10 Tips to Reduce and Manage Anxiety

Anxiety affects millions of people worldwide. In our fast-paced society, we often promote behaviors that actually increase anxiety. However, there are small steps you can take to help combat this condition. Here are ten concrete steps you can take toward managing your anxiety responses.

1. Practice Mindfulness

Study after study has shown how effective mindfulness can be against anxious thoughts. It helps you focus on the present moment instead of worrying about the future or past. Start with just a few minutes each day, using guided meditation apps or focusing on your breath. Allow your thoughts to pass through you and simply notice them. Focus on your bodily sensations. Over time, regular mindfulness practice can rewire your brain to respond more calmly to stress.

2. Stay Active

Exercise is one of the most effective natural remedies for anxiety. Physical activity releases endorphins, which are our natural mood elevators. Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise, such as yoga or jogging, most days of the week. An even better practice is to get outside into nature by hiking, walking in the park, or visiting nature preserves. Breathing fresh air and being part of the natural world will ease your mind.

3. Eat Healthy

A balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains can help stabilize your mood and energy levels. Avoid too much caffeine and sugar, which can make anxiety worse. Instead, choose foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon and walnuts, which have been shown to reduce anxiety.

4. Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is crucial for mental health. Establish a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. Create a calming bedtime routine, such as reading a book or taking a warm bath, to signal to your body that it’s time to wind down.

5. Limit Alcohol Intake

While it may be tempting to use alcohol to calm your nerves, it can actually increase anxiety over time. Alcohol can disrupt sleep and affect your mood. Reducing or eliminating alcohol from your life can significantly reduce your anxiety.

6. Practice Deep Breathing

Deep breathing exercises can quickly reduce anxiety by helping you focus on your breath and relax your body. One effective technique is the 4-7-8 method: inhale deeply for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale slowly for eight seconds.

7. Keep an Active Social Life

Spending time with friends and family can provide emotional support, reduce feelings of isolation, and improve your mood. Make an effort to maintain regular contact with loved ones, whether through in-person visits, phone calls, or video chats.

8. Break Up Your Goals

Anxiety can make even simple tasks seem overwhelming. To combat this, set realistic goals for yourself and break larger tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. This way you’ll feel more in control of your goals. Celebrate every accomplishment to build up your confidence.

9. Learn to Say No

Taking on too many responsibilities can increase anxiety and lead to burnout. Recognize your limits and learn to say no when you can. Prioritize your own tasks and focus on what truly matters by setting healthy boundaries.

10. Seek Professional Help

Some people are unable to manage their anxiety on their own. Whether your anxiety is more general or is linked to specific situations (for example, phobias, intrusive thoughts, or obsessions), you may need a consultation with a mental health professional. Your best treatment may include therapy, anti-anxiety medications, or a combination of the two. It’s also important to determine (or rule out) other co-occurring issues, such as trauma. In therapy, you’ll learn the root cause of your anxiety, how to cope with stressful situations, and how to build your resilience.
To find out more about how therapy can help you reduce your anxiety, please reach out to us.

How to Break the Avoidance-Anxiety Cycle

“The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering.”

— Paulo Coelho

Anxiety and avoidance often go hand in hand. When you experience anxiety, you may feel a lot of fear, worry, or heightened body sensations about specific situations and the possible outcomes of being in those situations. To cope with these overwhelming feelings, you might resort to avoidance behaviors. These behaviors involve (you guessed it!) avoiding situations, places, or people that trigger, or activate, your anxiety. As time goes on, you may find more and more people, places, and things that activate worry, fear, or a jittery nervous system.

Here's how anxiety and avoidance are connected:

1. Fear Reinforcement: When you avoid situations that bring on anxiety, you can get short-term relief, and this reprieve reinforces your avoidance behavior, making it more likely and familiar to you. So, you may then start avoiding similar situations more often. However, this avoidance prevents you from learning that the situation might not have been as difficult, dangerous, or scary as you believed. That you can survive going to an event alone, that you can get on an airplane. in the long run, turning away from and avoiding strengthens anxiety because you cannot learn to cope with the situation and the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors leading up to the situation.

2. Narrowing of Activities: Avoidance can lead to a narrowing of your life. You might stop participating in activities you used to enjoy or avoid social interactions, ultimately impacting your quality of life. When you become more isolated from the world, you can become depressed, unhappy, and—yes, more anxious.

3. Increased Sensitivity: Avoidance can increase and expand your anxiety triggers. The more you avoid, the more sensitive and fearful you become to those situations, making it even more challenging to confront them in the future. Your brain and nervous system are primed to believe future events are threatening.

4. Cycle of Anxiety: Anxiety and avoidance are a vicious feedback loop. Anxiety leads to avoidance, which provides relief but reinforces the anxiety, leading to more avoidance. Breaking this cycle often requires confronting the feared situations with the help of therapy and gradual exposure. So, what can you do to confront, re-frame, and build your toolkit? Read on…

1. Mindfulness and Deep Breathing: Sometimes, we can only breathe. Breathing exercises can match the intensity of what you are experiencing. For a quick fix, try straw breath: inhale deeply through your nose, exhale with sound, pursing your lips, and imagine you are blowing out through a straw. For a more complicated breathing activity that may stop your spiraling thoughts, try 4-7-8 breaths: inhale for 4, hold your breath for 7, and exhale for 8. Remain focused on the present moment without judgment (mindfulness) via taking action by engaging your mind and body in a breathing activity.

2. Physical Activity: Do as best you can regular physical activity. Exercise can boost your mood and reduce anxiety. It doesn’t have to be intense – even a short walk can make a difference. But sometimes, doing a complicated and/or intense physical activity can engage you more directly in the here-and-now.

3. Healthy Lifestyle: I’m sure you’ve heard it before—maintain a balanced diet, sleep well, and limit caffeine and alcohol intake. All these factors can significantly impact your anxiety levels. Changing your habits takes time. Celebrate the stepping stones! It’s an opportunity to engage in some authentic positive self-talk. ‘Nice work, Amanda. You are worth the effort’.

   Finding what works for you might take some time and experimentation. Contact me to learn more about how I can support you to transform and break apart the avoidance-anxiety cycle.

Grinning With A Clenched Jaw: How To Get Through the Holidays Unscathed

This time of year can shake up our usual routines and can be more challenging than other times of year. For some, it’s a really ‘bad’ season. For others, it’s pretty bad and a little good—for some about even on the bad and good, and for others, more good than bad.

If you are in any way activated, unbalanced or dysregulated during the holiday season, this post may help you navigate your challenges with more ease. Disclaimer: I do come from a Christmas background, lightly sprinkled with Christianity and Tolstoy from my formative years. My default communication-of-ideas can’t help but be somewhat based in past experiences and current observations within my framework as a therapist. And yet, perhaps some of these themes and tips may transcend culture and identity—being helpful for those who struggle during these months. Consider:

What are your expectations during this season? What you want to get from the holidays? Are these expectations realistic, do they involve how you want other people to behave? What if you didn’t have expectations (easier said than done)?

After a challenging experience (going to a gathering, party, being alone) when things didn’t work out as your hoped (or expected), think about the experience as a partial success rather than a complete failure. This can make it easier to see what you can learn from it, maintaining feeling rational (rather than emotionally dysregulated).

This time of year is temporary—there is an end date to the celebrations, the rituals, the family dynamics, the buying and spending, the indulging…

Practice good old health habits. Rest, sleep, drink water, eat some balanced meals, move your body, avoid the over-indulging, track how substances impact your mind, body and spirit. Talk to a person who helps you feel regulated, more calm.

Notice your early warning signals that your emotions are getting bigger. Emotions can get amplified this time of year—sadness, worry, isolation, loneliness, memories of painful holiday experiences. How can you self-soothe? This may be going inward— taking time on your own to go for a walk, listen to music, journal, breathe. Or it could be helpful to engage outward, have a simple positive interaction with a stranger or neighbor, go to a class, be with others without engaging—going to the library, the grocery store, a craft fair. Acknowledging that you are having an emotion is also key. Once an emotion starts, it needs to run its course. Oftentimes our thinking blocks or intesifies an emotion, leading to an emotion getting stuck, which then leads to some mental messes.

Old dynamics can take front and center—if you suspect or know you will be around a person, group or place that is triggering, or that can regress you to acting in a way that feels younger, Ask yourself— how can I minimize my vulnerabilities before engaging with the person, place or thing? What needs to be accomplished, what really matters, what are your priorities? Planning ahead will also minimize last minute stress. Can you plan ahead, creating a concrete strategy that involves setting boundaries (leaving early, vowing to not ‘take the bait’, excusing yourself to the bathroom, etc…)

Consider reflecting on all the positive things in your life, how far you’ve come in a year, what is going well. Be intentional with this, turning away from ruminating about what is wrong or hard.

Create your own traditions, memories, legacy and/or ritual. What do you want from these months? Connect with what feels good, energizing, empowering.

5 Ways to Accept Reality During COVID-19 Times

We are dealing with painful events and more of these are probably coming our way. It can be tough to realize we can’t stop the hard stuff from happening. So how do we cope? By accepting that this is our reality—for now. The adjustments, changes, unknowns, adult tantrums, child tantrums, overwhelm—it’s here. Do we fight against it? Hide? Freeze up? Yes…some of the time. And at other times, we could look at our circumstances straight in the face and reply, “Yes”.

Here are some ideas and tips to help you find a sense of freedom:

1. Learning how to accept things as they are is a skill. It takes practice.

And it’s ok if you aren’t sure you even know how to accept things as they are. That’s part of why I’m writing this—to help you develop strategies that work for you. The first step may be that you don’t know what to do. And that’s ok. Here are a couple questions to start with:

• Can you recall a time when you let go of having to have a certain thing happen, or go your way?

• Can you remember a time when you flat out refused to accept reality, and it lead to even more pain and suffering?

2. If we fight against reality, we can’t take steps to change our reality. We are just stuck fighting an impossible battle. To start getting a grip on accepting reality, in order to then take action and possibly change reality, try this activity (Adapted from DBT Skills Training Manual):

• Consider one or two important things in your current day-to-day life you are having trouble accepting. For example, trouble accepting that my child is cranky, mean and rebellious during lockdown; using my willpower to get her to change, which makes it worse.

• Assign a number from 0-5 to indicate how much or little you are accepting this part of your life, or yourself. 0=no acceptance (fighting against, denying, avoiding) 5=(complete acceptance, embracing chaos, at peace with it)

3.Life (as it is) is worth embracing and living—even when it is painful, scary or overwhelming.

Pain (emotional or physical) is a signal from the Body-Mind, Mother Nature or some other phenomena that something is wrong. And something is wrong right now—very wrong. We are experiencing a pandemic and the impacts it brings. It is natural to experience the pain of this. Basically, it’s normal to feel like soot right now AND it is still possible to embrace living your life as it is.

Here’s the thing—as you accept the raw truth of reality, you may feel worse at first. More sad, more irritated, more off balance. And often times, as you move through the worst of it, you find deeper acceptance, calm and peace on the other side.

4.Acknowledge there were a series of events that led up to this moment. And there were a series of factors that led to where we are right now with COVID-19. It happened and there is nothing we can do to turn back time. This orientation may help if you tend to think, “It shouldn’t be this way!”

5.If you are struggling with accepting, make a pro’s and con’s list

What are the positives of denying, avoiding, fighting against? If things are too overwhelming, denial could be useful to get you through a day, an hour, a conversation. What are the con’s? After a while, if you are avoiding by consistently numbing (say with alcohol) you may start to feel more depressed, hopeless, isolated and confused.

This is just a starter—there is so much more you could do, consider, or implement to help you be able to ride these painful days with grace, honesty and love. Contact me at info@amandarebel.com to learn more. Be well!

If your anxiety is out of control because of the pandemic, anxiety treatment can help. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.

10 Ways to Get Better Sleep During COVID-19

I barely slept last night. Clients I’m working with are also struggling with sleep; worrying if they’ll get to sleep, stay asleep, or if they’ll sleep. Sleep is important, basic, and can be so restorative and perspective changing—so I wanted to share some ways to find better sleep during these trying times. Many of these ideas were inspired from Marsha M. Linehan’s book, DBT Skills Training Manual.

1.Try to maintain a consistent sleep schedule all week long.

With less structure, more time at home, and a new way of possibly viewing life and death, your sleep schedule may be reflecting these changes—you may be going to bed at different times. As best you can, try to create a schedule you can stick to. Creating more structure, and making a habit out of getting ready for bed at the same time each night can be soothing for a wacked-out nervous system and frazzled mind.

2. Avoid Using the Bed for Daytime Stuff.

Because you may want to do some deep daytime sleep, which could further mess up your night time sleep schedule and sleep quality.

3. Less Doing and Consuming Before Bed

Are you watching things that are revving you up? Drinking coffee later in the day? Drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco in the evening? Try to curb that a bit, or do it earlier. Also, avoid strenuous exercise 3-4 hours before bedtime.

4. Take Time to Prep Your Bedroom

Does it need a bit of dusting, tidying, re-arranging to make it a more inviting place? Would adding a candle at night be soothing? Sniffing some essential oils? (lavender or cedar are good ones). Consider trying out using a sound machine, eye pillow, earplugs, or a sleep app. And have the room fairly cool in temperature, if possible. Use a fan to increase air circulation.

5. 30-60 Minute Rule

Allow for 30-60 minutes to fall asleep. If you can’t fall asleep, start to notice—what is your mood? Are you thinking a lot about stuff? Are you calm, edgy, excited?

6. Worrying About Not Sleeping=You Won’t Sleep

It is verryyy common to worry and stress about the fact that you can’t sleep—and can become a vicious cycle of insomnia. Try talking yourself down by knowing that you’ll be ok, even if you are just resting and lying in bed. Don’t decide to get up and start your day. Keep resting, see what happens…

7. If It’s Been Over 60 Minutes…

If you’ve done your due diligence and lingered in bed for up to an hour and still no dreamtime, go to another room or area of your bedroom and do a mellow activity (read a book, space out looking at the darkness, hug a pillow, eat a light snack, etc..)

Focus on Body Sensations

Splash cold water on your face, put a cool washcloth over your eyes—especially helpful if you feel keyed-up, overly tired/jittery. Lie down and focus on breathing—see if you can take a longer exhale and shorter inhale. If you are thinking in circles, notice where in your body feels active, tight, or full of thought.

Try the 9-0 Mindfulness Practice

This may help break up over thinking or worrying: As you exhale slowly, say or see in your mind the number 9. On the next exhale say 8, then 7, etc…until you reach 0. Then start over, but say 8 (instead of 9) when you take your first exhale. Continue down the numbers. Then start with 7 and so on …until you reach 0. Start over as many times as you need until you fall asleep.

Reassure Yourself

What seem to be big worries in the middle of the night, or as you are falling asleep, may not seem as big or overwhelming in the morning. Remind yourself of that.

If you can’t stop worrying, or thinking in loops, try these options: Ask yourself, can your worry be solved? If so, then use your mind to solve the problem. If it is a bigger, more existential, unsolvable: go deep into the worry, imagine the worst outcome—and then imagine yourself dealing effectively with the big problem, coping with the issue, and overcoming the worst fear.

If you are experiencing any sleep issues, anxiety treatment can help you. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.

Coping with Coronavirus

We use our emotions, rather than reason, to cope with unknowns. It is how humans are currently hardwired. We go subjective, filtering some facts through our personal histories, values, beliefs and societal norms and then react, or respond, from an emotional place. And the unknowns of Coronavirus—how it will affect us, how many of us will get sick, how to really stay safe, how to keep paying the bills—is right here, in our face. Yet we can’t see it. We can’t see how this will end. So we start to feel vulnerable, afraid. And then quickly reach to find ways to manage and control those seemingly out-of-control feelings. We buy toilet paper. We quietly stock our freezer. We go into survival mode.

We may—or may not—be more afraid than we need to be about the Coronavirus. Even that feels annoyingly unclear, how much, and what, do I need to be afraid of? We are all kind of free falling at the moment. Yet we still have choices—we can decide how to proceed, after the surges of emotion subside (and they do ebb and flow).

So what to do?

Know it is instinctive to look for a sense of control or to look for ways to control things that feel out-of control.

When we over-react, worry, obsessively read the news, we may be creating for ourselves added risk—for these mental activities often lead to increased stress. And stress suppresses our immune system, which then makes us more susceptible to illnesses, viruses.

Recognize and notice your reactions—this could be a healthier way to harness a sense of control. Try not to always avoid those uncomfortable feelings, let them be there for a bit. Then ask yourself what the wisest next step could be. Is it to consciously distract yourself with an online dance party? Call up a trusted friend? Take some sort of action? You get to have choices.

You are not alone in this—even if you are feeling isolated and cut off.

A lot of us are adjusting, and adjusting quickly. I don’t know how this will play out—yet I do know that cooperation, collaboration and helping others will lead us down a healthier path than going it alone, feeling like we have to hoard, and not trusting humanity. This is paradoxical if you’ve been asked to shelter in place, and literally cannot physically connect with others. And there are ways to still connect, and it may take some getting used to, or it may not feel the same.

Get back to basics: sleep, food, water, shelter. Ask yourself if you need to focus on improving any of these areas, and what you could do to improve your basic functioning.

If it all feels wayyy too much, reach out of a licensed therapist, counselor or talk line. You aren’t weak to do so. These are intense times.

Be well :) you can get through this. More tips soon.

If the recent pandemic has affected your ability to cope, anxiety treatment can help you overcome these issues. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.