Everyone has experienced anxiety to some extent. But if you suffer from an anxiety disorder, that knot-in-your-stomach may be an all-pervasive reality. This blog post will take a look at how to cope with anxiety, including panic attacks.

Symptoms of anxiety vary greatly person-by-person. Some common features include:

• Excessive worrying, sometimes called “rumination”

• Feeling agitated, like danger is around every corner

• Restlessness, especially in children and teens

• Fatigue, because your body is so worn out from being alert

• Difficulty concentrating

• Irritability

• Physical tension

• Trouble getting to sleep or insomnia

• Relying on alcohol or other forms of “numbing” behaviors

If you have a more severe anxiety disorder, you may also experience panic attacks or agoraphobia (fear of going out in public, often due to panic attacks). Panic attacks are a very real and very scary experience. You might feel like you are having a heart attack and wonder if you are dying.

Simple Suggestions for Coping with Anxiety

The good news is that there are many things you can do to treat anxiety disorders naturally. These suggestions may be helpful on their own, or you can use them in conjunction with anti-anxiety medication prescribed by a psychiatrist or medical doctor.

Get More Sleep

I know it’s hard to even think about this, especially if one of your symptoms is insomnia, but getting more sleep will help lower the levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline in your system while boosting the amount of calming hormones like GABA.

There are a lot of things you can do to encourage sleep at night, including:

• Dimming the lights in your home at night

• Enjoying a warm shower or bath 1 to 2 hours before sleep

• Using the blue blocker function (or “night mode”) on your electronic devices, as blue light encourages wakefulness

• Taking melatonin

• Skipping the electronics altogether in favor of something like reading a book

• While trying to sleep, keeping any lights out of the bedroom, including alarm clocks or other small LED status lights

• Reducing the temperature in your bedroom

• Journaling about a specific situation that is causing you anxiety (This way, you tell your brain, “OK, I wrote it down and can go over it tomorrow more if I need to.”)

Use Relaxation Techniques

Don’t roll your eyes! Relaxation techniques like deep breathing and muscle relaxation are incredibly effective at treating anxiety.

Your autonomic nervous system has 2 parts that work involuntarily: 1) sympathetic, and 2) parasympathetic. Your sympathetic nervous system is sometimes referred to as the “fight or flight” system because it is activated when your mind perceives a threat. The parasympathetic nervous system is often referred to as the “rest and digest” system because it causes your muscles to relax and heart rate to decrease.

The goal of relaxation techniques is to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, since it is impossible to be both in survival mode and relaxed.

Deep breathing is probably the easiest way to do this. There are many variations out there. One I like in particular is known as “square breathing.” You breathe in for 4 seconds (or other length of time), hold your breath for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, and then rest for 4 seconds before breathing in again.

Another technique is called progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). There are a lot of videos on YouTube that will walk you through a PMR session. The gist is that you go through each part of your body (usually beginning with your feet and ending with your face), clenching and then releasing your muscles. As you do this, notice what sensations you experience.

Both of these techniques should only take a few minutes, but they can leave you feeling much calmer and feeling the effects of your activated parasympathetic nervous system.

Coping with Panic Attacks

If you experience panic attacks, you may be thinking, “Gee, these suggestions are all well and good, but what about when I feel like I’m having a heart attack and can barely breathe.”

Panic attacks are much more complicated.

To begin, I would recommend incorporating the relaxation techniques outlined above into your day-to-day routine. As discussed, this will help activate your parasympathetic nervous system and reduce the likelihood of a panic attack. You will also be a lot more likely to be able to use one of these techniques during a panic attack.

The other thing I would recommend is addressing any trauma that may be underlying your panic attacks. Maybe you were sexually molested as a child. Or maybe you had a frightening car accident. Whatever the cause, it’s important to treat the trauma in order to find long-term freedom from anxiety.

One of the most effective forms of trauma therapy is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). I won’t rehash all the details—you can read my post on EMDR here—but I will say that it can have a profound impact on anxiety.

The problem with trauma is that it can often lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where your body believes that it is under attack and goes into panic mode even in benign situations.

EMDR helps your brain rewire so that traumatic memories go from being scary or difficult to neutral. Instead of reacting to triggering situations in light of the traumatic memory, your brain is free to experience a new sense of safety and peace.

There Is Hope for Anxiety

These are just a few of the suggestions I have for anxiety. There are many more healthy things you can do to cope with this varied disorder.

If you are dealing with anxiety, PTSD, agoraphobia, or even substance use that could be related, I highly recommend seeking advice from a therapist in your area. Talking through your stressors can be a big help, and the therapist should have other tools that he/she can teach you.

If you live in the San Diego area, Integrity Counseling Group can help you with your anxiety. Our therapists come from different backgrounds and use different approaches, but are highly skilled in treating anxieties, related addictions, and trauma.

Cory Anderson, LMFT, CSAT, is the founder and director of Integrity Counseling Group, a therapy practice in San Diego County specializing in treating sex addiction and trauma. For more information about Integrity Counseling Group or to schedule a session with a therapist, please contact us at (760) 283-7000.