As 2022 rolls off to a fresh start, you may be reflecting on how to prioritize your mental health in the new year. Whether you’ve been dealing with anxiety for most of your life, or have found yourself feeling more anxious in the last two years than you ever have been, addressing your anxiety can have positive impacts on your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Sometimes when you are feeling anxious, it can be overwhelming to know how to actually deal with it. Here are five tools to help you cope with anxiety in the new year.
1. Tapping
Tapping is based out of the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture. When we are feeling anxious, our bodies experience an increase in cortisol as a result of the stress. That is what can make us feel on edge or full of anxious energy. By lightly tapping on certain points on our faces, our bodies begin to feel calmer and can lower cortisol levels. The app The Tapping Solution offers free tapping exercises to help you learn how to tap and use guided meditations to help you tap about specific things you may be feeling anxious about. These exercises are simple, quick, and easy to use, which is so helpful for busy moms. Plus, these exercises can even be done with your kids to help them learn how to calm and relax themselves.
2. Grounding Exercises
When we experience anxious thoughts, they often tend to be in anticipation of something to come: “What if we don’t get our top choice for our next duty station?” or “What if I can’t get everything done tomorrow?” The mind can feel like it is some place completely different from the body. Grounding exercises can be helpful to break you out of this anticipatory anxiety. It helps you to focus on what is happening right here, right now, in front of you by using your senses and counting backward from five. To practice grounding, look around you and say the following out loud or quietly to yourself:
5: Name five things you can see.
4: Name four things you can touch/feel (and actually use your hands to feel them).
3: Name three things you can hear.
2: Name two things you can smell.
1: Name one thing you can taste.
Hint: Take a screen shot of this and save it to your phone so you can have this helpful guide to remind you of this exercise when you are feeling anxious.
3. Complete the Stress Response Cycle
When we experience stress and anxiety, the body goes through a stress response cycle to help prepare for and deal with the perceived threat (i.e., what we are feeling anxious about). While our body prepares for and deals with the situation we are experiencing anxiety about, it is also important that we complete the cycle by helping to release the emotions we are experiencing inside. I’ll do a more in-depth post about the stress response cycle soon, but here are several ways to help complete this cycle:
· Physical activity: Doesn’t have to be a full workout or exercise per se, but something as simple as jumping, stomping your feet, dancing to your favorite song, punching pillows, or going for a walk can help complete the stress response cycle.
· Laugh: Laughing by ourselves or with someone else is an amazing way to release our internal feelings. Call up your best friend and giggle till it hurts, or put on your favorite comedy movie and just laugh.
· Cry: While many people feel uncomfortable crying, crying is completely natural and normal and there is nothing wrong with it. In a similar way that laughing can help release emotions, crying is an excellent way to release internal feelings.
· Physical affection: Whether it is a friend, partner, or a pet, giving someone a hug for 20 seconds can have a huge impact on the body’s ability to release the stress we are feeling and flood our bodies with positive chemicals.
· Deep breathing: It can be really hard to try to calm our breathing when we are experiencing stress, but taking deep breaths helps to calm the central nervous system. Try breathing in through your nose to the count of five, hold for two seconds, and blow out through your mouth for a slow count of eight. Do that five times. Or you can use a guided breathing tool like this one to visually watch and help you take slow, deep breaths.
4. Write Your Anxious Thoughts In a Journal
Oftentimes when we are feeling anxious or stressed, we keep those feelings to ourselves. Especially as women, we tend to want to shoulder our struggles ourselves. But keeping those feelings inside only allows them to build. While you may not feel comfortable talking to a friend or your partner about what you are feeling, journaling about the thoughts that are running through your head can be really helpful. It doesn’t have to be a whole “dear diary” type of thing, but simply putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and just writing whatever comes to mind about how you’re feeling can be very powerful. Journaling can help externalize the feelings you are keeping inside and bring a bit of calm and relief.
5. Talk With an Online Therapist About Your Anxiety
Sometimes we need extra support in addition to using our tools to help cope with our anxiety. Talking with an online counselor about your anxiety can be a helpful way for you to work through the sources of your anxiety as well as find additional tools to help you cope. In the same way that journaling can bring relief by simply getting your feelings out, working with an online therapist can help you to express what you are thinking and feeling, and find new ways to relate to or understand your anxious thoughts and feelings. Anxiety is often felt when we are overscheduled and busy, but working with an online therapist can make accessing therapy so much easier since you don’t have to worry about scheduling childcare or driving someplace. You can meet with an online counselor from the comfort of your home or even your office during lunch break.
Begin Online Anxiety Therapy in Louisiana, Hawaii, Colorado, or Florida
Talking to an anxiety therapist can be a great way to practice anxiety coping tools like the ones mentioned above. I would be honored to support you in overcoming your anxiety symptoms from the comfort of home. I offer support for clients in Colorado, Hawaii, Florida, and Louisiana. To start your therapy journey, please follow these simple steps:
Schedule a free 15-minute consult via phone or video
Start overcoming your anxiety!
Other Services Offered With Ashley Comegys, LCSW
Online therapy isn’t the only service I offer to clients in Colorado, Hawaii, Florida, and Louisiana. Other mental health services include therapy for anxiety, online postpartum depression treatment, online postpartum support, and online depression treatment. In addition, I’m also happy to offer online grief counseling for women, online therapy for military spouses, and online trauma treatment for women. Learn more about my blog or about page today for more information!