Do you often find yourself anticipating a moment of relaxation, only to have your anxiety crash the party? You’re not alone.
Picture this: finally, a day reserved for some much-needed relaxation. Your plans? A nice bath, catching up on your favorite show, perhaps getting some fresh air – basically anything that brings a sense of peace. But as soon as you settle in, there it is – anxiety, barging in uninvited, ready to sabotage your downtime.
It’s a scenario too familiar for many of us.
Escaping stress at will might seem like a superpower that many of us do not have. How can you achieve genuine rest when anxiety intrudes?
Here are some ways in which you can address immediate anxiety symptoms and manage to rest.
Do not try to force a state of relaxation
Attempting to force relaxation when anxiety kicks in can often worsen the situation.
Your sympathetic nervous system is to blame for this. It is quick to latch onto anything, whether it’s mundane thoughts about your inbox or the alarms triggered by an anxiety disorder.
The moment your anxious mind perceives a threat, whether it is real or imagined, your body gets ready for the fight-or-flight response. Stress hormones flood your system, accelerating your heart rate, elevating blood pressure, quickening your breath, and sending your thoughts into a frenzy. None of these reactions are helping you achieve a relaxed and restful state.
Resisting this natural process only amplifies stress hormones within your system, prolonging the anxiety response. Therefore, allowing your sympathetic nervous system to complete its cycle without opposition triggers your parasympathetic nervous system, bringing in a relaxation response.
Focusing on the sensations of anxiety itself within your body might prove to be helpful in this situation. Take note of its duration, avoid judgment, and refrain from attempting to immediately change how you feel. Just observe and allow yourself to experience it.
Relaxation isn’t a single activity but rather the result of various activities. Therefore, the initial focus should be on discovering what really helps you relax by trying out different activities.
Use anti-anxiety tools
Breathing exercises, meditation, and basic self-care activities such as taking a shower or going for a walk are often recommended extensively and may seem too basic and even ineffective to some people. However, these suggestions hold immense value as they’re reliable go-to tools.
Among these tools, deep breathing stands out as a fundamental and highly effective technique in combating anxiety. This practice triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts the fight-or-flight response, helping you navigate through anxiety and make it more manageable.
Deep breathing is often underestimated but it can offer more benefits than people acknowledge. While it might not completely alleviate your anxiety, it can significantly improve your mental state, allowing you to assess the situation more positively.
In essence, these basic anti-anxiety tools, including deep breathing exercises, meditation, and simple self-care routines, might seem cliché but hold immense power in supporting you during anxious moments, helping in creating a better mental space to address anxiety more effectively.
You may even take a look at this guide to optimizing your space for better mental well-being and make some changes in your home.
Find what relaxes you
Everyone is different and this also applies when it comes to how we relax.
The first step to finding out what works for you would be to compile a list of potential activities, such as keeping your phone in a separate room while sleeping or listening to a curated playlist, then set a goal to try one activity from the list within the week or maybe even take a mental health day.
Here, we have to make the distinction between looking for ways to relax and trying to force relaxation. The former implies not fixating on the outcome or attaching expectations to it. This way, if one of the methods you try does not bring the expected results, you will not find yourself feeling even more anxious.
This enables you to experiment with diverse activities and allows you to focus on the journey toward relaxation without fixating on achieving a specific emotional state.
Find the cause of your anxiety
Understanding the triggers behind your anxiety is a crucial step towards effectively managing it. It could be something that happened, something you remembered, or it may even be that your favorite snacks contribute to your anxiety.
Allocate a set time and jot down everything that is causing you anxiety. Transferring worries from your mind onto paper can alleviate some immediate overwhelm. Even if it doesn’t immediately ease your feelings, this exercise serves as a starting point for potential solutions or strategies.
If you identify specific stressors preventing you from resting, you can address those root causes directly and tackle these issues head-on.
However, if you struggle to identify a particular stress source, it might indicate a need for a more comprehensive approach to managing anxiety and even seeking professional help. This will tailor your approach to effectively address the causes of your anxiety.
Avoid zoning out
In an effort to quiet the anxious mind, we often choose to immerse ourselves in distractions like scrolling through social media apps endlessly, binge-watching shows, or resorting to other coping mechanisms.
It’s essential to grant yourself compassion and acknowledge that these methods are human responses, and using them in moderation is acceptable.
However, try and maintain awareness of whether these activities hinder your long-term efforts towards rest.
Without self-judgment, take occasional pauses to evaluate your state and your anxiety: Are your symptoms subsiding, or are you merely ignoring them? Have you lost track of time in a way that adds to your stress? Do you genuinely feel more rested?
This isn’t about taking immediate action, but rather cultivating a habit of self-awareness. It’s about collecting data for future reference. Recognizing whether certain activities genuinely contribute to relaxation really helps in making informed choices moving forward.
Perhaps what you’re doing isn’t as conducive to relaxation as initially perceived. Hence, being attentive allows for the exploration of new strategies during future attempts to unwind.