What Helps With Anxiety

What Helps With AnxietyThis article will help you learn what can help with anxiety, including help with panic attacks, and where to find online anxiety help. The great news is that acknowledging “I need help with anxiety” is a very important first step, and if you’ve reached this page you can mark that step as completed.

What Can Help With Anxiety?

Anxiety has four interrelated components:

  • Behavioral symptoms – which include avoidance behavior (avoiding things that make you feel anxious) and “safety behaviors” (actions to prevent “catastrophes” such as only going certain places with a friend to try to prevent having a panic attack)
  • Cognitive symptoms – such as worry and rumination.  The term “cognitive” just means thinking-related.
  • Physical symptoms – fast heart rate, sweating etc
  • Emotion symptoms – feeling worried, nervous etc

The strategies that help with anxiety fall into the same four categories.  You can choose which types of strategies you prefer, but the best way to help anxiety is have some strategies from each of the four categories.   Because the four types of symptoms (cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and physical) are interrelated, when you use one type of strategy to help anxiety, it will also help with your other anxiety symptoms.  For example, physical strategies help with physical symptoms but also help with the cognitive and emotional aspects of anxiety.  To get specific, something like going for a run or walk (a physical strategy) will help you ruminate less and feel better (feel calmer and less hyped up.)

What are the Best Things to Do to Help Anxiety?

There is evidence from research that behavioral strategies are what helps anxiety the most. The other types of strategies are good, but behavioral strategies will usually help anxiety symptoms the most.

What’s fascinating is that behavioral strategies often help change anxiety-related thinking more than directly using strategies that target thoughts. For example, let’s say you avoid getting feedback on your work because you’re nervous that you couldn’t cope with feeling criticized. You could do thinking exercises to help you feel less anxious about potentially receiving criticism. However, if you can get yourself to stop avoiding feedback, your worries about feeling criticized will generally diminish on their own, and you’ll start to ruminate/overthink less whenever you do experience some form of criticism.

I have a huge list of 50 things to do to help anxiety in this blog article I wrote for Psychology Today. Ideally print the list and highlight those that most appeal to you. Notice if behavioral, cognitive, physical, or emotional strategies seem to naturally appeal to you the most. You can do what naturally appeals, but try at least 1-2 strategies in each of the four categories. If you’re interested in an introduction to mindfulness meditation, try these 5 meditation tips for beginners.

Things to Do to Help With Anxiety – Specific types of anxiety.

What helps anxiety attacks?

This section is aimed at people who want help with panic attacks. Physical strategies are best types of strategies for how to help panic attacks. Breathing techniques in particular are the best way to stop anxiety fast. Breathing techniques for anxiety work by automatically because when you slow your breathing, your heart rate will naturally slow down too, and all the body systems involved in the panic attack will become calmer. Focusing on your breathing can also help you calm your anxious thoughts by giving you something else to concentrate on. Go here to learn some simple, effective breathing exercises for anxiety in just a few minutes.

Educating your friends and family about what helps with anxiety attacks is a good way to get effective support. For example, have them read the article on breathing techniques for anxiety.

As a general rule, what can help anxiety attacks the most is learning strategies to reduce your fear around having panic attacks, and your avoidance of situations in which you fear having an attack. Panic attacks are very unpleasant and scary but for people with panic disorder, it’s usually the fear of having a panic attack that is more debilitating and life-limiting than the attacks themselves.

What Helps Social Anxiety.

Social anxiety is a very common form of anxiety. What helps for anxiety about social interactions? There are two main types of strategies that are my go-to options for what helps with social anxiety. The main one is to look at what social situations you’re avoiding due to anxiety. Include those were your avoidance is getting in the way of your success or your enjoyment of life. For example, maybe you avoid public speaking and it is impeding your career to the point you feel motivated to do something about it. Include the small things you avoid e.g., you avoid entertaining friends at your home, but would like to do that. Or, you avoid asking strangers for directions, or asking questions in meetings. There may be certain people you avoid interacting with due to anxiety, such as a particular senior person at work, or one of your spouse’s friends if you’re not sure s/he likes you. Once you have a comprehensive list of what you’ve been avoiding (only what you’re motivated to change), order the list from least to most intimidating. Work through the list, starting with the least intimidating. Do each thing on your list several times, ideally until your anxiety is half what it started with. For example, if you feel 4/10 anxious about talking to a particular person, then practice that until your anxiety doing that is only approx 2/10. It does’t need to be exact.

What can help with anxiety about having made social mistakes? If you ruminate after social interactions then learning some self-compassion skills is a great way to break the cycle of rumination and overthinking. See my book, The Anxiety Toolkit, or this excerpt from The Anxiety Toolkit posted on Oprah.com. The book is especially aimed at people who struggle with rumination (overthinking), excessive hesitation, fear of criticism, avoidance behavior, and paralyzing perfectionism.

Below I’m going to answer some more common questions about getting help for anxiety.

What Helps Anxiety Go Away Completely?

You might think that you want your anxiety to go away completely but that’s not realistic or desirable. Anxiety is a useful emotion. A predisposition to anxiety isn’t a bad thing. In an evolutionary sense, it’s useful for any tribe to have some members who are bolder and less anxious, and others who are cautious and more anxious. They’re the ones on the lookout for things that could go wrong, and who don’t dive head first into dangerous or unwise situations. Both types of people have strengths. One of the core exercises in The Anxiety Toolkit is to understand the ways you anxiety helps you, and the ways it hurts you in your life. Learning how to make anxiety work for you in a positive way, and reducing any shame you feel about having a predisposition to anxiety is part of the process of overcoming anxiety problems.

What Helps Calm Anxiety Straight Away?

All of the strategies discussed work quickly, especially the behavioral and physical strategies. Changing anxious thinking patterns can take longer. To get an idea of what’s involved in changing anxious thoughts, try this article about a quick, simple Cognitive Behavioral Therapy technique for changing your thoughts, and this article that’s a brief guide to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy..

What Vitamin Helps Anxiety?

What vitamin helps anxiety is going to vary somewhat from person to person. For example, if you are low in iron then a vitamin containing iron is likely to help with feelings of anxiety and depression. If you’re not low in iron, then it probably won’t help much.

Other than iron, magnesium and B vitamins can help with both anxiety and energy. If you’re feeling anxious and depressed, then getting your Vitamin D level and your iron level tested is recommended. If you can, get a full blood workup to make sure you’re not deficient in any other vitamins, such as B vitamins.

Don’t go overboard with vitamins. It’s important that you don’t take a toxic level of vitamins. Too much of a particular vitamin can be harmful.

Where to Get Help with Anxiety.

If you’re looking for personal, one-on-one help with anxiety then Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the type of therapy that has the best evidence base for anxiety. Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy often works well for social anxiety disorder.

For online help for anxiety, try these resources, and for a book, try my book The Anxiety Toolkit. Reading evidence-based anxiety books can be a great way to learn about your options for getting help for anxiety, and what type of therapy might work best for you.

If you’re asking yourself “What can I do to help my anxiety?” you’re likely to be someone who therapy works well for as the treatments that work the best are those that require you to work collaboratively with your therapist, and be a sort of anxiety detective in learning about your anxiety and the strategies are best for YOU as a unique individual. What calms anxiety generally is all well and good, but what you really want to know is what calms anxiety for YOU. The Anxiety Toolkit can also help you identify what anxiety techniques suit your preferences, personality, and lifestyle.

What Helps With Anxiety