Our life is quite unpredictable, and every day we feel a whole range of emotions, some of them positive and some negative in colouring. Today I would like to dwell on anxiety.
Anxiety is an emotional discomfort linked to the expectation and foreboding of unpleasant experiences or of danger. This emotional state can be either situational or persistent. Physically, anxiety most often shows itself in disrupted sleep or none at all, in headaches and joint pain, in constant weakness and drowsiness, in a disrupted appetite (including nausea and a lump in the throat); there may also be trembling in the hands and throughout the body. When we are anxious, our head is filled with all sorts of negative thoughts, right up to a tense inner dialogue with ourselves.
To reduce anxiety and its consequences, you can keep to a few rules:
Do not stay alone with your emotions: talk about what you are going through and share it. Allow yourself to let out what is inside you. At the same time, try to be gentle not only with yourself but with others too.
- Take your mind off the source of anxiety: do things that interest you, talk with friends and family about all sorts of subjects and do not withdraw into yourself.
- Keep to a daily routine and meet your basic needs. Do not forget to eat and to sleep enough. Eat a variety of food, so that your body receives all the substances it needs.
- Give yourself pleasure and treat yourself. Buy yourself something, for instance, or go to a beauty salon. Do something just for you.
- Take up physical activity or some other kind of activity.
- Recall situations in your life in which you were successful. That gives you confidence in yourself and in your own strength.
- You can use various relaxation and breathing techniques.
- Be very selective about your sources of information: the internet, the media and others. Filter everything you hear and see. That will help you judge the situation more soberly.
If you realise that you have been in a state of stress for a long time and the anxiety only keeps building up, turn to a specialist.
