Being cooped up at home is bound to result in stress and anxiety. With everything going on around the world, it’s not surprising that many of us are starting to worry about the future. If you’re feeling stressed or anxious, it’s time to start looking for ways to deal with anxiety.
At this point, the best thing you can do is invest some of this downtime addressing your own physical and mental health issues. The following information focuses on five things you can do at home to reduce your anxiety levels and feel a little better about your circumstances.
1. Focus on Your Diet
By now, you should know that your diet plays a significant role in every aspect of your life. If you are not eating properly, you probably feel sluggish throughout the day. Without enough energy to smoothly navigate your way through the day, it sets you up to be very vulnerable to anxiety, stress, and depression.
There are foods you can eliminate from your diet that will help you decrease anxious feelings. Too much caffeine is not a good thing. You don’t want to take in too many bad fats and sugars during the day. You also want to avoid alcohol. Alcohol is high in sugar content and very low in value.
What you do want to include in your diet is green vegetables, oily fats from fish, fruits, whole grains (oats, wheat), and nuts. A balanced diet could help manage your anxiety effectively. It provides you with energy to stave off stressful moments during the day while also filling your body with melatonin to help you sleep at night.
2. Put Together an Exercise Regimen
Sometimes, anxiety is born out of pent-up frustration. When you get that trapped feeling, it’s the right time to start doing exercise. A good exercise regimen will help give you the physical release of stress built up in your muscles. Exercise will also give you a sense of self-satisfaction, which will serve to take your mind off all the things that aren’t going right in your life.
Thirty minutes of exercise a day, like an ab workout, could make a huge difference in the way you think and feel. Even a daily walk could do you wonders.
3. Develop Better Sleeping Habits
If you are eating right and getting regular exercise, your body should feel more relaxed. It’s also possible your mind will rid itself of clutter, allowing you to think a little better.
Source: ShutterstockYou can use these physiological changes to create good sleeping habits. Good sleeping habits should include a regular bedtime routine and schedule, along with creating a proper sleeping environment. You can also alleviate some of your pre-bedtime anxiety by turning off your electronic devices (TV, computer, smartphone) 60 minutes before it’s time to sleep.
4. Keep a Journal
One of the reasons people have difficulty with anxiety is because they feel overwhelmed. There’s just so much going on around them that they can’t possibly keep track of and deal with anxiety at the same time. This is the point where keeping a personal journal could be an effective way of lowering anxiety.
By journaling your thoughts and feelings every day, you can help your mind start organizing thoughts and setting priorities. This sense of organization should help you better manage the things in your life that cause you stress and anxiety.
5. Identify and Manage Anxiety Triggers
All of us have things in our lives that trigger anxiety. The anxious people are the ones who haven’t yet figured out how to identify their triggers or manage them.
While keeping your journal, you should make a concerted effort to list all the things you encountered during the day that created stress for you. Over time, you will likely see a pattern in how you react adversely to certain things. It’s that pattern you need to focus on because the recurring items on your list are most likely your triggers. If you can learn to manage around your triggers, it should result in you lowering your anxiety levels.
As you watch the people around you deal with anxiety and other adverse situations, you’ll notice some people don’t even raise a hair. That’s where you want to be. If you follow these tips, you can be one of them.
