Do You Have Anxiety? Dealing with Anxiety Can Change Your Life

June 18th, 2008 Posted in Anxiety Cures

If you have anxiety, it can affect your whole life, not just how you feel. It can also affect how you behave and act. In fact, it can have a great impact on your physical and mental health. If your anxiety is mild, it can be simply a bit unsettling, but if it’s in severe, it can be very debilitating.

What Causes Anxiety?

There are many different things that cause anxiety. One of the most central of these is stress. If you have a life that is constantly stressful, you can get to the point where stress overwhelms your body and your body begins to shut down; this can make anxiety begin to take over.

If you have negative experiences, these can also cause anxiety. The negative experience can first be a trigger for anxiety directly related to the negativity. For example, you may be involved in a violent occurrence, or an emotionally stressful situation. However, the anxiety itself can stay after the event itself has gone away, because you can live in fear that the event will occur again, and thus the anxiety can be ever-present.

How Do You Deal with Anxiety?

When you deal with anxiety, you first must determine what’s causing it to begin with. Once you determine the root cause, dealing with the anxiety becomes much easier. Once you know what causes it, you can figure out a way to treat your anxiety.

One quick way to ease your anxiety (if not completely negate it) is to utilize certain breathing methods that can lead to relaxation. Whether at home or out, you can change your breathing to relax and calm down. This can be one of the most effective ways to deal with anxiety in the short term.

When you alter your breathing, you instantly improve your state of mind because you increase oxygenation and consciously focus on relaxation at the same time. If you can remember to breathe deeply and regularly when you experience anxiety, you will be better able to cope with it.

One simple breath exercise that can assist you in dealing with anxiety is the “sigh breath.” It’s a very simple breathing method and can help relieve tension in your neck, diaphragm and chest. You utilize it by breathing in slowly and steadily through your nose and then exhaling fully through your nose or mouth.

The sigh breath helps you to instantly reduce tension because it temporarily raises the level of carbon dioxide in your blood. It also holds your attention for a few minutes and can help lead your thoughts away from whatever is causing your anxiety. It can also help you reduce tension in your body itself, especially if it exists in your chest, abdomen or throat.

Breathing techniques like the sigh breath usually work very well. However, if your anxiety problems are specifically interfering with your life so that they are quite serious, it may be helpful to speak your doctor and consider prescription medications for least the short-term, until you can better manage your anxiety.