Anxiety can be really taxing for one to live with as you are in a state of worry and unable to focus on what you want to do with it, a lot of people in the world live with anxiety these days. It feels like you’re sitting with a toxic friend which is pointing out every little thing in your life about what you did, what you said and what you haven’t done. There are long term ways to deal with anxiety but this article will only focus on the ways which can get you relaxed quickly within a few seconds to a few minutes. I’ll cover the long term ways which can make you feel calmer throughout the day in another article.
Deep Breathing for 3-5 minutes
This one really helped me a lot in taming my anxiety at the moment when I was really anxious and I wanted to have a clear head but there was very less amount of time in order to do so. I got hooked on it when I was using my Fitbit charge 2 which had a deep breathing mode for 3 minutes and 5 minutes. After doing the deep breathing exercise I was way relaxed when compared to my state before doing the exercise.
Write a journal entry
Writing down the thing which is making you anxious somewhere and just reading it once can help. You can be anxious about something that you won’t be able to do in future or what will happen in future, or if you’ve said something to someone which might backfire. Writing the thing down gives a lot of clarity and suddenly it doesn’t seem so big of a deal and you realize that it isn’t such a thing to worry about.
Experience the Present
By saying experience the present, try forgetting everything for a minute and just notice your surrounding, just notice the sound that you’re hearing but don’t judge anything. Just being in the present for a minute can take your anxiety away like magic. This is a kind of mindfulness meditation for a minute to make you aware of the present and leave that sad state behind.
Relax your muscles
Find a quiet place, close your eyes and focus on your breath. Don’t change the way you’re breathing but just focus on the breath, then just do a body scan and let the tension in your muscles go, slowly scan your body from head to toe feeling every muscle and the tightness or lightness inside them, feel the bodyweight and get in your most relaxed position.
Count to a 100 slowly
Close your fists as tightly as you can and count till 100, you don’t need to be loud. It’s a great exercise just before a presentation or something which is bothering you and you need to take some action instantly. As your count move towards 100. You will feel much more relaxed.
Visualize your happy place
Thinking and visualizing a place which makes you happy can actually make you calmer and reduce your anxiety. You just need to find a quiet place and then visualise the things which make you feel happy, it can be a mansion or an ice cream, doesn’t matter as long as you like it. Doing this exercise can help you with anxiety, try to find a quiet place before starting on this though.
Focus on the Music
Listen to your favourite track, It works great if the track is instrumental, Just focus on the music and notice every minute instrument or tune being played by the artist and feel it in your body. This actually helped to elevate my mood levels in a very good way and i also felt productive after doing this. Please give this a shot, I will be very happy if it helped someone else too.
Guided Meditation
Guided meditation is a great thing for beginners in meditation, I used to use InsightTimer and Headspace when I started meditating, and they can get a person relaxed in 10-20 minutes when you start one of there meditations. I had good experience with youtube videos for self-meditation too especially when you find yourself not being able to sleep easily. These go to sleep meditations and very effective. I am linking one here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69o0P7s8GHE
Though Youtube can actually bug you more with some ads so do remember to keep adblocker on in your browser.
Do something slowly
Doing a task slowly can help you feel more relaxed, you can do anything 50% slow, from making food for yourself to actually eating something slowly. Or walking slow or slowly writing your journal as mentioned in the 2nd step above to have more effect. Doing something slowly actually makes you notice more things regarding that task and diverts your attention from the thing which is worrying you inside your mind.
Make a phone call
Calling a loved one and sharing what is actually causing you to worry might help you lose your anxiety a bit, though don’t do too much of it as your loved one will throw a pan as soon as you need them if you bug them too much with your worries. Once a week max is a good rule.
Do visit a therapist if you need more help.
Loudly speak what you’re feeling
Loudly say inside to yourself how you’re feeling at the moment and why are you feeling these emotions, this can help you get clarity when it’s needed. For added effect close your eyes visualize and then speak to yourself how you’re feeling and it will go away soon.
Take a break
If your continuous work is causing you to feel anxiety then just take a break and relax for 5 minutes, doing this may actually help you get more productive at the task at hand as you’ll have much more calm mind to put on the problem and solve it. I use this when i am stuck on a tough software programming problem which helps me a lot of time to solve the problem.