By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea
Anxiety can be tricky business. It can come on due to events in someone’s life or a small thing that might happen that becomes a huge deal in someone’s mind. For others, they feel anxious but are not able to pinpoint a particular event that is triggering it. It might just be that they are wired that way or past experiences have left them feeling generally anxious a lot of the time. Others tend to recall only the negative aspects of their lives without any attention paid to the good things that occur. In addition to seeking mental health counseling for anxiety, these strategies have also been proven to be effective. Here are two tips to help begin to manage anxiety.
For some people, thinking about anxiety from an intellectual standpoint rather than an emotional one can be empowering. When anxious thoughts and feelings start to take hold, your body reacts. Your adrenal glands release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol through the body. This can make thinking clearly a real challenge. Anxiety can quickly take over so quickly that recalling and trying to use taught strategies can be daunting. To release the anxiety without a lot of cognitive thought, many people benefit from the exercise of tapping. Check out this 5 minute video on how to do basic tapping to see if it works for you. Click here for how to tap
Another very effective way to begin to feel in control of anxious feelings is to use the positive psychology technique of writing down 3 good things that happen each day and why those things were good. By doing this, the thoughts that you have during the day will focus more on the good than the bad because you know that you will need to write down those things each night. It sounds like such a simple, insignificant task but the effect of the exercise is very powerful. Here is a clip from the psychologist who created this technique, Martin Seligman: Seligman on 3 Good Things.
Research on the efficacy of tapping: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/research-review-shows-eft-emotional-freedom-techniques_us_592ef89ae4b0d80e3a8a3270
For more about stress: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037
Nadine Briggs, Director of Simply Social Kids and Donna Shea, Founder of the Peter Pan Center for Social and Emotional Growth are authors of the How to Make and Keep Friends books series. They specialize in creating simple tips that teach kids with social challenges the social language of friendship.
