Anxiety affects everyone at some point or another but when it becomes such a big part of your life and seeps into nearly everything you do, then it’s extremely hard to overcome. More than 1 in 10 people in the UK are likely to have a ‘disabling anxiety disorder’ at some stage in their life according to Anxiety UK, yet despite it being so common, it’s so difficult to access treatment.
While there are extremely long waiting lists for counselling services and CBT, we have to look to self help to get us through. So I’ve compiled a list of over 314 anxiety tips you can implement right away, to get you started.
314 Anxiety Tips
If you’re looking for some quick, simple tips then try these quick 40 Tips To Improve Your Anxiety Right Now
Or these 3 Unusual Ways To Beat Social Anxiety
Or even these 15 Social Anxiety Tips From Mental Health Bloggers
If you haven’t got much time on your hands, here are 5 Ways To Reduce Anxiety When You Have NO Time
and 30 Grounding Techniques to Quiet Distressing Thoughts
Ask yourself these 7 Questions When You Are Feeling Anxious to work through your anxiety, as soon as you feel the first knots forming in your stomach and the first sign of quickening in your breath.
Or try these 102 Powerful Ways To Calm Your Anxious Mind
To prevent your social anxiety from getting worse or starting back up again, be sure to implement these 12 Habits For Good Mental Health
and try a few of these 100+ Ideas For Self-Care as it’s super important to keep on top of your mental health, even if you’re in a good place at the moment.
I hope these anxiety tips help you and you learn something you hadn’t thought of trying before. If you have any anxiety tips that you’d like to share, feel free to post them in the comments!
Don’t forget to check out Social Anxiety To Social Success – a PDF guide to overcoming social anxiety, step by step.
Sure, I’ll offer some extra tips in the comments for you all.
1. Look up “self compassion techniques,” online, to help manage self criticism. Dr. Kristin Neff’s website and guest posts around the internet is recommended.
2. Look up “journaling prompts,” for some ideas on what to write in a diary if you’re stuck on what to write to feel better. Some more specific prompts type include “journal prompts for self discovery,” “journal prompts for mental health,” and “journal prompts for gratitude,” as some of the few.
3. There is a course on the psychology of happiness that is free on the website Edx, and also a couple more on Coursera. For more scientific studies on the psychology of happiness, look up “positive psychology,” or “positive psychology books.”
4. It might be only because I’m more of the nerdy type, but reading about psychology, especially social psychology, really calms my nerves because I feel more confident if I understand how people “work”.
5. I also like to study different social skills online and in books. Even if I know them, just rereading them over and over makes me feel more confident. I review and rehearse for what I can, and there’s a lot of material like this everywhere if you look. Even if it’s not serious enough to be a disorder, social anxiety is a common enough problem that it’s not hard to find.
6. Look up lists of “100 grounding techniques,” if you need help staying present or a list of “mindfulness exercises,” for similar benefits.
7. Being nerdy, again, I like to look for famous successes on history to look for role models, and trying to copy them when rehearsing somewhat, really helps. Especially when studying famous speeches or others who communicate with the public a lot. Even if you’re not actually trying to give a speech, looking up public speaking tips helps with my social anxiety a lot. You can look up more specific types of people, such as “Famous black women,” or “Famous gay men,” or something like that. Maybe even something like “Famous people with (place mental/physical illness here)” and you’ll find a lot.
8. Again with the nerdiness, I like to learn a lot of new words, or make an effort to look up the thesaurus for more precise words, so I could come off as more articulate with my social anxiety. There are lots of books out there for increasing vocabulary to sound smarter on purpose, other than dictionaries, Some may even want to explore a new language using sites like Duolingo or Memrise, for example.
9. Speaking of Memrise, there are memory techniques for memorizing people’s names or other details well. Look up “mmemonics,” for memory techniques, or the Art of Memory wiki for more. If you need to memorize information well for other types of social gatherings, like in a meeting or some type of hobby group, this can help also.
10. I heard with eye contact, sometimes it’s best to look between someone’s eyebrows, though personally I grew up staring at people’s noses or mouths instead. So far, people haven’t noticed, but that’s just me.
11. I like collecting quotes that particularly inspire me, and there are lots of quote websites that collect quotes for about every topic under the sun, if you just search “Quotes on. . . “ or “Quotes about. . “ and so on. You may also want to collect affirmations that resonate with you particularly, or even download pictures that inspire you.
12. Lastly, I think socializing with animals, whether it’s a pet or helping out with a shelter, may come off as easier than interacting with humans for some types. Others may even want to talk about their problems to plants to rehearse first. Why not? It won’t hurt, would it?
These are all just suggestions, but felt like I should say something here. Thanks very much for this blog. I appreciate it.