What to do if I have anxiety? 4 basic tips

Among the reasons why people go to psychological consultation, anxiety stands out.

This phenomenon has effects both on our physiological state (sweat, blood pressure, etc.) and on our thoughts and actions, and in fact, it appears both in patients without diagnosable mental disorders and in psychological pathologies as important as OCD or phobia social. Anxiety takes many forms and is capable of manifesting itself in different ways and regardless of our way of life.

Thus, it is important to know what to do if you have anxiety; If we modify certain aspects of our day to day, we will be less vulnerable to this type of discomfort and we will be able to prevent its appearance in contexts in which it is not useful to us. Let's see how we can limit its harmful effects on our mental health.

• Related article: "What is anxiety: how to recognize it and what to do"

What to do if I have anxiety? various tips

Anxiety is one of the most common psychological and physiological disorders, and it can appear regardless of our lifestyle. In fact, it is part of the basic functioning of the human body, and its reason for being is very simple: we leads us to pay attention to our surroundings in order to react quickly when there is something potentially dangerous.

The curious thing about anxiety is that it has not disappeared when we start living in societies where access to technology and creation The welfare state has kept us away from immediate physical dangers such as predators or death from starvation or accidents. However, this propensity to enter into a state of alert continues to haunt us and appears even when there are no contexts that are capable of seriously harming us; Sometimes, something as seemingly simple as a partial exam or the need to cook something for some guests at our home can lead us to suffer through a mixture of anguish and stress.

1. Maintain a healthy lifestyle

In part, anxiety is the product of our body's inability to adapt to tasks and challenges that require continuous effort. Therefore, we must ensure that we are doing everything possible so that our body is capable of performing well and has energy available.

For it, It is essential to have a healthy diet and sleep well, above all. It may be that the same lifestyle that leads us to suffer from stress favors us forgetting these two aspects of day-to-day life. to focus on what worries us, but if we take them seriously, the effects of this will be felt quickly.

2. Get moderate exercise

This advice to control anxiety is related to the previous one, but it is also an escape valve to release tension. Being able to make physical efforts without damaging our body thanks to moderate exercise keeps our muscles and joints in good health, and is also an excellent form to "disengage" our attention from our worries and obsessions, so that although it seems paradoxical it prevents us from feeling exhausted more quickly as the day progresses. day.

So spend 30 to 40 minutes doing moderate exercise about 4 or 5 times a week, and try not to be just before you go to sleep at night.

3. plan your time

Another of the things that we often miss when asking ourselves "what to do if I have anxiety?" is that this alteration arises many Sometimes seeing that we do not adapt effectively to the challenges that arise in our path, such as university projects or goals professionals.

For this reason, not wasting time and effectively managing our capacities and our resources is key. So it is important facilitate our commitment to these goals, and for this you have to subdivide the goals into simpler and smaller goals, and set short-term dates to reach them.

Keeping an agenda and writing it down there is also very useful., as well as physically moving away from distractions during the times of the day that we set ourselves to attend to these responsibilities.

4. attend psychotherapy

The possibility of go to psychotherapy and having professional help that can monitor our evolution is also a possibility to take into account. Contrary to what is often believed, this type of psychological intervention is usually short, and does not focus only on talking to the psychologist, but on receive a "training" that leads us to transform our habits to protect ourselves against anxiety, regardless of whether or not we have a propensity to experience its effects.

In order to manage the effects of anxiety and prevent its appearance in contexts in which it is not very useful, psychotherapy professionals use different tools.

In the Institute of Psychology Psicode of Alicante, for example, we intervene helping patients to transform their way of relating to the environment and also helping them to adopt a mentality for the which increases self-confidence and it is less frequent to feel overwhelmed by events when it is really possible to put yourself at the helm of what happens.

These are the basic principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy applied to anxiety, which affects both behavior and behavior. thoughts and beliefs so that we believe that we can face challenges and are better able to manage them with effectiveness.

In it Psicode Institute of Psychology, which has more than 12 years of experience, point out that although it is essential to adapt psychological therapy to the needs and the patient layer personality, this double path of action is something that guarantees reaching the desired results in the shortest time possible, making the effects of psychotherapy sessions last over time. Of course, they also use techniques that complement this cognitive-behavioral approach, such as Mindfulness, which helps people to better modulate their attentional state and to not let concerns linked to the past and the possible future generate additional problems.

In conclusion

Anxiety is an unavoidable aspect of our lives, but we can do our part so that its effects do not overwhelm us and damage our well-being.

For this, it is important to modify our habits, since this will make us less vulnerable to its appearance, and it is also desirable to be able to count on the help of psychologists with experience with anxiety problems, given that their assistance can mark the difference.