Anxiety is one of the most common mental health conditions across the globe. Millions of people struggle with it on a daily basis, and if it isn’t managed properly, it can become debilitating.
While treating anxiety usually requires the help of a professional, there are things you can do on your own to manage symptoms. Additionally, there are habits you might have developed that actually make your anxiety worse.
It’s just as important to learn what’s fueling your anxiety as it is to know how to treat it. So, with that in mind, let’s look at seven habits that make your anxiety worse. Fully informed and aware, you can then start taking control of your symptoms and easing your anxiety.
1. Constantly Checking Social Media
Do you have your phone out constantly? Are you scrolling through Instagram and Facebook?
While social media can seem like a good distraction and a way to shift your thoughts, it often does more harm than good. Between constantly checking notifications and seeing the things people are posting, it can contribute to self-esteem problems, anxiety, depression, and stress.
2. Not Exercising
Regular exercise has many benefits for your mind and body. But, not exercising can actually elevate your anxiety. It’s important to discharge some of the energy fueling your racing thoughts, worry, or upset. The mood-balancing hormones that accompany moderate exercise are well worth the effort.
You don’t have to run to the gym for hours each day. Walking around your neighborhood, going on a bike ride, or taking a swim are all great ways to get in some daily exercise and keep your symptoms under control.
3. Not Drinking Enough Water
Your diet can actually have a big impact on your anxiety. One mistake many people make is simply drinking enough water. Dehydration can cause a drop in blood pressure, increase your heart rate, and cause you to feel light-headed.
Because those symptoms mimic anxiety attacks, dehydration can actually fuel mental/physical health worries. Or end up causing you to have an actual panic attack.
4. Procrastinating
Whether you’re putting off work, paying bills, or getting things done around your house, not doing things on time is a surefire way to increase your levels of anxiety.
By constantly putting things off, tasks remain unresolved and still on your mind. You know you have to get to them eventually, so you can’t find any peace or comfort in knowing they’re done.
5. Committing to Too Many Things
Again, you might try to fill your time and distract yourself in order to fight back against anxiety. But, overwhelming your life with too many obligations can make your symptoms worse.
First, having an overly-busy schedule will always add extra stress. Second, if you’ve made promises to people, you’re going to feel anxious about keeping them and getting things done right. While keeping yourself occupied is good, learn to say no. Don’t get bogged down by too many tasks all at once.
6. Staying Inside All Day
There have been plenty of studies done on the benefits of getting outside. It can boost your energy and your mood. Rain or shine, being outdoors can actually support feelings of happiness and connectedness.
If you tend to stay inside all of the time, it could be contributing to your nervousness and discomfort. Getting outside may not “fix” everything, but it can change your perspective and put you in a better mood and calmer state.
7. Staying Up Too Late
Do you consider yourself a night owl? You might want to try forming different habits when it comes to your nightly routine. Getting less than eight hours of sleep each night can increase the effects of negative thoughts and self-talk. Unresolved, sleeplessness creates a cycle of worry about sleep and the effects of exhaustion on your life that can drive anxiety levels higher.
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As you can see, even the smallest habits can make a big difference when it comes to your anxiety levels. Keep these unhelpful habits in mind, and try to avoid them to find some relief from your typical anxiety symptoms. If you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out for guidance or learn more about anxiety and anxiety treatment.
If you suffer from social anxiety, then you know just how easily it can take over your life. You may fear large groups of people, get nervous when you’re the center of attention, and dread small talk with coworkers.
Of course, you may also experience physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, nausea, lightheadedness, or trembling. When these symptoms occur constantly, it’s easy to feel hopeless and discouraged.
If social anxiety has taken over your life, you aren’t alone. And your suffering does not have to be permanent. Social anxiety may feel overpowering, but there are strategies to help you work against your fears and free yourself from its grip!
1. Focus on Others
If you have social anxiety, then you’re likely very focused on how you present yourself in any social situation. You’re worried about the things you’re saying, how you’re saying them, and how you look to other people.
The next time you’re in a social situation, try to do the exact opposite. Focus on the person you’re talking to. What are they saying? How are they saying it? By shifting your focus to them, you’re not only calming your fears and insecurities, but you’re also making yourself a much better conversation partner.
2. Practice Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is a great technique that helps with many different anxiety disorders. It’s especially great for alleviating physical symptoms, such as a racing heartbeat or lightheadedness.
How do you do it? Inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a few seconds, and then slowly exhale. Repeat as many times as you need.
Deep breathing helps deter physical symptoms, and it also helps clear your head of negative, racing thoughts. You can even find great videos online that guide you through different breathing techniques. Look around, find one that works well for you, and then use it when you feel anxious.
3. Tell People When You’re Feeling Anxious
Those with social anxiety tend to have a fear of embarrassing themselves in front of people. Because of this fear, you probably get extremely nervous around people. And the harder you try to calm your anxiety, the worse it seems.
You don’t have to share any personal details about your mental health if you don’t want to. However, instead of trying so hard to hide your anxiety, you may feel a sense of freedom by telling people about it.
Express your concerns to coworkers, friends, and family—you’ll likely find that people will be understanding. It’s incredibly reassuring to know that you have the support of others, and you’ll also feel much less anxious moving forward.
4. Challenge Your Negative Thoughts and Feelings
Anxiety makes us think of the worst-case scenario in most situations. When it comes to social anxiety, this manifests in a few different ways. You likely experience negative thoughts when it comes to making conversation, public speaking, or doing anything where people may see you. Social anxiety causes you to feel like you’ll inevitably fail or make a fool of yourself—and these thoughts can be crippling.
So, the next time you have one of these negative thoughts, actively try to challenge it. If you think you’re going to embarrass yourself in a conversation, simply ask yourself why. The next time you’re nervous about a presentation, really consider what’s the worst thing that could happen.
Once you rationalize these fears, you may find that they’re just that—fears. Sure, they’re still real and valid feelings, but these worries don’t have to come true. In fact, you may feel a sense of power when you challenge these negative thoughts.
5. Try Putting Yourself in More Social Situations
One of the best things you can do to treat anxiety is to face it head-on. While you may like to play it safe by staying home most of the time and avoiding social situations, really try to make the effort to put yourself out there.
You don’t have to push yourself too hard, and you don’t have to be the life of the party, either. Start with little changes: strike up a conversation with your coworker or agree to go to happy hour with friends. These little changes will help get you out there and, with each success, you’ll feel that much better about overcoming your fears.
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You won’t be able to overcome your social anxiety overnight. It will take time, but you don’t have to suffer forever. Consider implementing the aforementioned tips as you move forward in your journey, and consider seeking out a therapist to help you even more.
Remember that you aren’t alone, and your anxiety doesn’t have to be a permanent fixture in your life. Make some changes, seek out a therapist, and soon enough, you’ll have complete control over your social anxiety! If you would like to discuss treatment for anxiety or concerns about social anxiety, feel free to contact me.
Some people are fortunate to experience anxiety disorders only for a short period, possibly at a specific stressful part of their life. For many more people, though, anxiety and phobias are chronic.
Perhaps you first suffered panic attacks in college, facing the stress of being away from home and a heavy workload. Maybe you found yourself frozen at the door of an airplane, unable to board, caught in a powerful new phobia. Or it could be that you feel anxious all the time. Sometimes you don’t even know why.
No matter when you first started experiencing your anxiety disorders, they may have turned into a chronic, even terrible, part of your daily life. Whether you’ve sought anxiety treatment in the past or not, it’s essential to know that you can still make great strides and even fully recover from them.
1. Effective Therapies
Several approaches to treating anxiety have shown to be particularly helpful:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Although it’s a mouthful, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is scientifically shown to be useful for many mental health issues. With CBT, you learn to carefully examine and reframe the thoughts you have about yourself and your experiences with anxiety. The ultimate goal is for you to actively learn to replace your unhelpful thoughts with ones that can move you forward.
Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy often goes hand-in-hand with CBT. If you have specific phobias, such as air travel, exposure therapy might involve small steps to help you face your feeling of fear. You could watch videos of planes and airports, park somewhere to watch planes taking off and landing in person, and possibly even enter the airport. You might also work up to a full flight simulator. It’s not comfortable, but if you take baby steps, it can help significantly.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is another treatment that is very helpful for anxiety caused by trauma. Therapists receive specialized training to guide clients through this approach. It works by alternating stimulation between both hemispheres of the brain, usually by sight, sound, or small “tappers” held in the hands.
Mindfulness
If you utilize any CBT skills in your fight against anxiety, there’s a good chance you’ll also draw upon various mindfulness techniques. With mindfulness, you can learn to listen to your body. The thoughts and emotions you experience are directly connected to and experienced in your body. You’ll learn to notice the signs that your body is giving you when you feel anxious.
2. Practice Continually
As with learning anything new, recovery from anxiety disorders involves practice. Your fears and phobias have probably created strong pathways throughout your brain. They’re easily triggered. But the more you practice using the techniques and skills you’ve learned, the stronger the new neural pathways will grow. With time, they’ll start to override the anxiety-connected networks in your brain.
3. Self-Compassion
As with so many mental health issues, those struggling with chronic anxiety may feel tempted to beat themselves up. You might take positive steps forward, only to find yourself a few steps backward in a month or two.
Belittling yourself, however, doesn’t do you any good! While it can definitely be a challenge to learn how to stop criticizing yourself, it is necessary. Draw upon the wisdom of cognitive behavioral therapy and learn to stop untrue beliefs in their paths.
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Of course, reaching out to a therapist is also something very worthwhile that you can do if you’re struggling with chronic anxiety disorders. Often, the outside perspective and professional guidance of a therapist opens up the door to a deeper understanding of yourself. A therapist can walk you through these steps. They can help you if you find yourself stuck at a particular point.
Sometimes, anxiety stems from a tendency to dwell on worst-case scenarios. When the outcome of a particular scenario seems like it could be negative, people often think about the very worst that could happen.
Perhaps you have been faced with a situation that made you feel uncertain or worried. For example, maybe your boss reached out to you to request a meeting. At first, you might have wondered if they had to give you some feedback on work that was subpar. But over time, those minor worries developed into full-blown anxiety. The next thing you knew, you were lying awake at night and wondering if you were about to lose your job. In another scenario, you are concerned about a health-related symptom and you have scheduled an upcoming visit with your doctor. You may turn to “Dr. Google” and jump to the worst conclusions about what your symptoms may mean.
“What if” thinking can leave you feeling bogged down by fear and dread. But there are ways to shift your mindset. Here are a few strategies to help you deal with “what if” thinking.
Worst Case Scenario
Every once in a while, you might find yourself stuck on the possibility of dealing with the worst possible outcome of a particular situation. But during these moments, it’s important to ask yourself if the “worst-case scenario” is really so bad after all or how would you handle it in a proactive way.
Often, you will find that even the worst scenario you’ve imagined is something that is either extremely unlikely to happen or relatively easy to remedy. In most cases, when you dwell on the worst case you are creating anxiety that does not have to exist yet. As the saying goes, “do not borrow trouble,” but wait until you have the facts to determine your response.
Call a Friend
It’s okay if you need to vent. Calling a friend and asking them for their input on your situation and your thoughts about it can help you find relief.
Many times, your friend will be able to help you put your situation in perspective and see the big picture. Chatting with them might make you realize that what you’re dealing with isn’t as bad as you initially thought.
Disconnect
Nowadays, many of us are spending hours each day in front of a screen. This habit isn’t beneficial for our mental health, and it can worsen anxiety.
Therefore, if you catch yourself caught in a spiral of “what if” thoughts, it might be a good idea to simply unplug for a while. Turn your phone off, close your laptop, refrain researching the worst case, and step away from the TV.
Meditate
Taking a few moments to breathe deeply and meditate can work wonders for your mindset. So, if you find yourself struggling with pervasive “what if” thoughts on a regular basis, beginning a meditation practice can help you shift your perspective.
Mindfulness is all about acknowledging a thought, observing your feelings, and then letting it go, rather than identifying with a particular thought and allowing it to cloud your judgment.
Write in a Journal
Journaling is an immensely beneficial practice. Sometimes, all you need to do to clear your mind is to get your thoughts out of your head and write them down on paper.
As you write about the emotions you’re feeling and all of your worries, you might feel lighter—like a burden has been lifted off your shoulders.
Extra Preparation
Sometimes, you may get stuck on a “what if” thought that you actually have the power to change. If you can address the source of your worries, you might feel like you can finally breathe a sigh of relief!
For example, you may be thinking, “What if I oversleep for my job interview tomorrow?” You can take steps to make sure that won’t happen, such as going to bed early, setting several alarms, and asking a friend to give you a helpful wake-up call.
“What if” it gets worse?
For some types of anxiety, calling a friend, telling yourself to “stop thinking,” and preparing for every possible scenario actually increase the anxious feelings and “what if” thoughts. Or you find some short term relief, but the anxiety returns and you have to go through all the same strategies again and again. When your typical strategies are not working for long-term relief, and you find yourself caught in a loop, it may mean that the “what if” thoughts are potentially obsessive in nature. Speaking with a professional can help you determine if this is the case for you, so you can receive targeted treatment for these types of anxious thoughts.
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Do you feel like “what if” thinking has been holding you back lately? Talk therapy can help you adjust those thought patterns. Read more about anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. If you have questions about my therapeutic techniques, please contact me to see how I can help.
Suffering from anxiety isn’t easy. No matter what anxiety you deal with, the desire for relief is always there. Whether it’s social anxiety, PTSD, OCD, agoraphobia, specific phobias, or generalized anxiety disorder, you yearn for a break from painful symptoms.
You’re probably tired of anxiety’s physical effects, such as racing heart, flushing, stomach issues, and insomnia. You’re tired of its emotional effects—running thoughts, panic, living life much less fully than you’d like.
Perhaps your anxiety has grown and become worse over time. It can feel discouraging. If you’re searching for answers and hoping for help, here is some insight into why your anxiety has become worse over time.
Lack of Treatment
Like many mental health issues, anxiety often becomes worse when it isn’t actively treated. Treatment helps you get to the root causes of your anxiety. It enables you to discover solutions and practical ways of managing its symptoms.
But when you don’t treat it, your fears and phobias can run untethered through your mind. You don’t learn to rein it in—you may not even believe that it’s possible to rein it in.
Feelings of anxiety set off the “fight, flight, or freeze” instinct in your brain. These are authentic physiological reactions with deep roots in your nervous system. This instinct wants to protect you; it readies you to respond to danger. This instinct used to be vital to survival when predators were common, and a physical threat was real. Now, though, it often overreacts to the perils of our modern world.
When you suffer from anxiety, you need to learn how to manage this fight, flight, or freeze instinct. It can be hard to do on your own. The guidance of a therapist is often necessary. If you haven’t treated your anxiety, this biological instinct can wreak havoc in your life. Learning how to calm your nervous system is possible, but the longer you’ve delayed treatment, the harder it can be.
Lack of treatment also allows one type of anxiety to mushroom into others. Perhaps you started with a phobia of flying. Over time, as you learned to avoid airplanes, your brain started thinking that car travel was also a threat. Without learning the skills to manage your first phobia, it was easier for another one to pop up.
Substance Use
Like many health conditions, anxiety can be worsened by substance use. This includes alcohol and nicotine, along with illicit drugs. Many of these substances create feelings of anxiety. They can also lessen your body’s ability to handle your anxiety on your own.
Unrelenting Stress
Life is stressful. If you suffer from anxiety, you certainly know that. But sometimes life’s demands can be more relentless than at other times. Persistent times of stress can worsen anxiety. When you’re continually facing real-life pressures with no chance to recover, it’s harder for your body and mind to bounce back.
Job loss, natural disasters, divorce, or death of close family members, moves, and child-rearing can place heavy burdens on your shoulders. If you’re already anxiety-prone, the weight of such challenges wears your coping skills thin.
Your emotional reserves and resiliency become weaker. It’s no surprise that your anxiety has worsened over time if you’re in these situations. Seek out resources to help you become stronger and get through these challenges.
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As hard as it is to believe, please know that there is hope and help for anxiety. If you’re tired of living in fear, you can find a way out. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll be able to find relief.
As a psychologist with over 17 years of experience in anxiety treatment, I have helped many clients move forward with renewed thinking and relief from anxiety. Learn more about anxiety therapy or feel free to contact me for more information regarding anxiety treatment.
Many people think that the symptoms of anxiety would be obvious. After all, you would assume that you could usually tell when someone is nervous, or if they’re hesitant to join in on conversations and socialize. However, anxiety isn’t always so apparent.
In fact, many people do their best to keep their anxiety symptoms under wraps. Their symptoms may not interfere with their daily life on the surface, but inside, they’re struggling. This is what’s called “high-functioning anxiety”—it’s like a storm brewing beneath a calm exterior.
People with high-functioning anxiety might seem like they are thriving in the professional and social spheres, yet no one around them recognizes their inner turmoil. Just getting through the day can still feel like a difficult balancing act. High-functioning anxiety is often a way for the mind to try to prepare for a disappointing outcome to a future problem to avoid the letdown that comes with it.
Here are a few tell-tale signs of high-functioning anxiety.
Anxiety Disguised as “Ambition”
People with high-functioning anxiety are often viewed as highly ambitious. But, sometimes, this ambition is just a cover for anxiety.
Inside, maybe you’re deeply afraid that you will lose everything you’ve worked for if you make even a minor mistake. Or you may worry that people will not love you or approve of you unless you rack up prestigious titles and accolades. Therefore, you try to prove yourself through hard work.
The Mind Never Stops
Individuals with high-functioning anxiety might feel like they can never “turn off” their thoughts. They go over the same troubling thoughts over and over again, unable to simply drop it and move on. Even when they know that they should be relaxing, they simply can’t let these thoughts go. They are prone to rumination.
Perhaps, you lay awake at night imagining scenarios in which things can go wrong and how you would handle them. Or you may wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what you said or did yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. Once your mind gets going, it is impossible to fall back to sleep.
Perfectionist Mindset
If you have high-functioning anxiety, your friends might think of you as the perfectionist of the group.
On one hand, you might be proud of this: you think ahead and avoid some of the problems that your friends deal with, and you’re on top of your to-do list at all times. But you’re also constantly trying to anticipate problems and solve them before they happen. And half the time, the problems you dream up and prepare for never end up happening.
Hiding Your Feelings
Your loved ones think that you have it all together. But deep down, you know that this isn’t true. You’re scared to express it because you worry that admitting you deal with so much anxiety will let people down. And part of having high-functioning anxiety is harboring a fear of being vulnerable. Therefore, you don’t really want to open up. You’re afraid to break the illusion. And the idea of sharing your worries makes you feel like they could come true.
Unable to Relax
If you experience high-functioning anxiety, you may find it hard to physically relax. You might carry a lot of tension in your back and shoulders. Sometimes, you may even notice that your breathing is shallow and rapid when you’re trying to focus on something. And perhaps you grind your teeth at night or experience digestive issues. While these symptoms are not severe enough to stop you from doing the things you need to do on a daily basis, they can easily make you feel uncomfortable.
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Do you go through your day pretending that everything is fine—but deep down, you’re mired in anxiety and wish the people around you understood? People with high-functioning anxiety can benefit from therapy by learning strategies to quiet their minds without compromising their drive and sense of accomplishment.
Read more about anxiety treatment, or reach out for more information about help and treatment for anxiety. My office is located in East Cobb in Marietta, Georgia across from East Cobb Park.
