By Mohammed Adil Sethi, Content Team Academic.

This article aims to identify various methods of dealing with the anxiety problem by encompassing cognitive and behavioural therapy (CBT), mindfulness training, and goal setting planning. It also underlines the need to focus on self-care and taking the professional support of specialists to improve people’s mental well-being and foster a resistant capacity.

Anxiety is a type of mental health issue suffered by millions of people that influence daily living and overall quality of well-being. It’s pervasive nature can lead to constant pressure and can cause cognitive distress in one’s thinking process and emotional functioning. It is important to equip people with anxiety with genuine tools and strategies that will help them manage their anxiety effectively. In this way, using practices like strategies like cognitive-behavioural techniques (CBT), mindfulness practice, and enhanced goal- setting can facilitate clients’ skills to control anxiety and optimize their quality of life.

2. Understanding Anxiety

 Anxiety is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of states that can be observed in people’s daily lives, ranging from everyday worries to clinically significant disorders (Huggins, 2024). Normal anxiety is a pathological response to stress, which is normal and physiologically helps a person to prepare for challenging situations. It is temporary and corresponds to the degree of the stressor in question. For instance, experiencing anxiety before a job interview may increase performance due to an increase in awareness and attention. On the other hand, clinical anxiety is defined as excessive, persistent, and irrational worrying that negatively affects daily tasks (LeDoux and Pine, 2016). Other conditions labelled under this category include Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder which should be treatable with the assistance of a professional intervention (Cheng and McCarthy, 2018).

Common symptoms of anxiety contain physical manifestations like high heart rate, sweating, body shaking as well as stomach upsets. Some examples of psychological symptoms include an increased rate of worrying, restlessness, irritability and inability to focus. Triggers include inheritance, abuse genetic predisposition, traumatic experiences, chronic stress and some medications. Timely identification of the aforesaid distinctions and triggers is important towards designing efficient interventions (LeDoux and Pine, 2016).

3. Cognitive-Behavioural Techniques

 Thought Challenging

This technique entails recognizing and evaluating the nature of the negative thinking style. People analyse the pros and cons of their ideas and find them prejudiced mostly (Chawathey and Ford, 2016). For instance, the thought “I will fail” requires one to counteract it by recounting previous achievements to get a healthier reaction of “I have succeeded before, and I am now ready”.

Behavioural Experiments

Among these is the one that entails putting into practice anxious predictions in real-life situations. For instance, a client diagnosed with social anxiety may go to a social gathering to determine whether their fear of being judged is accurate. Nevertheless, through confronting the fear by noting the outcome, a person can find their anxious prediction is merely exaggerated with their negative thoughts, but in reality they are less anxious (Dagnan, Jackson and Eastlake, 2018).

Graded Exposure

In this approach, a person is gradually exposed to frightening and challenging conditions or stimuli. This means that beginning with lower levels of difficulty like speaking in front of a few people, the confidence level is gradually developed as people seize higher levels of difficulty. Generically, it reduces fear reactions and increases resilience (Call, Miron and Orcutt, 2014).

4. Mindfulness and Relaxation Practices

 Mindfulness Meditation

Practices like mindful breathing exercises and body scans decrease anxiety through the mindful presence in the current reality. This good practice enables a person to observe their thought process without judging, thereby reducing their impact and strengthening the ability to control emotional regulation (Luberto et al., 2020).

Deep Breathing

As diaphragmatic breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, it helps to counter the effect of stress response and anxiety disorders. It also increases oxygenation and relaxes; thus, it is a practical method for reducing stress in the current interdependence.

 Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This practice is consciously contracted and then relaxed to enhance the physical body’s awareness to reduce anxiety-related tension. In addition to fighting stress, it also teaches people to orient themselves to signs of physical discomfort at their initial stage.

5. Goal Setting and Action Planning

 Targeting SMART goals is a tool that helps to maintain motivation and define all components to ensure clear progress tracking. The SMART target, stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, the goal of “reducing anxiety” is much more effective than practising 10 minutes of meditation daily for the next month (Jacob et al., 2022).

Fig: Smart Goal                              

Source: Author

Behavioural Activation

Fig: Behavioural Action            Source: Author

Behavioural activation entails doing something to change the state of affairs at least by undertaking some simple tasks that exclude withdrawal, which is a common feature of anxiety. For instance, taking a walk or having scheduled social activities can go a long way in improving mood and decreasing anxiety (Cassell, Beattie and Lawrence, 2018).

6. Seeking Professional Support

It is highly important for people experiencing anxiety to address the problem with the help of professionals since anxiety treatment entails factors that are more or less outside of self-help options. A specialised form of treatment, Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) offers structured interventions aimed at assisting an individual and altering maladaptive thought patterns and behaviours (Reardon et al., 2018).

Counselling is an approach that involves talking through problems and feelings, while finding healthy ways of dealing with them, on the other hand, coaching entails goal-oriented support like planning, preparing and executing strategies for achieving personal and professional goals.

7. Self-Care Strategies

Effective self-care measures are useful in supporting the management of anxiety. Adequate sleep is basic because sleep greatly influences cognition function and emotional regulation. The symptoms of anxiety can be eased if one chooses to stick to a set routine for sleep and ensure that the restful environment can alleviate anxiety. Hunger also should be emphasised; a properly balanced diet with the required amount of nutrients is useful for the brain and significantly helps to normalise mood swings, one should limit caffeine and sugar intake which can lead to anxiety (Pilkington and Wieland, 2020).

 Another significant factor is regular exercise that helps relieves stress due to the production of endorphins in the body. Also, healthy relationships enhance emotional support and nurture a sense of belonging that reduces feelings of anxiety. Engaging with other people, having friends, and participating in community events makes people emotionally stronger and provides a very positive reference to anxiety. People can combine these self-care techniques to make a comprehensive strategy for dealing with anxiety more effectively (Call, Miron and Orcutt, 2014).

8. Building Resilience

Building resilience is essential to manage anxiety since the person will be able to bounce back from each failure and be able to handle all stressful situations. Strategies like flexibility enable a person to change easily without getting stressed up in a given situation. Proper problem-solving skills empower people to take actions that help to prevent or solve problems and this helps in preventing feelings of helplessness (Reardon et al., 2018).

Emotional regulation is another aspect of resilience. It embraces one’s capacity to approach and manage emotions appropriately. Techniques such as mindfulness and cognitive revaluation help in keeping emotional stability and thus prevent anxiety from escalating. Therefore, the improvement of these skills allows the person to develop a strong ground on which they will be able to cope with anxiety and support mental health (Simco, McCusker and Sewitch, 2014).

Conclusion

Here are some key tools and techniques that may be useful when experiencing anxiety, which include cognitive behavioural techniques, mindfulness and relaxation strategies, as well as developing accurate and specific SMART goals, and seeking professional help. These strategies enable people to regain control of their mental health status. Self-promoting and helping others with anxiety is important, which will therefore contribute to a healthier mental state.

References

Call, D., Miron, L. and Orcutt, H., 2014. Effectiveness of brief mindfulness techniques in reducing symptoms of anxiety and stress. Mindfulness, 5, pp.658-668.

Cassell, V.E., Beattie, S.J. and Lawrence, G.P., 2018. Changing performance pressure between training and competition influences action planning because of a reduction in the efficiency of action execution. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 31(1), pp.107-120.

Chawathey, K. and Ford, A., 2016. Cognitive behavioural therapy. InnovAiT, 9(9), pp.518-523.

Cheng, B.H. and McCarthy, J.M., 2018. Understanding the dark and bright sides of anxiety: A theory of workplace anxiety. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(5), p.537.

Dagnan, D., Jackson, I. and Eastlake, L., 2018. A systematic review of cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety in adults with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 62(11), pp.974-991.

Gaesser, A.H., 2018. Befriending anxiety to reach potential: Strategies to empower our gifted youth. Gifted Child Today, 41(4), pp.186-195.

Huggins, A., 2024. Anxiety to Empowerment: Exercises & Meditations to Stop Stressing & Start Engaging. Llewellyn Worldwide.

Jacob, J., Stankovic, M., Spuerck, I. and Shokraneh, F., 2022. Goal setting with young people for anxiety and depression: What works for whom in therapeutic relationships? A literature review and insight analysis. BMC Psychology, 10(1), p.171.

LeDoux, J.E. and Pine, D.S., 2016. Using neuroscience to help understand fear and anxiety: a two-system framework. American Journal of psychiatry, 173(11), pp.1083-1093.

Luberto, C.M., Hall, D.L., Park, E.R., Haramati, A. and Cotton, S., 2020. A perspective on the similarities and differences between mindfulness and relaxation. Global advances in health and medicine, 9, p.2164956120905597.

Pepping, C.A., Walters, B., Davis, P.J. and O’Donovan, A., 2016. Why do people practice mindfulness? An investigation into reasons for practising mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness, 7, pp.542-547.

Pilkington, K. and Wieland, L.S., 2020. Self-care for anxiety and depression: a comparison of evidence from Cochrane reviews and practice to inform decision-making and priority-setting. BMC complementary medicine and therapies, 20, pp.1-15.

Reardon, T., Harvey, K., Young, B., O’Brien, D. and Creswell, C., 2018. Barriers and facilitators to parents seeking and accessing professional support for anxiety disorders in children: qualitative interview study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, pp.1023-1031.

Rodricks, K.C., 2023. Examining the influences of anxiety among students, coping styles and the use of self empowerment techniques (Bachelor’s thesis, University of Twente).

Simco, R., McCusker, J. and Sewitch, M., 2014. Adherence to self-care interventions for depression or anxiety: A systematic review. Health Education Journal, 73(6), pp.714-730.