Anxiety and fear are quite normal and in many instances useful – they can help an individual to better cope with certain situations and keep him or her alert and careful. However, millions of people suffer from various anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), or phobias. These are not mild fears and anxieties, but rather severe disorders that persevere; it is believed that in the United States alone, more than 40 million people older than 18 suffer from anxiety disorders.Once you have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder what is the best way to deal with it?
Get rid of the fear of your fear
Psychologists have confirmed that most anxiety attacks stem from fear. When a fearful thought creeps into the person’s mind, this will trigger an attack. Even the fear of an anxiety attack by itself, is a trigger and it is proven that this “meta” fear can be undone. Once this “meta” fear is resolved, the trigger is no longer there and anxiety attacks will cease to happen.
For a good resource on how to permanently resolve this “meta’ fear, click here.
Understand and analyze your worries
Your first step should be to understand and analyze your worries. Put your mind into work and carefully determine if your worries, fears, or phobias are justified: being afraid of a dog when one is growling at you is more than understandable, staying home all the time because you are afraid of dogs is quite unreasonable. Understanding the nature of your worries will help you decrease their power, it will also help you decide on the practical steps that you can take in order to overcome them.
Postpone worrying
This is not the same as ignoring your worries, this is more telling yourself that there’s no need to worry now about something that is only about to happen two weeks from now. This will actually help you reduce anxiety and is a very simple, yet very powerful technique. In many cases people worry about things that are insignificant or about future events that never materialize – postponing your worries might actually lead to avoiding them altogether.
Take action
Contrary to the popular belief most of us experience mild anxieties quite often. Consider this: you have to submit a large project two weeks from now and you haven’t started with it yet, but you keep worrying about meeting the deadline and finding the time to finish it. However, once you start working on that project, you are taking action, you are in control and your worries are less stressful. Ignoring your troubles and concerns would only make them worse.
Be positive
If you are obsessed with worries and dark thoughts all day long, then this might actually lead to a lot of troubles. This is also commonly known as “the power of thought” – instead of thinking and focusing all your energy on your anxiety, think of how you can successfully resolve your issues or take care of your troubles and this might actually happen.
Write down your worries
This is one of the most powerful ways to fight anxiety. This will also help you easily analyze the nature of your worries – if you are over-concerned with small and unimportant events and issues, then don’t give them a second thought, focus on the most important things in life!
Put a lid on your negative thoughts.
You can spend all day feeling angry and worried about small things or you can force yourself to have much happier thoughts. Yes, you are in control of your own brain and can actually decide on what you are thinking.
Don’t worry too much what other people think or say about you.
Many people are way too concerned what others think about them or if they are well-liked or not. Of course, we live in a society, and we all want to fit in and be well-accepted and appreciated. However, do not be over-consumed by what others think or say about you.
Talk about it
Talking about your worries with a friend or a medical professional will always do your good, for people with severe anxiety disorders few different therapies have been developed and most of them can be quite beneficial, but the above-mentioned actions and steps will help you better deal with your stress and anxiety.
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The fear of an anxiety attack by itself can trigger an attack. This is true as reported by many anxiety disorder patients and after resolving the “meta” fear, most reported an immediate cessation of anxiety attacks.