Chapter 6
The Best Ways to Beat Anxiety
with Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy
People battling anxiety have to struggle with unwanted thoughts popping into their mind. Sometimes, your intrusive thoughts may be informed by the nature of your anxiety. For instance, people with generalized anxiety have a tendency to receive intrusive thoughts involving one of their loved ones, whereas people with social phobias tend to receive intrusive thoughts that remind them of a moment they embarrassed themselves. Forms of anxiety include:
Around 12 percent of the population may have an anxiety disorder in any given year. Between five and 30 percent report having one sometime during their lifetime. It usually occurs between the ages of 15 and 35. The most common variety of anxiety disorder is a phobia.
The causes of anxiety disorders may be genetic and environmental. A history of trauma, such as child abuse or hardship (i.e. poverty) can lead to it. The experience of anxiety disorder can coincide with other mental health disorders, such as forms of depression and personality disorders. The physical wear of an anxiety disorder or the combination of multiple disorders can tax the body to the point of heart disease, substance abuse, or hyperthyroidism.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and pharmaceutical therapies are frequently the treatments for anxiety disorders. Mindfulness exercises work, and many OCD patients opt for self-help sources.
What Makes You Anxious?
Anxiety is merely a persistent fear, and it extends to your future. Having an anxiety disorder will surely harm your quality of life. You get into the mindset of seeing problems where there are none. Anxiety puts a quality of extremity to your life so that you’re either withdrawn and isolated, or aggressive. Both extremes tend to stifle social cohesion.
How Does Fear Manifest?
When you are frightened or anxious, both your body and mind operate too quickly. The following are some of the things that may happen thanks to fear and anxiety:
The physical symptoms of fear can be very frustrating, especially if you have no idea about the cause of your fear or anxiety. There are various triggers for fear and sometimes the brain keeps sending these messages even unnecessarily. You can only improve your capacity to understand your relationship with fear by raising your self-awareness.
Panic Attacks
This is the condition of being overwhelmed by the mental and physical feelings of fear. Sufferers of heart attacks report difficulty breathing, increased heartbeat, and a crazy sensation of losing it.
Worry
This is the magnification of issues so that a person tends to believe that the future is bleak. A worrying individual has a loss of hope, and they expect terrible things to happen at a later time.
The following are some of the techniques for getting rid of your fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and pretty much any other mental disorder:
Face Your Fears
It might sound counterintuitive, but it is the way to go. You gain more power by exposing yourself to your fears rather than running away from them. When you expose yourself to your fears, you gain something valuable: knowledge. Thus, you banish ignorance and realize effective ways of overcoming your anxiety.
Know Yourself
To deliver yourself wholesomely from your fears, you have to spend some time understanding the person that you really are. What are the origins of your fears? What was your childhood like? Knowing that most of our attitudes and fears were formed from early childhood, as well as our experiences, it is incredibly important to unravel as much as you can about yourself.
Exercise
Performing a workout requires your full attention. Thus, your mind is taken away from its fears and focuses upon the task at hand. This is a great technique for getting rid of your fears and anxiety. Additionally, exercises improve heart health, leading to great blood circulation, strong immunity, and effectively decreasing bad emotions.
Relax
When you make your body and mind relax, fears will be pushed away. This state of relaxation may be achieved through deep breathing. This involves assuming a meditation position and breathing in and out while clearing the noise from your mind. It helps in restoring the body to a state of balance.
Healthy Eating
Having a clean diet is critical in ensuring that you stay in perfect mental and emotional health. A clean diet focuses on key nutrients and eliminates junk. You want to keep a healthy blood sugar level. When your blood sugar goes down, you are susceptible to panic attacks and anxiety.
Drink Alcohol in Moderation or Avoid It Altogether
If you are nervous, it can be tempting to down a few bottles. However, understand that the ensuing state of bliss is short-lived. You cannot drink your way to calmness. Instead, learn to face your fears and anxieties while sober. This is more fruitful.
Faith
If you believe in a supernatural entity that oversees the universe and the people in it, then it is helpful to trust upon them for deliverance. The more faith you have that this supernatural entity will reach out to you, the better your chances of actually getting rid of your fears and anxieties.
Medication
Medications appeal to people who have time constraints. They may not be the best treatment model, but when combined with other models, the use of medication becomes incredibly helpful.
Support Groups
There are many people battling fears and anxieties just like you. Thanks to the internet, you don’t even have to stress out finding these people. They have forums, Facebook groups, websites, and so on. However, before you request to join a support group, make a point of understanding their principles, so that you can weigh up whether you would fit in.