Try one step per day, per week or whatever you can manage. Small steps over time
can break worrying habits. A peaceful heart and mind leads to happiness.
Method 1: Manage the body.
Eat right
Avoid alcohol, nicotine, sugar and caffeine
Exercise
On going self care
Sleep
Consider hormonal changes
Method 2: Breathe
Breathing will slow down or stop the stress response
Do the conscious, deep breathing for about 1 minute at a time, 10-15 times per day every time you are waiting for something eg., the phone to ring, an appointment, the kettle to boil, waiting in a line etc.
Method 3: Mindful Awareness and Meditation : learn from a qualified teacher Close your eyes and breathe; noticing the body, how the intake of air feels, how the heart beats, what sensations you can feel in the gut etc.
With eyes still closed, purposefully shift your awareness away from your body to everything you can hear or smell or feel through your skin
Shift awareness back and forth from your body to what’s going on around you
You will learn in a physical way that you can control what aspects of the world – internal or external –you’ll notice, giving you an internal locus of control and learning that when you can ignore physical sensations, you can stop making the catastrophic interpretations that bring on panic or worry. It allows you to feel more in control and mindful of the present.
Method 4: Don’t listen when worry calls your name
This feeling of dread and tension comprises a state of low grade fear, which can also cause other physical symptoms, like headache, temporomandibular joint pain and ulcers. The feeling of dread is just the emotional manifestation of physical tension.
To stop listening to the command to worry, you can say to yourself: “Its just my anxious brain firing wrong”. This is the cue to begin relaxation breathing which will stop the physical sensations of dread that trigger the radar.
Method 5: Knowing, Not Showing, Anger
When you fear anger because of past experience, the very feeling of anger, even though it remains unconscious, can produce anxiety. To know you’re angry doesn’t require you to show you’re angry.
A simple technique: Next time you feel stricken with anxiety, you should sit down and write as many answers as possible to this question, “If I were angry, what might I be angry about?” Restrict answers to single words or brief phrases.
This may open the door to get some insight into the connection between your anger and your anxiety.
Method 6: Have a Little Fun
Laughing is a great way to increase good feelings and discharge tension. Getting in touch with fun and play isn’t easy for the serious, tense worrier.
A therapy goal could be simply to relearn what you had fun doing in the past and prescribe yourself some fun.
Method 7: Turning it Off
Sit quietly with eyes closed and focus on an image of an open container ready to receive every issue on your mind. See and name each issue or worry and imagine putting it into the container. When no more issues come to mind, ‘put a lid’ on the container and place it on a shelf or in some other out of the way place until you need to go back to get something from it. Once you have the container on the shelf, you invite into the space that is left in your mind whatever is the most important current thought or feeling.
At night, right before sleep, invite a peaceful thought to focus on while drifting off.
Method 8: Persistent Interruption of Rumination
Its important to attempt to interrupt the pattern every time you catch yourself ruminating – you’ve spent a long time establishing this pattern and it will take persistence to wear it down.
Thought stopping – use the command “Stop” and/or a visual image to remind yourself that you are going into an old habit. The command serves as a punishment and a distractor.
Method 9: Worry Well, but Only Once Some worries just have to be faced head-on, and worrying about them the right way can help eliminate secondary, unnecessary worrying. When you feel that your worries are out of control try this next method:
Worry through all the issues within a time limit of 10-20 mins and cover all the bases
Do anything that must be done at the present timeSet a time when it’ll be necessary to think about the worry again
Write that time on a calendar
Whenever the thought pops up again say, “Stop! I already worried” and divert your thoughts as quickly as possible to another activity – you may need to make a list of these possible diversions beforehand.
Method 10: Learn to Plan Instead of Worry It is important to learn the fundamentals of planning as it can make a big difference in calming a ruminative mind. These include:
Concretely identifying the problem
Listing the problem solving options
Picking one of the options
Writing out a plan of action
“Stop! I have a plan!” It also helps the endless reassurance-seeking, because it provides written solutions even to problems the ruminator considers hopelessly complex.
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