Medicine taking the edge off, but you're still experiencing anxiety?
It's common for medicines to provide some benefit, but to not entirely extinguish symptoms. Here are 10 things you can do to complement your medication:
Exercise-vigorous exercise releases endorphins (feel good neurotransmitters), directs fight/flight energy into a positive behavior, and relieves stress.
Mindfulness practice-paying attention to the moment without judgment helps you be the observer of your thoughts/feelings. There is a body of evidence that long term meditation can make changes to the brain.
Yoga and Relaxation Practices-you can learn to help your body relax. You can find some of these just by searching online. Here's a link to one I created:
Writing down the thoughts and feelings that are stuck in your head,. This can create a mind/body connection and help to offload emotions. It also uses the language processing part of your brain to separate your identity from your thoughts and feelings.
Self-Compassion practices, can help you reduce your self-criticism and increase your confidence to face challenging things. These include things like an inner dialogue based in compassion for what you're experiencing and self-compassion affirmations, can help you reduce self-criticism. Here's a link to some self-compassion statements:
Examining the relationship between your thoughts/feelings/behaviors and working to change unhelpful thinking.
Creative expression through an art form can also help you offload emotions and use your mind and body to change your relationship to your anxiety
Talk to a trusted person. This allows you to offload emotions. Voicing fears out loud can be a powerful process of undermining the power of the fear. Talking to someone else allows you to feel human connection and less alone with your thoughts. You may have to let the trusted person know you need them to listen and not give advice.
Get out in nature more. Nature has a restorative, calming effect for most people. It also can help you connect with something meaningful and greater than yourself.
Therapy can also be a place where you can learn new skills for managing anxiety and address underlying beliefs or ways of relating to yourself and your anxiety. Learn more
