In and of itself, anxiety is not necessarily an illness that requires professional intervention. As is the case with depression and guilt, most people experience some of it on a regular basis. So long as the anxiety is not interfering with a person’s ability to engage in day-to-day life it is probably not appropriate to regard it as an illness.
Even so, anxiety can make a person uncomfortable even though it is not a diagnosable condition. There are many tools that can be used by a person to calm their anxiety in moments when they feel it is getting too intense. Two of the most easily accessible are described here.
Generally helpful techniques include:
1. Deep Breathing
Find a quiet place to sit down. Sit up squarely, legs unfolded, feet flat on the ground/floor, palms resting on your thighs, close your eyes and take a deep, slow breath through your nose. Fill your lungs and hold the breath for a count of three (3) then release it slowly through pursed lips. Repeat this simple breathing in and out six times. While doing it, try to replace all of your thoughts with a blank white space in your mind and think only about the breathing.
For many people, this simple exercise will quickly reduce the rates of both respiration and heartbeat, lower blood pressure and substantially defuse the immediate feeling of anxiety rather dramatically. Requiring no special equipment, it can be done anywhere there is a place to sit down alone. In teaching some teens how to do this, they tell me one of the only available places to find such a spot in High School is a stall in the bathroom! The place does not matter – Only the activity.
Deep breathing can be developed further into a type of meditation many people find helpful in managing their daily lives.
2. Deliberate Distraction
Distractions and distractibility have acquired a bad name but sometimes they can be good things.
We all get distracted sometimes but in this instance, the suggestion is to distract one’s self intentionally. With anxiety, generally the more one thinks about and dwells on it, the worse it tends to become. Deliberate distraction can be quite effective in reducing intermittent episodes of anxiety that is just a tad too high for comfort.
Distractions can be as simple as turning on the TV, picking up a book or magazine, listening to some favorite music or calling a friend to talk. Going for a walk is as much a distraction from the anxiety as some people need. The object is to give your mind somewhere else to go, something else on which to focus for a while. Mild anxiety can be, in this way, temporarily displaced. Each moment you can dampen your anxious feelings down reduces the power they have to cause you discomfort.
An Anxiety Disorder is not just normal nervousness. Some anxiety is both normal and expected. If the aforementioned techniques do not help quell your anxiety sufficiently for you to feel OK, a consultation with a professional may be the next appropriate step.