7 Exit Strategies When Stress Tips to Anxiety
Stress is normal. Good stress can help us be aware and alert us to danger. But stress on overdrive can become anxiety. The first step to combating stress is learning to recognize it. Below are several signs of stress that may push you into an anxiety state.
Signs of anxiety:
- Sleeplessness or sleeping more than usual
- Jitters
- Irritability
- Crying for no reason
- Easily agitated and/or overwhelmed
- Inability to focus
- Feeling a need to escape to a safe place
- Extreme fatigue for even you favorite things
- Chest pains, dry mouth, headaches
Now that you can recognize the signs of stress, what can you do to avoid escalating toward debilitating anxiety?
Be Proactive: Learn to recognize the signs of stress early as well as the approaching signs of anxiety. Use one or several of your techniques for combating anxiety. The trick is to start early.
Reach out: Build a network of people you can trust that understand not only the extent of your anxieties but that know your coping mechanisms.
Research Options: There are a wide variety of physical and mental feedback methods that can ease anxieties; research them and have a plan A and a plan B that you prefer. There are also homeopathic remedies and medications that very successfully treat the physical effects of anxiety. Research each of these options until you find the one that works for you. Get help and take a trusted confident with you that might hear something you could miss.
Support Groups: Find a group where you can talk about your anxiety, you might just hear something new that rings true for you to use. No one understands anxiety and its complexities better than someone that’s gone through it.
Be Still: Give yourself permission to check out of situations that make you uncomfortable or host feelings of being over-whelmed. As you rest and heal, these feelings will be more manageable. Learn and practice meditation to relax the body’s reaction. Others successfully use the Meridian Tapping Method. The trick is to explore many methods of relaxing and use the one that works for you.
Exercise. Giving the body something to do with the adrenaline produced by anxiety is not only restoring but relaxing. Try a new workout class, DVD or home fitness equipment. It doesn’t take but an easy twenty minute walk to begin to release tension.
Quiet Activities: Take up painting, photography, scrapbooking, coloring, gardening, or fishing to quiet your body and mind. It’s a good idea to belong to group activities but it’s equally as important to have activities you can do alone and quiet the noise within.
Millions of people experience anxiety episodes at least one time in their life. And most of those people won’t see it coming, nor will do much about it. That lack of being invested in your health stalls your getting well. Refusing to recognize anxiety can keep you trapped and allow the stress to take over your life. Unabated stress can have far-reaching physical and emotional consequences. Choosing to do something is better than doing nothing. The more you understand what’s going on the easier it will be to equip yourself with a solution.
Short-term or life-long management can prevent a melt-down and leave you in charge of you and your health. Creating a stress exit plan may go a long way to avoiding the consequences of stressful anxiety. You’ve Got This!
