lena ralene

Today’s post will go along with the mental health series that I have going on. As a sufferer of anxiety I have read and learned a lot about it. Throughout my reading I have learned quite a bit about different things that you can do to help reduce anxiety and today I will be sharing 10 of them with you!

1. Yoga – Doing yoga helps keep you calm and focuses your energy on slowing your heart rate and reduces your blood pressure.
2. Meditation – Meditation helps you to stay in the present and not focus so much on the past or future, which is often what orients anxiety.
3. Exercise – Like yoga, exercise helps keep you focused on the now. Having a routine of 3-5 days a week for 30 minutes can help reduce your anxious feelings.
4. Figuring out your triggers – Figuring out your triggers helps you learn how to bypass those triggers and place your focus on something else.
5. Affirmations – Repeating positive affirmations can help shift your negative and anxious thinking patterns.
6. Grounding techniques – The most common grounding technique is the 5,4,3,2,1 technique. You name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 good thing about you. By doing this it allows you to shift your focus off what was causing you anxiety.
7. Sleep – Establishing a bedtime routine can help with your feelings of anxiety. Lack of good quality sleep at night intensifies those feelings of anxiety during the day.
8. Get outside – Being exposed to natural sunlight triggers the brain to release serotonin which helps increase the feeling of calmness. If you cannot get outside even looking at nature scenes can help increase serotonin levels.
9. Keeping a journal – Writing about things that are causing you stress or anxiety can often reduce the intensity of anxiety associated with them.
10. Medication – There are many medicinal options out there for you if that is the route that you prefer to take. This can be a tricky path because for most it involves trial and error until you find the right drug and dosage that works for you. This also could involve needing to go back to have your dosing or drug adjusted or changed.

I hope that if you suffer anxiety you were able to take something from this. If you have any other techniques to help reduce anxiety let me know in the comments!

Until next time..

xoxo