How to Tackle Stress and Anxiety

With these uncertain times ahead, it’s completely normal for us to feel some kind of stress or anxiety in our lives. Whether it’s stress with digital learning or anxiety with the unpredictable future of our nation, it’s stress and anxiety nonetheless, and it won’t do us any good to keep all of that bottled up. Written below are 10 fool-proof ways to deal with the escalating stress and anxiety in our lives while helping us strive to be our best selves and reaching an inner state of peace and mind.

1. Listen to music. Try to go on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, or whatever music-streaming service you use, and create a go-to soothing playlist whenever you’re feeling stressed out with something or overwhelmed. Music has a unique link to our emotions and the power to relax our minds. Attempt to create or find a slow and soothing soundtrack or try out a white noise playlist on YouTube. Maybe even make a playlist full of your favorite pop/rock songs to make you feel more energetic and to boost your mood!

2. Meditating. Meditation can produce a deep state of relaxation and a peaceful mind. During meditation, you attempt to focus your attention and reduce the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing your stress and anxiety. Meditating helps to clear your thoughts while lifting all that extra stress and anxiety off of your shoulders. Additionally, there are several meditating tutorials available on YouTube, where you can follow along with the instructor and enter a state of peace and calm. Try finding an empty room in your house without any distractions and attempt to meditate peacefully for around 5 to 10 minutes. Sit up on a criss-cross position and only focus on your breathing. This will help you to clear your mind of any unnecessary thoughts and make you feel more at peace with your “inner self.”

3. Exercising. While this might sound a little tedious, exercising is a simple, yet effective, way to reduce the amount of stress and anxiety in our lives. Exercising releases endorphins, chemicals that act as our body’s natural painkillers, that help to increase sleep, which in turn, helps to calm us down and decrease stress. Endorphins also act as mood elevators and ways of boosting our mental health. In the evening, try going on a brisk walk around your community, or maybe even take out your bike and bike for around 10 to 15 minutes. If you can’t go inside, then find an open space in your house and try doing some yoga or simple stretching exercises. There are many available stretching tutorials available on YouTube, so consider searching some up!

4. Talk it out. What’s on your mind? What’s been bothering you lately? Keeping our secrets and thoughts to ourselves only contributes to our rising levels of stress and anxiety, so attempt to talk to your parents or your friends about it. This might help to ease off the stress of keeping all those thoughts to yourself. Talking it out also helps to gain the support of everyone around you, so now you’re not alone through whatever troubles you’re going through. Additionally, informing your friends and family of what’s going on will make your mind feel clearer and heart lighter, reducing the stress and anxiety on you!

5. Organizing. Most of our stress possibly comes from how often we procrastinate, and most of our anxiety probably comes from trying to overcome our procrastination. Take it upon yourself to one day write down your agenda for the whole week, so you won’t be fumbling around with multiple tasks for the days ahead. Focus on one task at a time, and when you’re done, physically cross of that task from your list and work on the next task. Maybe even attempt to create a weekly schedule, divvying your time into slots for certain activities. Making a schedule has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety as people know what to do at the right time. Additionally, this will help you to make you feel more organized and prepared for the future and tasks ahead.

6. Express your creativity. Expressing our creative side is a go-to way to help relieve stress and anxiety in our lives. Painting, writing, or even working on our hobbies for a while helps to reduce stress-related hormones, including cortisol, which in turn helps us to clear our mind and think easier. Additionally, even starting a hobby is a great idea to tackle stress. Starting a new hobby is a way to create an outlet to express ourselves and helping to overcome stress while giving us something to do in quarantine. There are many hobbies that can help to reduce stress and anxiety, such as drawing, painting, journaling, doing Puzzles, hiking, cooking, and even coloring; the possibilities and endless!

7. Take a nap. While this might seem a little weird, sometimes taking a nap is all people need to feel refreshed and more energetic. Sometimes, the majority of our stress and anxiety is because, at night, we aren’t getting the amount of sleep our body needs and because of that, we get easily burned out. Taking a nap helps to tackle those horrible stress-related hormones that our body produces and makes our minds feel clearer. Taking a quick nap also helps deal with fatigue, helping to handle anxiety.

8. Read a book. This is probably one of the simplest activities that can tackle stress and anxiety. For a few minutes, lie down, open a book, and just start reading. Reading can relax your body by lowering your heart rate and easing the tension in your muscles. A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%. Reading a book can also help you take off troubling thoughts on your mind and go into your “happy place.” Consider one day picking up your favorite book, or a book you’re in the process of reading in, and just read for a solid 15 to 20 minutes.

9. Eat healthier. Sometimes, it’s because of what we eat that we’re experiencing all these extra levels of stress and anxiety. Take it upon yourself to one day, examine your diet. Are you seeing an increase in caffeine, which is a stimulant proven to increase your stress rather than reduce it? Consider swapping it out for herbal tea, which helps to relax your mind and bring you in an inner state of calm. Spying lots of sugar, which delays our body’s response to stress and anxiety attacks? Try eating more fruits, which instead have sucrose, fructose, and glucose, all healthy substitutes to sugar. Fried foods a large part of your diet, which can decrease one’s energy and easily burn them out? Don’t fall for that, eat vegetables instead! Vegetables are filled with rich fiber and vitamins, which help to decrease stress and anxiety in one’s self. Additionally, try attempting to eat these foods, all proven to act as a natural stress and anxiety relievers!

• Dark chocolate

• Whole grains (such as bread)

• Avocados

• Fish

• Warm milk

• Nuts (such as pistachios, almonds)

• Citrus fruits
  

10. Take a break. Sometimes, working non-stop only helps to increase our levels of stress and anxiety. Consider stopping working for a few minutes, and take a break. Try performing a “context switch,” where you switch from working on an activity to a completely different one. This helps to relax certain parts of the brain, as working on different tasks utilizes different parts of our brain. Switching from one activity to another will help you feel refreshed and more energetic for the tasks ahead. Additionally, try completing one of the activities above. It’ll help with dealing with your stress and anxiety while giving you something to do during your “break.” If that doesn’t sound pleasing for you, don’t do anything at all! Sometimes, doing nothing helps us to reflect on our day, mentally organize our thoughts, and focus on the simple things in life.

Yet sometimes, our stress and anxiety can get the overwhelmingly better of us, otherwise known as panic attacks. Panic attacks can occur from severe stress, anxiety, and events that have taken a negative toll on your life. It’s a very serious issue, but don’t worry if you experience one; there are steps to help lessen the symptoms.

• First, accept that it’s a panic attack. It’s okay to have panic attacks, especially in these times right now, so take that first step to admit that it is one and also tell yourself that you’re going to be okay.

• Secondly, take deep breaths. Hyperventilating is a major symptom of panic attacks, which increases fear and escalates stress and anxiety, while deep breathing helps to reduce symptoms of panic during an attack. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, breathing in for four seconds, holding for one second, and then letting out for four. This will help to calm down the symptoms of the panic attack while making you feel more at peace.

• Next, try finding a focus object. During a panic attack, it can be very easy to feel like the world is spinning and everything is a blur. Attempt to find an object, any object, from those greased cake pans to maybe even your parents’ broken coffee machine. Picture the object in clear sight and mentally note everything about it. Focus all your attention on that object, and that will make you feel more grounded to Earth and help your panic attack symptoms to subside.

• Lastly, try doing some light exercise. Consider going on a simple, brisk walk for 10-15 minutes, or doing some simple stretching exercises in your house. Maybe even try performing muscle relaxation techniques, where you attempt to relax one muscle at a time, starting with something simple like the fingers in your hand, and move your way up through your body. This helps to stop panic attack symptoms by controlling your body’s response to the attack as much as possible.