but in the relationships between the body and the environment.

Bibliographic references:

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