Many of us know ourselves to be predisposed to anxiety. We get nervous over what some might consider, “nothing” and life can be very difficult this way. Well this week we’re talking about some lifestyle changes that you can take on that may help you become more calm, cool and collected.
Disclaimer
I don’t often feel the need to put disclaimers in front of my posts, but today I’m going to because it is a tricky subject.
So, anxiety can be both a feeling and a diagnosis. Some people have both, others may experience one over the other. I am not going to tell you that feeling anxious isn’t as valid as having an anxiety or panic disorder, but they are different things.
If you are diagnosed with an anxiety of panic disorder, please don’t use these things as an excuse to forego professional help. And if you think you may have one of these disorders, also go see a professional to get diagnosed, if at all possible. (I know not everyone has access to medical help.)
That all being said, don’t feel like going to see a professional will fix all your problems, either. Even if you are working with a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I encourage you to put some of these into practice if you feel led. Making these changes in your lifestyle can be a big help to you, as it has been for me and many others.
Nutrition
What you put in your body has a direct effect on its effectiveness at dealing with the world around you, as well as a direct effect on your mind via the mind-body connection.
In order to have everything working smoothly, you want to make sure your body is getting what it needs. So make sure that you’re eating your vegetables, getting enough vitamins and minerals, and drinking water. Another helpful thing is increasing your fat and protein intake, and cutting down on sugars. These make our body and brain basically go into overdrive and can definitely have an adverse affect on our anxiety prone dispositions.
Also, be sure that you’re eating enough, just in general. Sometimes when we’re hungry, we don’t think straight. If we are prone to anger or worry, we will do so even more when we’re hungry. So don’t let yourself run on empty all the time. Be sure you’re consistently eating enough to fuel your body and your brain.
Exercise
Now I’ve talked about the benefits of exercise on this site before, in bits and pieces, but I have found exercise to be particularly helpful with quieting anxious thoughts and feelings.
Firstly, in the moment of anxiety, you tend to have a lot of excess energy without much idea of what to do with it. If you channel it into breaking a sweat, not only will it be diverted away from your physical focus, but once it’s used up you will be able to think straight.
But in the long term, exercise helps with anxiety too. Physically, a fitter body is a more calm body. Your heart doesn’t need to work as hard to pump the blood all over, your brain is more used to stress hormones, and not only that, but you have a steady stream of endorphins pumping in.
Emotionally too, exercise is a good habit. You develop a useful coping skill for dealing with anxious thoughts and feelings. When this response is grounded into your routine as a way to unwind your anxious mind, you will find that not only is it a healthy coping mechanism, it’s one that actually works. It helps you let off steam, and then allows you to see your situation from a much more rational standpoint. All-around win!
Meditation
When I started meditation, I didn’t realize what I was doing. I stumbled upon it when I was the most unhappy I had ever been, and completely wrapped up in the negative thoughts in my head.
Not only did I not know what I was doing, but I had no name or concept for it. I guess if someone were to have noticed and asked me about it I would have just told them I was “zoning out”. But there’s something so special about getting into that calm, quiet place. The one without a bunch of thoughts clogging up your experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for thinking. But sometimes we just need a break. It’s like how we can’t stay awake indefinitely. Eventually, we’ll need to sleep. I think our brains are the same way. Eventually, they need a rest from all the thinking. A lot of us find this rest in passive entertainment, (like watching tv or reading books, etc.) but those things don’t allow your brain to be fully at rest. It’s still trying to follow along and conceptualize whatever’s going on. Meditation lets you pretty much just shut off your brain, completely, while still awake. And using this technique means your brain can fully rest, and do so quicker than it would if you were “relaxing” in a more roundabout way. If you’re interested in learning how to start a meditation practice for yourself, you can check out my post on it by clicking here.
Action
Now this one can often be a point of contention, for me as well as many other anxious people, but I’ve decided to call myself out today. Although not every situation can be fixed right away, there’s something to be said about the anxiety of the procrastinator.
Some of us think that we thrive under pressure, so we keep putting ourselves in these freak out scenarios, while others are just so nervous about things we end up putting them off. Well, let me put it this way: they say that life is run by those who show up, and I have found that to be largely true.
Yes, there is definitely value in planning something out before you go to do it, but at some point it just becomes overthinking and you psych yourself out. For the bulk of things in life, getting something done mostly right is better than not doing them at all. Listen, you’re going to mess up. That’s inevitable. And you might end up looking silly. But if you manage to get some of it out of the way, you’ll likely end up feeling better than if you put the whole thing off.
I’ve written a post about this too, which you can find here. It’s called facing your fears and taking action, but really what it boils down to is a sort of self-discipline. If there’s something to be done and you can sort of conceptualize what you need to do, then do it. Don’t talk yourself out of this, and don’t put it off because that will only serve to torture you.
If you can start taking regular action towards your goals and responsibilities, you’ll find that they often weren’t quite as scary as they seemed.
Artistic expression
Now this one has been a life-saver for me, in so many ways, so I couldn’t help but include it. Because like I said, sometimes a situation can’t be solved in one go, and the tension has to be held and tolerated. For me, that’s where artistic expression came in.
There are many ways of expressing yourself. For me, it’s been the trifecta of music, writing, and visual art. (For you it may be dancing, or sculpting or something else. It’s important to find what works for you.) I found these things to be tangible ways to tolerate immense feelings of tension, fear, and disappointment.
Using these tools, I could register the feeling, fully observe and embody it, trying to let it bloom and take its full form, and release it into the world (or the page or whatever). In this way I could, for a while, be free of it. And it was freedom I needed so badly.
You may not consider yourself to be very “creative” or “artistically skilled”. And that’s okay—you don’t have to be. I would, however, still suggest this approach to anyone who is looking for more emotional regulation and tolerance.
The usefulness in creative expression, I believe, isn’t whether it’s “good”, but rather, whether it finds itself to be effective. If your creative pursuits help you to understand, process and cope with your real life struggles, then I would deem that effective. And if you can manage to help others do the same through coming into contact with your creative expressions, then I would consider that doubly effective.
The human experience
I want to tell you that you’re not a freak. Diagnosis or not, anxiety and nervousness are things that crop up in the human experience from time to time and it is not useful to judge ourselves for felling them and struggling to balance them in our lives.
I don’t like being anxious. And I don’t think that ever being told to “calm down “ has genuinely helped me to calm down. But I think the less I told myself that “I’m an anxious person” and the more I started to re-frame it as, “I am feeling some anxiety right now”, the better I started to get.
I know it can be tough when you have a diagnosis. And I’m not saying that your mental illnesses or disorders will be able to be eradicated by changing one simple thought. But I do know that when I was in my darkest place I didn’t know if I could ever get better or be happy or healthy. And moreover, I didn’t know who I would be without my “insanity”, without my pain.
And I guess that’s what I’m saying. It was a big step to be able to stop identifying with my problems so much, and eventually, start identifying with things that I like (or at least didn’t hate) about me, and my life, and what I’ve been through.
I think this thought could help a lot of people, if they’re in a place to receive it. Maybe you’re not an anxious person. Maybe you’re just a person who experiences anxiety. It’s okay to struggle with this. It doesn’t make you any less of a person, and it doesn’t make you forever broken. Do what you need, in order to take care of you, and in the meantime, try some of these lifestyle changes. See if any of them work for you. Who knows, you may find your experience improving in the near future.
