How to Crush Anxiety by Avoiding 7 Mistakes

There is an abundance of advice available online, in books and from professional sources such as support groups and doctors. However, with this comes an eclectic mix of information that can be incredibly useful or detrimental to your development. Anxiety is a mental disorder that varies considerably depending on the individual and their past experiences and it is for this reason why mistakes can be made in the advice taken towards dealing with anxiety.

The key to combating anxiety is understanding, acknowledging, analysing and then acting on your condition. You know yourself the best so you will know what you will respond too the best. So, here is a list of some of the mistakes that can be made when dealing with anxiety, so you can at least be aware when researching how to move forward in the right way.

1. Taking medication straight away:

Being prescribed medication can be, for some, the first thing that happens when a form of anxiety is diagnosed. This might be the right thing for some but for most this should be a last resort as medication can lead to you to feeling more anxious as it triggers a chemical reaction in your brain, triggering a threatened reaction and causing higher levels of anxiety and huge side effects. Taking medication can also lead to dependency and raise anxiety at a later date when another form of worry sets in and a person does not learn to cope with it.

2. Breathing exercises:

One common type of advice for anxiety sufferers is to breath, which helps to regulate the heart rate and calm a person down. For many this does not happen as the techniques are not taught in the correct way at times. Breathing can help to combat a panic attack but will only work if you breath out longer than you breath in. Breathing deeply will deplete Carbon Dioxide levels in your body. Even though we are taught that CO2 is a bad thing at school it is still something we need in our system to function. So by breathing deeply and inhaling too much oxygen our bodies can panic more, exasperating the situation.

3. Not getting or asking for help:

Ironically, asking or getting help can be one the biggest hurdles for some people as they see it as embarrassing and in turn induce anxiety from the thought of this. Well, simply this is wrong. What we need to realise is that just by admitting we have a problem we have taken the first real step to living that happy life. Help can be anything from talking things through with a friend or family member, seeking advice from your doctor, attending a support group, going to church or seeing a therapist. To get help or ask for help is the bigger and more admirable thing to do, so why do we feel like we need to shy away from it, surely living a life controlled by our irrationalities is worse especially when it can affect our life so badly.

4. Facing your fears:

Much of the advice you get when it comes to dealing with anxiety will be to face your fears. Now, this is true to some extent but it has to be done extremely carefully. The way anxiety works and why it happens is due to how the brain and then body reacts to certain situations so imagine if you have a fear of shopping malls and crowds and you throw yourself in the deep end and go into one at midday on a Saturday at peak time. This is likely to bring on a severe panic attack that will reaffirm your phobias even more and may even associate other events to the negative perceptions you already hold.

5. Therapy:

Going to therapy is something that can be daunting for many of us and can have a social stigma attached to it. There seems to be an uneducated approach and attitude towards finding and going to a therapist. Anxiety and other mental illnesses vary according to the person, experiences and mindset; so allocating a therapist to each individual can be an extremely subjective thing. Opening the yellow pages and making an appointment with the first therapist that sounds like they could help you may be one way of doing it, but the mistake that is easily made is staying with this therapist under the idea that this is the way it is done.

However, not every therapist is suited to the needs to a person. If they are professional they will state this but some may not. If you do not see any progress or feel you do not get on with them then you should move on to the next one.

6. Not understanding anxiety and the brain:

The understanding of how the brain works and how anxiety can occur is something vital in overcoming it. Many people, however, will not carry out any research, ask any questions or think they already know everything. This is the wrong thing to do, with so much information readily available we can find out huge amounts about the condition of anxiety and help guide us through the path to self discovery.

7. Not taking action straight away:

Anxiety can manifest itself in many ways, but it can only take one experience or symptom to happen for the condition to spiral out of control. The ignorance, little education and stigma that surrounds the term ‘anxiety’ and ‘mental illness’ people can end up hiding their head in the sand and not biting the bullet straight away as the worry of what others think takes over the way we lead our lives.

Anxiety can be dealt with as long as the right things are in place, knowledge is power when it comes to battling the condition, so, when this is accomplished and you have you’re eyes wide open you can push your way forward into getting your life back to how it was and maybe even better.