12 Simple Ways To Conquer Anxiety

Anxiety

One in three individuals in the world suffer from anxiety. 

Mark Twain said "I have had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened”

While the 19th century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called anxiety the dizziness of freedom

Definition

What Is anxiety and is it abnormal and why is it on the rise, in fact why shouldn't you be anxious with all that is happening in life, whether economical, occupational, political or even relational challenges we are facing day in day out empowered by news and social media.

Anxiety is defined as an emotion which presents with intense dread due to anticipated calamity and uncertainty in any aspect of life. So as per this definition anxiety is the fear of future possibilities and the consequences of the choices we make, like the despair which happened during the covid-19 pandemic.

Now anxiety is quite different from fear because fear is a natural response to a real threat and not a future one. 

Everyone gets anxious especially while performing, like public speaking, singing, sports, going on a date, and any other social activity which is often coupled with excitement and hopefulness. 

Now an anxiety disorder is an illness whereby the anxiety diminishes your quality of life and disables you from performing at work, social events and even at home. 

Often anxiety disorder can accompany panic attack, depression, addiction, suicide ideation, OCD, and conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, hypertension, insomnia and many more diseases.

Causes

Physiologically anxiety is as a result of the activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is a type of nervous system which is involuntary, hence we have no control over it. It has two types: the sympathetic nervous system which is activated in situations where the body is under any kind of threat and the body responds by releasing adrenaline leading to either fighting, flight otherwise known as running away or freezing from the threat. Funny enough that's why caffeine makes you anxious because it is a stimulant of the sympathetic nervous system. The second one is the parasympathetic nervous system which is activated when the body is under no threat and you can either rest, digest or carry out any other mundane activity. 

The brain has a structure known as Amygdala which is responsible for regulating fear emotion while the Hippocampus is responsible for keeping emotional memories henceforth when these two structures work together a person would be having recurring fear of the threat which lead to the initial response which is why get anxious about something which has not yet happened because the brain may not differentiate between current events and future events.

According to the most eligible personality test, the big 5 personality test, people who are high in the neuroticism spectrum have hyperactive Amygdala hence making them susceptible to extreme and frequent anxiety attacks unlike other people. 

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Another factor is the gut-brain axis which seems to play a role in both activating anxiety and responding aggressively to it, which is why you feel your stomach tightening up when you get a panic attack or the annoying diarrhea.

Does anxiety even have any benefits, otherwise it wouldn't have stayed in our DNA, simply put we wouldn't have survived as humans if we didn't worry all the time about the next threat to our existence whether a predator, hunger, disease or isolation from the tripe. However because of the relative safety of modernity it's likely that our minds abstracted anxiety, so when we feel a minor inconvenience we project an existential fear like being outcasted from community which was a sure way of death for our ancestors. 

Therapy

The only way current medicine treats anxiety is through drugs because of the narrow biased view of the brain as a simple cogs of a machine, that we have no agency over and if you can modulate the hormones you can cure it with drugs like Diazepam or Valium which can possibly lead to addiction and overdoses, even though anxiety is often exploited by the pharmaceutical-medical industry. Some people take a self medication pathway involving substances like alcohol, smoking and other powerful drugs. 

 As an individual there are a lot of ways that you can help yourself not only to overcome the emotion but avoid the response altogether with holistic combination of:

1. Facing your fears: and overcoming them is the best therapy. There is a kind of therapy known as exposure therapy whereby a person is exposed gradually to the item which gives them fear and phobia, a person truly heals from it when they can face it giving them immense confidence and pride and proving that the fear was bigger than the object of fear. 
2. Mastery: of the skill or the activity gives you confidence and self belief. It true that anything that is new to us scares us due to the simple fact that we don't know whether we capable of doing the assignment or the task, henceforth the only way to become comfortable with it is by doing it as many times as possible before the new activity just becomes routine to us, practice makes perfect. 
3. Putting on a mask: like a lot celebrities like Beyonce has an alter-ego, persona(Greek for the mask which actors put it in when they are performing a role) is something we all possess, simple put how you interact with your friend is different from how you interact with your boss, which is different from how you interact with your spouse, your kids, your parents, etc. So we put on a different mask depending on the different social situation we are in, and just like Beyonce and many other elite performers utilize that nature to their advantage by creating a strong persona which is different from the other persona's which can appear confident and fearless, like Clark Kent and Superman. 
4. Rituals: are a way of helping the mind to get in sync with the current state of affairs. Performing a simple activity or reciting a few words like a prayer or song, in a sense activities the different persona which takes over the moment.
5. Reframing: much like Stoics advised to control your thoughts. By changing the lenses you look at a situation to something more positive or not fully catastrophic and even being hopeful. All of us tell ourselves a continuous story about everything which is happening and though we have no control of our personality and situation we are in, the only thing we have control over is that story, so by telling a different story to yourself you can wield the power over your state of mind.
6. Journaling: writing down helps you think better through the emotions. Thinking is a complicated process especially when there are emotions involved so the simplest way to organize your thought is by writing it down and giving yourself the chance to make a logical decision and not an emotional one.
7. Meditation: is the way to transcend your thoughts and not be controlled by them. Easier said than done, but the ability to transcend your thoughts not only gives you the power not to react immediately but even appreciate how insignificant and ephemeral it's on the bigger picture of your existence and the world.
8. Breathwork: works by reducing CO2 in the body hence deactivating the sympathetic nervous system. Not only does the mind control the body, but the body also controls the mind because of the afferent neurons which sense a feedback to the brain, hence the less breathing you make when anxious the more the brain interprets it as something to be anxious about, so by reversing it you can control your adrenaline based response.
9. Dieting: as mentioned before the importance of gut health is paramount to mind health, by avoiding caffeine especially when you have a major event coming up or before sleeping you reduce the chance of getting anxious, other foods like spices also do the same thing, and even eating a lot food before performance gives you stomach issues including bloating, barfing and even diarrhea. 
10. Exercise: by exhausting the negative energy, you can tamper down the feeling. The reason why you shake when anxious is because the body is preparing for fight or flight and hence the muscles and tensing up to do either of those, so a simple exercise like walking on the stage when presenting instead of standing in one place relieves a lot of the pressure. 
11. Sleep: helps you to process your memories and organize them in a useful manner. Often at school, on exam nights we would stay awake on last ditch attempt to cram the information, ironically the fact that we don't sleep well before the exam both makes us more anxious and error prone in the exam but even worse reduces our ability to recollect from memory the things we were cramming beforehand.
12. Talk therapy: with a friend, family or professional therapist can set up a longer solution. The worst thing you can do to yourself when anxious is bottle it up, the simple act of talking about it not only helps you by getting a different point of view from another person, but often for you to come to a better solution and understanding while talking with that person. 

 

Again Kierkegaard said:

‘Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way, has learned the ultimate way’

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