Reading an article about the connection between anxiety and dementia certainly isn’t going to make anyone with anxiety any less, well, anxious. However, identifying and reducing the factors contributing to your overall anxiety is necessary, according to Joseé Muldrew, a licensed professional counselor and founder of The Looking Glass, a private therapy practice in Georgia.
“The first thing I always encourage people to do is actually taking a moment to slow down and reflect the triggers that are showing up,” said Muldrew.
You can do this through journaling, jotting down your feelings in the notes app on your phone, or recording voice memos if you don’t feel like writing, she said.
Ask yourself, “What am I doing right now when I start to notice my anxiety peaking? What thoughts are going through my mind? Is there anything specific that I’m experiencing right before onset?” Muldrew suggested.
“What this does is it really helps you be able to go back and actually evaluate what’s happening and develop different connections as well as established patterns that actually might be emerging,” Muldrew continued.
It can also be helpful to listen to your body, because anxiety often manifests through physical symptoms like rapid heart rate, muscle tension and sweatiness. Muldrew said you can do a body scan in bed in the morning (or wherever you feel calmest and safest) to determine your baseline. Then, do another midday brief body scan to determine if any feelings of anxiety are appearing. That way, you can examine how your environment changed ― for example, are you at work? ― to identify your triggers.
Once you determine what makes you anxious, you can make an effort to limit those things in your life. Maybe you decide that scrolling social media makes you anxious, or skipping your daily walk drives up your anxiety, or having that second cup of coffee makes you feel unsettled.
Muldrew also recommends setting designated five or 10-minute “worry breaks.”
“I can have five minutes, 10 minutes, to get my worry out, to list out or talk out all the things that are bringing me a little bit of anxiety right now,” Muldrew said. “But once these 10 minutes expire, I’m leaving that there. I’ve gotten them out, and now I’m entering back into my day knowing that I can only control the controllables and I’m only going to focus on what’s here right now in the present moment.”
Lastly, don’t expect all of your anxiety to disappear after trying out these strategies once or twice.
“The same way anxiety is something that can be developed over time [and] certain things can exacerbate it, there are certain coping skills that are going to work better for certain moments,” Muldrew said. “And so you really have to allow yourself the time to try different things and try them more than once.”
Just know that working hard to reduce your anxiety is worth it.
“By managing your anxiety in the present, you’re not only caring for yourself in this moment, but you are taking care of your future self, you’re improving your quality of life and you’re lowering your risk for longer-term health implications,” Muldrew said.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
