7 Ways To Stop Anxiety And Panic Without Drugs Or Alcohol

Here are 7 tips from healthdival on how to stop anxiety and panic without using drugs, alcohol or food!. Anxiety is totally your choice. Choose a different thought and get a different feeling.  Work on it and see how this changes for you.  It’s guaranteed.

Retreat and retract – aka take a moment to chill out

Sometimes we can become obsessed with a thought that creates worry and anxiety. It can take up so much mental space, drain your energy and ultimately take you out of your present moment, stopping you from enjoying your day. Since this is usually just mind-made thoughts creating negativity, it’s really important to retreat and retract. In other words take a moment to chill it out.Then take a moment to stop, breathe and calm yourself down by reminding yourself that it is your choice to feel this way and that this is not the best choice of feeling for the rest of the day.
Negative thoughts can drain your energy and stop you from enjoying your day so it’s important to take a moment to calm yourself.

Check your thoughts for ‘catastrophizing’

Anxiety is a feeling being created simply and solely from your thoughts. Thoughts pop into our minds all the time and it’s good to be reminded that actually, we have a lot more control of the thoughts that we choose than we realise. The only reason you are feeling this way is because you are thinking in a ‘catastrophic’ way – in other words is negative!

In other words if you are thinking ‘I cannot believe my email system is down and I now I cannot do ANYTHING, what will my clients think of me?’ this will be creating a lot of negative feelings.  Instead start to question that thought, ask yourself,  ‘Is this thought serving me or making me feel bad?’  If it is the latter, question the hell out of it – for example, ‘Is it useful for me to think this way?’ and ‘Do I really believe my clients will hate me because I didn’t get back to them for a few hours? – and start thinking about your situation in a more positive way, for example ‘my emails will work again and right now I am doing my best within the current situation!’

Remember, your thoughts are not facts

Us humans really do believe that what we think is always a fact. The truth is when we believe that every thought we have is true, we open ourselves up to a whole world of pain and stress. If a thought comes into your mind that ‘you’re not good enough’ and you believe it, it can trigger a tonne of other negative thoughts and feelings around this. However this is an unmanaged mind.Allow these thoughts to float in and then out of your mind, and remember they are just thoughts.

Choose how you feel – you can

Anxiety is simply a feeling created by a negative thought process. Ultimately we get to choose how we feel. Choosing Anxiety is not ideal on any day so its time to start deciding how you do want to feel and then work your mind around how you are going to get there.

 Feelings are simply just feelings. They cannot hurt you unless you sit in the negative all day without wanting to change it. Choose a different feeling like ‘calm’ and then ask yourself questions such as ‘How can I think about this in order to feel ‘calmer’?  Remember this is massive growth for you so go gently. But don’t sit there thinking ‘I cant do this’. You can. Keep asking yourself questions about how you can and you will find the answers are inside you.Replacing a negative thought to more positive one can help to suppress anxiety.

Have a chat with yourself as though you’re your own best friend

A great exercise to try now is to write down your anxious thoughts or worries in a notepad. Then imagine your friend is telling you this is how she feels.  How would you answer her back? What would you say to her from the point of view of being a caring, rational and loving friend. What, for example, if your thought is ‘I am freaking out about going out on this date later, what if it is just awful?’ you could respond to the thought with ‘This is only dinner with a boy! He could be a really interesting person and it might be a really enjoyable evening whether there is romance there or not. He might even be more scared than you!’.Writing down your anxious thoughts in a notepad will make them to look less scary.

 Anxiety is creating adrenalin – which is why you feel wired – but it can’t hurt you

Many feelings we choose also result in physical symptoms.Your mind is powerful and you are letting it set off a roller coaster in your own body!  Your body thinks it needs to fight, or flight (run away from danger) so it starts to produce a physical reaction. Although adrenaline feels scary, it can’t really hurt you. So next time you experience those weird feeling symptoms, remember, it’s just adrenaline and you calm it down by calming down your mind.

Talk to someone you trust

Anxiety can feel isolating when you believe you’re alone in what you’re going through and that you are the only one in the world that feels like this. The truth is that anxiety is actually common – but it is something that you do not have to live with and something that you can change.  It’s really important to open up to friends and loved ones about your thoughts and feelings as talking about things can help you to feel better right away and get you seeing things with a clearer and more realistic, truthful perspective. A conversation with your loved ones will help you to see things with a clearer, more realistic perspective.

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