Do you find it hard to let go of your worries and fears? Are you always ill at ease, thinking about the bad things that could happen? Living with anxiety is hard, but sometimes dealing with individual worries can be easier than you think. These techniques will help you get on top of the problem and enjoy a healthier life outlook.
Get them in perspective.
When you have many worries, it’s easy for them to blur into each other until they seem impossible to untangle or stack up until they appear overwhelming. When this is happening, trying to ignore them doesn’t help. What you need to do is get them in perspective. One way to approach this is by writing them all out as a list. You may well find that some are subsets of others, so you can refine the list until it contains a smaller number of specific problems. You can then order these to determine which are most serious and which you’ve been allowing to take up more of your energy than they deserve.
Seek practical solutions
Once you’ve defined your worries clearly, it’s easier to reframe them as a set of problems that need to be solved. Sometimes there are simple, practical ways to approach them. Though you may have been putting these off because they’re stressful in themselves, your life will get a lot simpler when you tackle them one by one. If you’re worried about money, for instance, drawing up a clear financial plan will make it much easier to cope. If you’re concerned about your performance in the bedroom, you can read through Roman reviews to see if a simple pill could help. If you’re worried about your weight, getting into an exercise routine could change everything.
Recognize what you can’t change
Of course, not all problems can be solved this way. If you’ve been bereaved, if you have an incurable illness, or if your marriage has irretrievably broken down, for instance, you’re going to have to find a way to deal with things as they are. What matters here is recognizing and accepting the situation so that you stop being exhausted by a constant mental search for solutions. It’s hard to accept suffering or unfairness, but doing so can be liberating. It can leave you free to find a way forward.
Dismiss worst-case scenarios
If you’re living with serious day to day challenges or have experienced trauma in the past, it can be easy to get into a habit of trying to strategize and plan for everything. That isn’t a practical use of your time and energy. Learn to recognize when your mind has drifted off and has started focusing on worst-case scenarios. Even if they’re possible, they’re probably not very likely. When you’ve got a bit of distance, you may even find yourself laughing about your past obsession with them.
Distract yourself
When you find yourself stuck in a cycle of worries that won’t go away, you need to find ways of distracting yourself. This could mean doing a puzzle that takes up all your attention, going outside and running to flush stress hormones through your system, putting on a favorite piece of music that always changes your mood, or refocusing your senses by cooking something that smells delicious. Build up imaginary worlds so that if you’re lying in bed and can’t sleep because reality is too stressful, you can put your focus there instead.
Focus on the right things
When you’re focused on your worries all the time, you may not be giving the good things in your life the attention that they deserve. Every night, before you go to bed, make a list of the things in your life that make you happy, no matter how small or trivial they may seem – from the color of your hair to your favorite sports team winning a game or a view you enjoy on your route to work. By paying more attention to these positive things, you can lift your mood, get a better night’s sleep, and wake up feeling more optimistic about the day ahead. Worry exists for a reason, and sometimes it’s essential, but all too often, we get caught up in cycles of fear that don’t serve any useful function. If you can stop worrying about all the little things, you’ll find yourself much more capable of dealing with the big ones, and the more problems you tackle successfully, the more confident you’ll feel.
