At-Home Remedies For Your Anxiety
If you’re locked up in your home and trying to wait out a global pandemic like the rest of us, you’re likely not feeling too great about your anxiety. The social climate isn’t doing much to help with those anxieties either. Since the pandemic has begun, things have been spinning out of control and it’s not very conducive to helping you keep things in perspective, stay productive, and not feel the anxiety creeping further and further into your mind. However, if you’re someone that’s diagnosed with chronic anxiety, this is a unique time. For the first time, perhaps ever in your lifetime, everyone around you is feeling the exact same anxieties as you are. In a time like this, it’s important to remember that even if you’re alone in your home, you’re not really alone. We’re all in this together, and we’re here to help you tackle your anxieties and keep a cool head in the face of a significant challenge.
Wendy Iglehart is here to help you, and everyone you know, find more coping mechanisms to help you deal with anxiety and the many symptoms of anxiety while you’re at home in a healthy manner. So, if you’re starting to feel your symptoms flare-up and the uncertain future is weighing heavy on you, read on to find out more about healthy coping mechanisms to help ward off anxieties of all kinds.
Leave The Caffeine
With no Starbucks open and in-range, now might be the perfect time to tone down the caffeine. If you’re staying at home all day, there’s a good chance you won’t need nearly as much to get the same amount done. Plus, caffeine is a major cause of anxiety flare-ups. It causes nervousness and jitters in people who aren’t prone to anxiety disorders and can make those symptoms so much worse in people who do have them. It can cause panic attacks from time to time and make general panic and anxiety symptoms much worse. And those conclusions were drawn when the world wasn’t in a state of turmoil, now caffeine likely has a much more noticeably negative effect on you. If you can’t forego caffeine at all just yet, start weaning yourself off. We recommend switching from espresso drinks to just regular coffee, then stepping that down to breakfast tea or a black tea of some kind. Finally, limiting your caffeine to sources that only come from green tea, whether it’s from a bag or from matcha could be the final wave of relief you desperately need. If you have less of this hyped-up chemical in your system, you won’t be so reactionary, especially when you’re watching the news.
Try Meditation
Lately, meditation has largely been associated with medicinal purposes that don’t have much in the way of scientific research backing them. The word “meditation” and even “meditative” gets thrown around a lot in regard to different activities and how they can help you calm down. And that’s why it’s so easy to discount the whole practice, because if you don’t find driving meditative, the whole thing must not be for you, right? Wrong. There are loads of different ways to meditate and half the battle is finding one that works best for you.
The most simplistic goal of meditation, at its purest core, is simply to help you remove tumultuous thoughts from your mind. The idea is that when those are removed, or sort of forced out by a sense of calm, your mind itself will stop spinning in those unhealthy circles. Mindfulness will push out chaos and therefore relieve your stress and give you a more centered place to approach your issues from. The recommended amount of time for meditating falls somewhere in the 30-minute range according to John Hopkins. We recommend trying the least expensive way first: go and sit outside, breathe deeply and focus on your breathing, or try to tap in and hear your heartbeat. Don’t let your mind stray to anything else. Focus only on the sensory sounds of your body being alive. Follow this practice every day, and you may find some relief from your anxiety symptoms.
Stay Healthy
Just like cutting out Starbucks, now is the perfect time to give cutting out bad foods a try. You’ll be at home, so you’ll only be able to cook, and ordering from outside is a bit risky in the case of your health. So start favoring your body with nutrient-rich, delicious foods that you just can’t access when you’re mostly eating out. Find healthy recipes online or in a good cookbook that you have lying around and form your two-week grocery shopping list around that. Go and get plenty of vegetables and fruits, and invest in lean meats wherever you can, whether it’s frozen or fresh. This is the perfect time to start giving your body and your brain the nutrients you need to survive and thrive. Plus, a well-fed body can help you fight symptoms of anxiety because it won’t be caused by anything like low blood sugar, chemicals in unhealthy, processed foods, or preservatives.
Schedule With Wendy Iglehart Now
In times like this, when everything seems filled with uncertainty, it can be helpful to make plans for when this all ends. Reach out to us today for all of your counseling needs in the Cockeysville area. We’d be honored to help you start working through the issues you became more acquainted with throughout this time of global strife. Reach out to us today to schedule an upcoming appointment for your anxiety disorder now.