Self Care Treatments to Tackle Anxiety | A Mental Health Initiative by Fashion Herald

In a recent survey conducted by the Indian Psychiatry Society, the sudden rise in those suffering from mental illness is up to 20 per cent. According to the survey, at least one out of every five Indians is suffering from mental illness.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a condition when intense and persistent worry and fear takes over your mind and interfere with everyday situations. Anxiety is when feelings and emotions become excessive and out of control, consuming the better part of your daily life. It may result in faster heart rate, fatigue, rapid breathing, sweating and uncontrollable flow of emotions, worry and fear, irritability, restlessness, insomnia etc.
Anxiety overwhelms the actions of a person and causes drifting of mind and lack of concentration; it sits like a worm inside your mind and body, eating you up every moment.

Uncontrollable and untreated anxiety disorder can have negative impacts in the growth of a person in and out, making the person a victim to his own mind. If one does not learn to tackle the disorder then it will grow further, causing other disorders such as depression. Even the slightest symptom of anxiety must be taken seriously and immediate changes must be made to control the condition before it turns into a huge storm.

Self-care treatments to tackle your anxiety

During the lock down, for our own safety, we have been isolated from the outside world and while it has various impacts on the environment as well as humankind, one major impact which is taking its toll is the degrading mental health of people from all ages.  Anxiety disorder, depression and other issues are coming into effect due to a sudden change of behavioral pattern of human beings.

“People should always focus on finding long-term fixes for mental health issues such as anxiety rather than finding short-term fixes. Short term fixes are fast but does not heal the root of the trouble while long-term fixes work slowly but focuses on healing the very cause of the problem.”

Therefore in this article, we have come up with some self-care long-term treatments that you can follow to tackle your anxiety. So without any further ado, let’s get started.

1. Focus on breathing

This one is for when you are having, or about to have an anxiety attack. The first thing you should do is close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Sit in a relaxing position and take a deep breath in, give a few seconds pause and send a deep breath out. This practice can really calm you down and divert your focus from your thoughts to your breathing.  Practice this for a few minutes until you find yourself in a calmer state of mind. This will allow your body to fully exchange incoming oxygen with outgoing carbon dioxide. This will also slow the rapid heartbeat, lower or stabilize blood pressure and lower stress level.

2. Analyze your thoughts

When thoughts barge in your mind and start troubling you take a step and try to analyze your thoughts and patterns. Most of the thoughts are actually unnecessary and does not make any sense and as soon as you actually try and analyze your thoughts from a distance, you understand the working of your own mind, but to achieve this step, you will require a lot of concentration for which the next step will come in handy.

3. Meditate

This practice is not unique or new, in fact this is something you must have heard a lot of times before, meditation have proven to be one of the most effective tools to find inner peace and calmness, providing a relief to various mental health issues including anxiety. Meditation will provide you a self-reflection moment and peace. But it is not as easy as it sounds, especially when you are constantly over thinking and worrying yourself with thousands of thoughts. That is why meditation is something that must find a position in your daily routine activities. Calming your mind will take time but it will have long term benefits. Practicing meditation on a daily basis will increase your concentration level and overall calmness of mind.

4. Yoga and physical exercise

Yes, Yoga and exercise will boost up your physical and mental health. We understand that in times when anxiety actually hits, doing anything feels like a burden but just an extra effort that you put to heal yourself will have long-term benefits. Yoga and physical exercise is a daily activity that you must follow to heal from your anxiety.

“Only you can help yourself out of this, remember! If you can follow these steps then you will save yourself from medical drugs and heal naturally. An extra effort that you put in today will help you dramatically in the long run.”

5. Healthy Diet and Lifestyle

Following a healthy diet is very important. What you put inside your body has a dramatic effect on the output. Eating fresh vegetables and fruits with proper, healthy diet will affect your mood positively and make you feel healthy internally as well as physically. Drink plentiful water, as it washes away the toxic waste in your body. Remember long term changes do not happen in a day, all of these activities must be cultivated as daily habits to control anxiety.

6. Take a Shower

Yes, it is important too. Cultivate this habit in your daily routine. Taking a shower will make you feel relaxed and refreshed and if not much then it will certainly give you a break from continuous ongoing worry and fear.  Try and play some music in shower while dancing to the beats. This may sound funny and useless but sometimes it’s the smallest activities that make us happy and relieved.

7. Focus your thoughts on something you like

As you start to gain concentration through the above steps try and channelize your thoughts towards something you like to do. Be it reading, drawing, dancing, singing, cooking, anything. Take one step at a time, focus completely on the task on hand and deliver or enjoy the best you can. Even if the activity involves just eating, try to take in every taste and scent of the food. Remember this will not happen suddenly it will take your continuous effort to cultivate the other steps into your daily routine before you can channelize and focus your thoughts.

8. Open up to someone you love and trust

Talking to a loved one and letting it all out has some benefits and make you feel relieved for some time. Take a moment with someone you love and talk about your problems and seek help. There is no shame in doing that. Even if you do not want to talk about your mental health, sometimes randomly chatting with old friends and people you care about will lift up your mood. But this step will not always work, so cultivate a trustworthy relationship with someone who will understand your issues and help you in troubling times.

9. Healthy Sleeping patterns

Try not to sacrifice your sleep, as it is something necessary for your mind to recover from fatigue. If you cannot sleep then you can try various activities to become tired or something that triggers sleep such as low music or reading in a comfortable bed. Try to follow healthy sleeping patterns if you can, as waking up early in the morning will give you a fresh environment to work out and meditate.

10. Seek Help

If you feel too overwhelmed by your emotions and cannot make an effort towards self care treatments, then it will be for the best to seek help from mental health professionals. Remember that it’s okay to feel this way and that you are not alone.

These self-care steps can be beneficial only when they are cultivated as day to day habits. One thing that you must remember is that anxiety never disappears, it happens from time to time but by developing these habits you will be able to tackle anxiety in a better way and decrease its intensity and frequency.

Have any query in mind or any comments for the article? Feel free to write to chiefeditor@fashionherald.in