Anxiety has a major impact on your life whether you are consciously aware of it or not. Most of the time, people think as anxiety as only a negative thing, relating to worry and irrational fear. It can help save your life if there is actual danger or make you happier if you’re excited about something. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what anxiety is, how it affects your life, and how to deal with it.
Most anxiety is thought to be bad because so many have trouble dealing with negative anxieties. You’ve no doubt seen various books, programs, and pills aimed at reducing anxiety. There is more focus on the negative in our culture and no one complains about or even mentions positive anxiety.
There are more types of negative anxiety though. To tell if it is helpful to you or if it needs to be dealt with, you should ask yourself if you’re looking forward to something or if there is a legitimate threat to you. If this is not the case, you’re battling with irrational fears or useless stresses. Stress is just a mild form of fear.
Anxiety is blamed on a variety of things. Some say it is biological, that there are increased risk factors in your DNA. It can be partly related to hormones. Your environment provides stimulus, but it is more your culture and influences that have taught you how to react to those stimuli.
Ultimately it is up to the thought processes of the individual and that is the best thing to focus on. Other “causes” limit your options. When you blame something on factors you do not control, you take away your power. And that feeling of helplessness will inevitably cause more anxiety.
Extreme cases of anxiety pave the way to attacks. Such attacks may be chronic or acute. Over time stress may build up and lead to panic attacks that seem like they come out of nowhere. Anxiety attacks occur when you are in certain situations that you associate a lot of stress to.
Daily fears and stresses put you at increased risk to experience such attacks. Your life won’t be as satisfying when you have to live with these feelings either. Even if you never reach the attack stage, this still applies. When you can deal with your negative anxieties effectively, you will begin living a much better life.
Slow, deep breathing, is the common suggestion on how to relax and let go of stress. When you are physically tense you will be mentally tense too. By providing your mind with a calming physical input you can start to relax. This principle can be applied to any other healthy way of relaxing the body, such as exercising (tension will be reduced after) or getting massages.
If you attack the root of the problem, you won’t have to do relaxation techniques in the first place though. Again, this is not avoiding stress as you can’t control what life throws at you. It is more about changing how you see the situations so that they don’t cause you stress in the first place.
You can learn to discipline your mind through regular mediation. This is used as a tool for introspection or though control. You can use this to isolate the sorts of thoughts that you don’t want and learn how to replace them with thoughts you do want. There are tons of forms of meditation and mental discipline that you may practice. Not all of them are right for everyone, so research them further if you feel they might be of use to you in your battle against anxiety.
To learn more about panic attacks while sleeping visit our panic attacks while sleeping page.