Tag Archives: Reduce Anxiety

Self-Coping with Your Anxiety

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Have you ever felt as though your anxiety would never go away? Maybe you feared that your heart rate would never decrease or that your spiraling thoughts would continue to consume you? It can be a terrifying feeling as you try to take control of your mind or body.

The good news is I will give you two coping strategies that could be beneficial when dealing with your anxiety. These skills are mental activities that will help you feel calmer in the moments where your anxiety has gotten the best of you.

Challenging Irrational Thoughts

Challenging your thoughts can be a great way to decrease your anxiety. Sometimes your worries might not have a lot of evidence behind them and challenging their validity can help you take the power away from irrational thoughts. One way you can do this is by using socratic questioning. This is when you ask yourself questions to determine the logic and validity of a thought.

Here are some socratic questions you can ask yourself:

  • Is my thought based on facts or feelings?
  • How would my best friend or spouse view this fear?
  • What is the likelihood that this is going to happen? (0% to 100%)
  • What is the most likely outcome of this situation?
  • What evidence is there to support that your fear is going to happen?
  • What evidence is there to support that your fear will not happen?

Visualizing

What you think about has the power to change how you feel and behave. For example, if you are thinking about your fear of getting fired at work, it might make you feel insignificant or insecure. Knowing your thoughts have this ability means that you can also use them positively.

Imagining peaceful situations can make you feel at ease when faced with anxiety. When using imagery, you want to use all 5 of your senses. This way you can envision this place in greater detail.

First you will want to identify a place that brings you comfort. Now use all of your senses to take you to that place. You want to be as detailed as possible. For this example I am going to use the beach as my comfort spot.

Sight: I see waves lightly crashing on to the shore, a family eating sandwiches out of a picnic basket next to me, birds flying around, kids building sand castles, endless miles of white sand, a line of tall hotels behind me, and my best friend sitting next to me

Hearing: I hear the sound of the birds chirping, country music playing, the family next to me laughing about the birds trying to take their food, and the crunch of the chip bag as my friend tries to stick her hand in there.

Smell: I smell coconut because of the sunscreen that I am using, the saltiness of the water, my lavender body spray, and the pepperoni pizza that I am having for lunch

Taste: I taste saltiness after swimming in the ocean, marinara sauce from the pizza, and the taste of a yellow gatorade

Touch: I feel the soft sand in between my toes, the sun beating on my face, the water dripping off of my hair onto my back, the wind blowing to the right of me, and the cold gatorade in my hand

Next Steps:

If you found these coping strategies to be helpful and are looking for more ways to reduce your anxiety then we are here for you. At New Vision Counseling and Consulting we have a team of compassionate and highly trained therapists who can help. They will work with you as you become the best version of yourself. The version who lives in peace and not stress and fear. Call (405) 921-7776 to start the process or get more information on how we can help. We are excited to hear from you and begin the journey towards what better looks like for you!

Reduce Anxiety in Five Minutes

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Reduce Anxiety in Five Minutes

There are a lot of different ways to treat your anxiety.  Some common examples are lifestyle changes, mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises, or different types of talk therapy.   One way you can reduce your anxiety in five minutes is by EFT tapping.  EFT uses fingertip tapping on a numerous number of specific points in your body in order to reduce your anxiety over a certain thought or belief.

In this blog I will give you 5 steps to follow in order to balance your energy and decrease your stress.  EFT tapping is used to make a connection between your body and the damaging thoughts or emotions that you face.  Before you are able to make that connection you have to be willing to become aware of your own harmful thoughts.

Step 1: Identify Concern 

Identify what concern you want to address.  For example, that could be the anxiety you are experiencing over a recent health diagnosis.

Step 2: Rate Intensity of the Concern

When you start to think about that concern, rate it on a scale of 0-10 based on how much it is affecting you.  10 being that it is causing you a lot of distress and 0 being that it does not bother you at all.

The purpose of the scale is that you will be able to measure your anxiety level around the concern before you partake in the tapping exercise vs. after you finish it.

Step 3: Set up Statement

Before you begin tapping, you want to create a statement that you can use that narrows in on your problem.  The statement should consist of 2 different parts.

  1. Acknowledges the problem
  2. Promotes self-acceptance

An example could be “Even though I am afraid of not being good enough at my job, I deeply and fully accept myself.”

Step 4: Tapping Sequence

There are many different tapping points throughout your face and your body.  You will tap each one 5-7 times while completing the exercise.  For this specific activity you will be locating 9 individual tapping spots.

You will start with the karate chop point (on the side of your hand) and tap there with a couple fingers while repeating your set up statement. After that you will tap on these 8 points.

  1. Beginning of your eyebrow
  2. Side of your eye
  3. Under your eye
  4. Under your nose
  5. In between your mouth and chin
  6. Beginning of your collarbone
  7. Under your armpit
  8. Top of your head

While you are tapping at these spots you will want to have a statement that reminds you of your concern. This will help you stay focused. So if your set up statement was “Even though I am afraid of not being good enough at my job, I deeply and fully accept myself.” Your reminder statement could be “ I have anxiety about failing at my job.”

Step 5: Re-rate your distress level 

After you have finished the tapping sequence, you will then rate your anxiety over the same concern on a scale of 0-10. If your number was 8 in the beginning but now it is 4, that is great. The goal is to get your number down to 0, so you will want to continue with the sequence until that happens.  Sometimes your number may not get all the way down to 0 and that’s ok.  EFT can help you consistently lower the numbers and the more you practice the more effective it becomes.

Next Best Step– Contact Us and we CAN help!

If you found this helpful and are tired of dealing with the same issues only to get the same results we can help!  We CAN help you level up.  At New Vision Counseling and Consulting we have a team of therapists trained that would love to walk with you and equip you with to tools to build the life you want.  We can help you heal and break free from the issues that create suffering in your life. You can reach us at (405) 921-7776 or go to our website at NewVisionCounseilng.org to learn more about how we can best help you.