Self Help For Anxiety
For some people, anxiety self help techniques are enough to help with mild feelings of anxiety.
For other people, self help techniques for anxiety are a valuable tool to support professional anxiety counselling.
If you might need professional help, please get professional help.
But self help techniques for anxiety can often help a lot too.
Are you ready to practise anxiety self help?
What Are The 9 Self Help Tips For Anxiety?
1) Controlled Breathing
We know that when something shocks people, they gasp and breath in.
When people relax, they sigh and breath out.
This is hard wired into our physiology, and we can use it to help calm anxiety.
By breathing out for longer than we breath in, the brain sends powerful message to the body to relax, and the body sends powerful messages to the brain to relax. An amazing cycle for a calmer mind.
Simply by breathing out for longer than you breath in.
2) Timing Your Breaths
When we count, we are giving our conscious rational minds something important to do, and something to do that is far better than worrying.
The more you practise relaxing, the easier it will be to take long, deep breaths.
Find the numbers that work for you, and change them if you need to.
Breathing in to the count of 3, and out to the count of 6 often works well for starters.
You can even visualise the numbers, as smoke, or bubbles, or lights, then notice how they appear and change as you count.
3) Take Your Mind To Amazing Places
If your brain wants to be busy, it might as well be busy helping you.
While doing the breathing exercises, imagine yourself in the most amazing places.
Some peope go to a beach, forest, garden, mountain, building or room.
Whatever is right for you at the time is right.
Notice what you notice.
See what you’d see. The colours, shapes, shades.
Hear what you’d hear.
Feel what you’d feel.
Imagine what it would feel like to be the best possible you, in this amazing place.
4) Self-Haven
Havening Techniques are a new and powerful psychosensory therapy.
We often use Havening during Surrey Counselling sessions, along with specific thought work, to help rapidly release traumas, phobias and fears.
It also works really well for anxiety self help, and is known as self havening.
The strangest thing is, you probably already know that it works and know people that do it without realising!
You may have seen people who are trying to work something out, and they start rubbing their arms, hands, legs or face.
Scientists recently discovered that this creates very relaxing delta brain waves in the emotional centre of the brain. These are the same brain waves that exist in our brains during the deepest most relaxing sleep.
While you do steps 1 to 4 from above, you can also give your brain an amazing massage, by simply:
- Hubbing your hands together;
- Gently stroking your face, cheeks or forehead;
- Crossing your arms, and stroking your arms, from your shoulders to your elbows.
5) Take The Time
Find a way to fit anxiety self help tips 1 to 4 into your life.
Some people set an alarm, once or more each day, and then a timer for 5 to 10 minutes, while they calmly breath, counting, in amazing place, with Havening touch.
Even 5 minutes a day can make amazing differences.
6) Physical Nutrition
Some people say that we should treat our human bodies like we would a complex plant.
It needs good food (avoiding sugars, saturated fats, processed foods), good hydration, sunlight and movement.
Even slight improvements in our levels of physical nutrition can significantly help anxiety.
It’s not rocket science! It’s obvious anxiety self help.
So perhaps it is time to do it?
7) Psychological Nutrition
Our human bodies are actually more than complex plants!
For humans, psychological nutrition is also important.
And this is not just about relaxing.
The brain needs emotional nutrition, through positive experiences, which might be linked to the community and people, or the hobbies we do.
The 9 emotional needs from Human Givens are also a great way to look at this.
It is OK for people of any and all ages to have fun. In fact, it is necessary.
Find things that make you feel good and that provide healthy non-addictive psychological nutrition.
Then do them more.
What Else?
Still feel anxious?
Simply do the anxeity self help activities more.
Your brain and body have all the knowledge, skills and resources you need to help you feel good.
They just need your help to make it happen.
Contact Us
If you’d like to know more about anxiety self help or anxiety counselling, call 0800 292 2126, book an appointment, or message us here:
