When the Anxiety Strikes and After
Posted on July 17, 2009
These steps would be best applied during of after anxiety strikes. You can use as many as you can apply or any one that you particularly feel comfortable with:
Apply A Tried And Tested Relaxation Technique
There are a number of relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, positive thought reinforcement, self-hypnosis, breathing and so on. Go ahead and learn about each one of these and choose one that suits you best. Practice that relaxation technique until you are able to apply it almost automatically as a reflex reaction, whenever you experience an anxiety attack.
Reach Out For Your Prescribed Medication
It is important that side by side with various relaxation techniques and other methods that help you defuse and/ or decrease your anxiety attack, you should take your prescribed medication. The emphasis here is on the word "prescribed". Do not, however tempted you might be, recur to over-the-counter anti-depressants, sedatives or the like. In most cases, when you do so you would harm yourself more than help. Ensure that you carry with you your anxiety medication (which is prescribed by your doctor) and you take it as advised. Keep in mind that anxiety attacks are caused by chemical imbalances in the body which can be controlled with appropriate medication.
Do Something About It
You would find in times of crisis that you feel worst when there is nothing you can do. Action or rather the ability of "doing something about it" often diffuses drastically the anxiety attack. The best you can do is walk to a mirror or a place where you can have a little privacy and tell yourself loudly and confidently, "This is nothing but an anxiety attack. It is okay. It is going away as I talk." With time, this would act like an order to your brain, which would comply instantly. Force yourself to smile if not laugh out loudly. You will find that it is impossible for you to harbor dark thoughts when you are smiling, just as you would find impossible to frown.
Reach Out To Someone You Trust And Talk About What You Are Feeling
This could be your spouse, children, parents, cat or your medical practitioner. The important thing is that you look inward and identify what you feel. As you would verbalize these feeling you will realize (often just as you are talking) how hollow the whole thing sounds. As long as these thoughts are stuffed inside your mind they seem extremely menacing; however, as you would describe them you will realize that things are not as bad as they seemed.
Face Your Fears
As the anxiety attack hits you, you would be tempted to bolt, literally. Most people feel safe running away, hiding, isolating themselves from all people and things like that. Resist the urge to run away from your fears. Rather push yourself into facing them. When you do this, you would sometimes feel that it aggravates you anxiety attack. What actually happens is that it forces you to look closely at your problem and as you do this, you would more often than not realize that no matter what the trigger was, it can be handled. With practice you would gradually be able reduce the power of the grip anxiety has on you.
Think Positive
Stop all negative thoughts that course through your mind. Replace them with positive thoughts. Do not say, "I will not be afraid", say, "I can face this problem"; do not say, "I not let this anxiety attack overwhelm me", say, "I can repel this anxiety attack." At the first glance it might not very different to you – but on a closer look you can observe that the first statement focuses on the negative aspect while the second statement on the positive. You need to completely focus on the positive side if you want to stop your anxiety attack in its tracks. Positive thinking to an anxiety attack is what water is to fire.
Accept That Nothing Is Perfect
Most of the time anxiety attacks when things do not go your way. You need to accept that things would not go your way many times and that it is utopian to expect everything perfect. Remove the tinted glasses and face reality. There is a song I heard once that puts very succinctly, "I beg your pardon/ I never promised you a rose garden/ Along with the sunshine/ There is gonna be a little rain sometime". There is no perfect home, workplace, or relationship. Everything and everybody have their plus and minus points. The sooner you accept this fact, the better you would be able to control your anxiety attacks.
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