Coping Skills for Anxiety — Transcription
Hi, all happy holidays!! Hope you’re doing well today. I’m going to talk about three (3) different practices to help Reduce Anxiety and manage it. So you can hopefully feel better, especially around the Holiday season where Anxiety is pretty prevalent right now for most people, including myself.
(1) So the first one is going to be Mindful Meditation. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of this practice. It’s actually pretty common. And there’s apps like Headspace that is a really good one that people use and has a free version as well as a paid version that you can purchase. And then there’s also a perhaps on Spotify, YouTube, things like that, that you can also search. So what this is a Guided Meditation it allows you to be more present. So you’re focusing on the here and now versus the past or your futuristic thinking that sometimes can spiral you into a lot of negative thoughts. So it just brings you back to the present moment and it’s allows you to do that without any judgment with yourself. So this is a great way to relax, reduce that anxiety. It’s really important to practice this, probably on a daily basis is my best advice for you, because you have to retrain your mind to think more presently because we’re used to thinking in the future or the past. So it takes time. Don’t give up if you’re a week in and say this is not helping me because it just does take that time. So I would suggest doing maybe no more than five minutes a day and just doing it every day. So you can kind of practice that. So that’s mindful meditation. Also there’s a great Netflix documentary. It’s a docuseries called the Mind Explained and one of the episodes is on Mindful Meditation. It kind of gives you a rundown of what it looks like, what to expect, what the benefits are, things like that. It’s about 20 minutes and I highly recommend it.
(2) The second one is going to be Progressive Muscle Relaxation. This is especially good if you’re having trouble sleeping. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to tense each muscle in your body, from your toes to your head or vice versa. And you’re going to attempt it for a couple of seconds and then you’re going to release it. So you’ll feel the release in your muscles. And by doing this throughout your entire body, you’re going to be more present with the feelings that you’re having, and then it’s just going to help relax your entire body.
(3) And the last one is going to be Guided Imagery. So think of I’m sure you’ve done this before. You might just not have known what it was called, but think of those moments where people are like, imagine you’re on a beach feel the sand and your toes feel the warm air from the sun, smell the ocean, things like that. That’s Guided Imagery. So you can either use something that you’ve actually been to in the past. That was a really serene moment for you or a really nice place that’s relaxing, or you can just use something like a beach that, you know, you’re just kind of imagining. And what you want to do with this is just use all five of your senses. So think about how it smells, how it tastes think about what you see, what you hear, what you feel, just use those sentences to kind of guide you through that imagery. And it’s going to help you to feel more present in the moment again, and feel more relaxed and then hopefully reduce this Anxiety. So hopefully this helps with you.
And please take care of yourself this holiday season. I know it’s tough. I know it’s tough mentally physically sometimes, and it’s just a rough time right now, but one day at a time and take care of yourselves and stay safe. I will be taking the week off next week to spend time with my family, so I will jump back in after the new year and 2021 is a new year. So let’s just take it one day at a time until then. And I will see you all after the new year. Have a good one!