Before we start looking at how to treat anxiety, I want to remind you I am not a mental health professional. I do not have any formal education or training. You should always consult your health care professional for any serious condition. This information is my opinion from my personal experience and is not to be taken as professional advice. Read my disclaimer here.

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How to treat anxiety generally means that you are looking for a way to eliminate or get rid of it.

What if that wasn’t the problem?

What if you just weren’t treating it right?

When we are mean to a person, we love we say we aren’t treating them right. What if this was the case with anxiety?

I want you to take a look at anxiety in a way you may have never considered it before.

What is Anxiety?

What is anxiety to you. Think about what you describe anxiety to be.

You probably just described it as something awful that happens when you are triggered by something in your environment.

What if I told you, you were wrong?

What if I told you that it is just a response or sensation in your body?

Break down what anxiety is in your body. Is it hot or cold, tense or shaking, do you feel it all over or just one area?

There is not a right answer to this question.
You will experience it differently than someone else.

Really characterize it. Once you break it all down, it doesn’t seem as earth shattering as we may make it seem.

Now it certainly isn’t enjoyable, but we can not always feel positive emotions. You have to have some negative ones. Without that comparison point it the positive emotions would never feel that positive.

Knowing that anxiety is a sensation in your body what can you do about it?

Take Anxiety’s Power

Resisting anxiety gives it power. It can grow from a small sensation to a debilitating state.

This will happen when you start to resist feeling it. It will build up until you can no longer manage it or find your way out of it.

Think of a time you started to feel that twinge of anxiety start coming around. You start trying to push it down and out of the way.
You ignore it and try to use a coping skill to make it disappear.

That might work on occasion But, I would bet that it comes rushing back more forceful than ever.

This is because you never truly dealt with the anxiety.

Feel it –

Let yourself feel anxiety – Sit with it, acknowledge it, say it is there. Remember, it is just a sensation in your body.

You can simply repeat “this is anxiety”. Allow it to be there. You can still move through whatever task or activity you are doing. Feel it and let it pass.

There is no set amount of time that it will last. It may even come back. Feel it then too.

Feeling your anxiety can seem like a scary idea especially when for so long you have tried to resist it. The over intense feeling you relate with anxiety is because of how it builds up when you resist it.

The first time you sit with your anxiety notice the difference than when you were rushing to fix it or make it go away.

Why do you feel anxiety?

Anxiety is an emotion. Emotions are sensations in your body.

Whatever emotion you experience is because of a thought that you are having.

People will argue that anxiety is triggered by an event that happens.

Someone yelling at you. Your plans not going as expected. You are put in an unknown situation.

All of these things may be happening when you experience anxiety but it is not the event.
It is how you think about the event.

This may be happening subconsciously but it is still happening. You are having a thought that is creating you to feel anxiety.

BUT! You have the power to change your thoughts. You can change the narrative of your life.

Even though you are going to sit and feel your anxiety it doesn’t mean there aren’t things you can do to help with the processing of anxiety.

Breathing –

You have heard this before a gazillion times if you have ever looked into how to treat anxiety. It is a useful tool when you treat anxiety.

Simple breaths may help but you can breath in ways that really help calm your body.

There are methods to breathing. To become familiar with some of the methods I would recommend looking into some yoga instructors. If yoga is not your thing, that is 100% okay but I would still say you should explore the breathing techniques.

The important part of the breath when you are considering how to treat anxiety is actually the exhale. People have a misconception that it is the inhale. While you do need to inhale the exhale should be your focus.

Many yoga instructors will have an introductory video to breathing that guides you through how to get a full breath. This is a great video from Adriene at yogawithadriene.com to get you started. She has several different breathing techniques and is wonderful at explaining them even for beginners. Find a yogi you connect with and explore different types of breath.

Journaling –

Journaling or Brain dumping as I like to call it can help you look at where the anxiety is coming from. Finding the source is how you treat it. Without treating the source, you are just putting a band aid on it.

There are times where you are just in a mood. You may not even be able to put a finger on it but you can just feel your whole presence shift.

You are not in the right head space.

This could be particularly helpful in environments like at work. There are days where your work load or day may not be all that different from any other day. Yet, you feel this weight or whatever the pre stages of anxiety feel like to you.

That is when brain dumping comes in. When you feel yourself start slipping and losing control over your emotions its because you are losing control over your thoughts.

Mastering your thoughts takes a lot of work and that’s okay. That is why we have tools like journaling. Start with just writing down whatever is in your head.

Zero judgement, zero hesitation. Pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and get it out.

Once it’s out in front of you, you can really assess it. Look at where your feelings might be stemming from.

Always remember this is not the time to be hard on yourself. Just be aware of where your thoughts are taking you.

You can usually find more clarity and head space to get through the rest of the day after doing a brain dump.

Walk it out –

When you first let yourself feel the anxiety it’s a new experience for you. This can be difficult to do in your every day life. Taking a walk not to get away from the anxiety but rather focusing on feeling it can be helpful in the beginning.

A lot of the times you try to resist the anxiety is because you are trying to focus on whatever is happening at that moment. Until you can feel the anxiety without it affecting your functioning try to move to a space where there is nothing pulling you away from the experience.

Final Thoughts –

Anxiety does not mean anything but that you are experiencing an emotion caused by a thought that you had. It is not because someone said or did anything to you. It is inside your brain.

You have the ability to manage your brain. You get to identify the anxiety and let it flow through you until it reaches its end.

There is a thought causing your feeling. When you pinpoint that thought you can start shifting it to think differently and create an emotion you want to feel. Or you could even choose that anxiety for this particular event is not all that bad and it’s what you want to feel.
The amazing thing is that it is up to you to decide.