Reduce Stress and Anxiety Naturally
Anxiety May At Times Feel Like An Out of Control Wildfire
Learn how to reduce stress and anxiety naturally. Did you know anxiety symptoms affect millions regularly, up to 1 in 4 adults? This means that if you experience feelings of anxiety or have even been diagnosed with an anxiety condition, you are far from alone! In fact, nearly every human has likely felt some level of anxiety in life, especially during times of change, transition, relocation, struggle and growth.
However, if you are someone who experiences anxiety more regularly than you’d like, know that there are definitely ways to reduce it. You just need a multi-targeted plan to help!
In this blog we’re going to talk through how reducing your stress will calm your anxiety, naturally! It may not solve it all, but it will definitely help.
The Downside of Pills to Treat Anxiety
Often times pharmaceutical treatment for anxiety is focused on only a couple targeted areas of the body. Medications that sedate your central nervous system or impact your neurotransmitter levels are the most common. The goal here is to blunt your feelings of anxiety in an attempt to make the anxiety “less noticeable” or “more manageable.”
This can be helpful for some. But for many, the last thing they want is to be offered yet another medication, with potential side effects to deal with. And most women we speak with are tired of medications as the only solution. These medications aren’t working to heal the anxiety, only manage the symptoms.
You deserve more than management…
The pharmaceutical approach is singular in facet. It doesn’t take into account your personal make-up, your diet and lifestyle, or what systems in your body may be out of balance, fueling the anxiety. This is not a wholistic or sustainable strategy to help you reduce your stress and anxiety naturally over the long-term.
You don’t have to feel like your anxiety is controlling you. It’s possible to get the relief you need!
One way to do this is to calm your stress response.
What you may feel when you experience anxiety
- restlessness
- feeling keyed up or on edge
- heart palpitations
- overwhelm
- sighing
- sweaty palms
- breathlessness
- being easily fatigued
- trouble concentrating
- irritability
- muscle tension
- insomnia
- headaches
- changes in bowel movements
- sleep disturbances or insomnia
Your Reaction to Stress Can Directly Impact Your Level of Anxiety
One of the first steps to reducing anxiety over the long-term, is to understand where your anxiety stems from.
Many people find there are specific triggers that set them off. Identifying these personal triggers can be life changing. At the very least, they can be helpful in preventing the anxiety from getting out of hand. Sometimes identifying them and changing your daily routine can prevent the anxiety entirely.
The goal here is that once the triggers are identified, you can do your best to avoid them. For instance, if grocery shopping is anxiety provoking to you with the long lines, and the people pushing their carts, nearly running your feet over, do you need to go grocery shopping when everyone else does? Nope….you can find a more relaxed time to go shopping or have someone shop for you!
Now that you’ve identified some triggers and identified changes to make to your routine, next you’ll want to create anxiety reducing habits that you incorporate into your life, on a daily basis.
This can be as simple as giving yourself regular mental breaks during the work day – get outside, make a cup of tea, or lay down on the couch for 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be monumental, it just needs to be calming, soothing and ideally, reinvigorating!
The Benefit of Anxiety Reducing Habits
These simple habits will reduce the amount of anxiety you feel over all, as in, you actually experience less anxiety from situations. Second, these habits help you be better equipped in dealing with the anxiety when it arises.
It’s a long-term win-win to be able to reduce your susceptibility to anxiety and also manage it when it arises.
Real Root Causes of Anxiety
Now that you’ve come to understand the importance of identifying triggers, adapting your routine, and having anxiety reducing daily activities, lets talk about reducing anxiety from rearing it’s ugly head in the first place.
A LOT of anxiety can actually stem from an out of balance stress response. The stress response is what is known as your fight or flight system. When something has triggered your stress response system, you may experience symptoms similar to anxiety.
Anxiety can often feel like you are in survival mode. And, the adrenal system is all about survival.
Even if your life isn’t truly in danger, being “under stress” may produce some of the same exact symptoms as anxiety such as heart palpitations, inability to focus, muscle tension, sleep issues, and more.
The Stress Response and Anxiety
Is the health of your adrenal system impacting your anxiety levels?
If you want to understand whether your anxiety is being impacted by your adrenal system, you’ll want to look at the adrenal hormones over the course of the day (through salivary or urinary functional lab testing).
If your adrenal system is not in a healthy circadian rhythm, the natural 24-hour cycle of hormone highs and lows your body goes through naturally, helping it return to health is a sure way to reduce some of those symptoms of anxiety.
Other Root Causes of Anxiety
Other areas of the body that may be contributing to anxiety symptoms include: neurotransmitter levels, the health of the gut and your digestive microbiome, your nutrition, vitamin and mineral status, thyroid health, and more!
When working with clients, we always take a holistic approach to health. We seek to uncover the individual root causes of your symptoms. Then we couple that with personalized nutrition, lifestyle and natural medicine to help you feel well.
In order to reduce stress and anxiety naturally:
- identify your personal anxiety triggers and adapt your lifestyle, when possible
- build anxiety reducing habits into your day to day routine
- support a healthy stress response by understanding the health of your adrenal system
- naturally treat the anxiety at the root cause (everyones is different = find yours)
- last but not least: build resistance to stress, cause face it, stress isn’t going anywhere (10 tips below)
10 Ways to Build Resistance to Stress: Put Out the Anxiety Wildfire
1. Maintain good relationships with close family members and friends by setting boundaries you need (or distance if necessary)
2. Avoid seeing crisis or stressful events as unbearable problems, but more something you’ll get through with some help
3. Accept circumstances that cannot be changed, and change circumstances that you can
4. Develop realistic goals and move towards them; small steps are better than none
5. Take decisive actions in adverse situations, get out of fear mode
6. Look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss; reset your life when you need
7. Develop self-confidence: practice, practice, practice
8. Keep a long-term perspective: consider stressful events in a broader context
9. Maintain a hope-filled outlook, expect good things and visualize what you wish; know that it takes time and action to get there
10. Take care of your mind and body, by paying attention to your own needs and feelings
Ready for more great information I share only with my email community?
Subscribe to the Wellness Newsletter
We protect your information according to our Privacy Policy.