10 Tips to cope with Anxiety

Slow breathing

When you’re anxious, your breathing becomes faster and shallower. Try deliberately slowing down your breathing. Count to three as you breathe in slowly – then count to three as you breathe out slowly.

Progressive muscle relaxation

Find a quiet location. Close your eyes and slowly tense and then relax each of your muscle groups from your toes to your head. Hold the tension for three seconds and then release quickly. This can help reduce the feelings of muscle tension that often comes with anxiety.

Stay in the present moment

Anxiety can make your thoughts live in a terrible future that hasn’t happened yet. Try to bring yourself back to where you are. Practicing meditation can help.

Healthy lifestyle

Keeping active, eating well, going out into nature, spending time with family and friends, reducing stress and doing the activities you enjoy are all effective in reducing anxiety and improving your wellbeing.

Take small acts of Bravery

Avoiding what makes you anxious provides some relief in the short term but can make you more anxious in the long term. Try approaching something that makes you anxious – even in a small way. The way through anxiety is by learning that what you fear isn’t likely to happen – and if it does, you’ll be able to cope with it.

Challenge your self-talk

How you think affects how you feel. Anxiety can make you overestimate the danger in a situation and underestimate your ability to handle it. Try to think of different interpretations to a situation that’s making you anxious, rather than jumping to the worst-case scenario. Look at the facts for and against your thought being true.

Plan worry time

It’s hard to stop worrying entirely so set aside some time to indulge your worries. Even 10 minutes each evening to write them down or go over them in your head can help stop your worries from taking over at other

times.

Get to know your anxiety

Keep a diary of when it’s at its best – and worst. Find the patterns and plan your week – or day – to proactively manage your anxiety.

Learn from others

Talking with others who also experience anxiety – or are going through something similar – can help you feel less alone.

Be kind to yourself

Remember that you are not your anxiety. You are not weak. You are not inferior. You have a mental health condition. It’s called anxiety.

Choose your Life, Don’t settle for it. You can’t afford depression!!!

Are you living your life your way?

• 0%Yes
• 0%No way- I need help
• 0%No idea what I want. Help me

You think you’re on the right path but somehow you feel lost. You think you’re

doing your best. And you probably are, but deep inside you hear a little voice crying to get out. You try to silence it but you can still hear it.

Your loved ones want the best for you.

Since you were a child your parents had their own dreams about what you will become, who you’ll choose to love, and how you will live your life.

That’s lovely when it works favorably, but sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and suddenly you feel lost and confused. You’ve lost your dreams, desires, and vision of the life you wanted. 

Caring about what other people want for you can cause you to live to fulfill their desires and forget about your own.

Happiness cannot happen if you don’t live your truth. It may cause mistakes, failure, and regrets but it will also bring lessons, wisdom, and personal harmony. If you don’t live your truth, you will become angry, resentful, and end up in a life that doesn’t suit you. But of course, it’s not easy to just be true to who you are.

Finding your inner truth is a process that takes time. And sometimes it takes a very long time. You have to work to pay the bills, but while you are being responsible, try to be true to that voice inside you.

When you discover the true you, AHA! happens; you know what you want and are free to go after it with every ounce of your being. When you do, you live contently—comfortable in your own skin—able to achieve whatever impossible dreams you had imagined for yourself.

Listening to your inner voice is a skill. It’s a journey that doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about tuning in to your deeper self and tuning out the noise that is disrupting your own voice. It’s a daily practice of trial and error. Sometimes you have to change the direction you were headed in, make a u-turn, and go back again before you can move forward. It’s about falling down, getting hurt, brushing yourself off, and getting up again and again.

Self Care Tips when you have Depression

1. Journaling

The idea of writing in a journal might seem spectacularly unhelpful for depression. You want to get away from negative thoughts, not wallow in them further.

Decide how long you’ll write in your journal each day. Then, set a timer for half that time. Vent your frustrations and distress until the timer goes off, then write about more positive and meaningful experiences.

Get your negative thoughts out. Then, aim to fill the same amount of space (whether that’s 10 lines, half a page, or one full page) by recording positive experiences, or challenging and reframing those negative thoughts.

2. Practice positive self-talk

The self-critical and self-defeating thoughts that often accompany depression can feel impossible to escape. Maybe they play on a loop — a track permanently set to repeat that you can’t seem to switch off. But this is depression talking, and depression often lies.

Revising the way you talk to yourself is an essential self-care tip for depression.

Try breaking down the negative thoughts:

Identify the thought.

Consider whether you have any proof to back up that thought. What evidence might counter it instead?

Get more insight by exploring cognitive distortions, like all-or-nothing thinking, mind reading, or overgeneralization.

Ask yourself if you’d say the same thing to a friend. No? What would you say instead?

Then, try slowly mixing positivity into your internal dialogue:

Aim to focus on everyday humorous and lighthearted moments instead of the darker ones.

When you find yourself fixating on flaws, remind yourself of your strengths and positive qualities.

Accept praise and compliments instead of brushing them aside.

3. Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness can help you tune into your emotions, making it easier to recognize distressing thoughts and feelings as mere thoughts — not reality.

Mindfulness also helps you stay present and engaged in your day-to-day life, so you’ll be more aware of pleasurable moments and sensations.

Consider these quick steps to enhance mindfulness:

• Do one thing at a time. Devote all of your senses to that activity.

• Take a nature break. Sit outside and experience the world with all of your senses.

• When negative thoughts surface, sit with them briefly before reacting or responding.

• Try meditation.

• Work with a therapist who offers mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.