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Managing anxiety

Overcoming Anxiety: How to Take Control of Your Anxiety

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Overcoming anxiety is one of the most challenging and personal journeys you can embark on.

Defining success when challenging anxiety is not wildly diverse, though. For most, success means taking back control and overcoming their anxiety.

Anxiety isn’t something that can be cured overnight. And many anxiety sufferers have combatted anxiety for many years, even some for most of their adult lives before they finally overcome it.

Just over 18% of the adult US population suffer from a type of anxiety – costing the US over $42 billion a year, almost a third of the entire total US mental health bill.

In Northern America, prescriptions for mood-altering conditions shows us the extent of use with 43% of the North Americans taking these on a daily basis.

And according to leading healthcare organization, NICE, in the UK alone, anxiety and depression affect 7,8% of people. Further NHS research also states that that 1/5th of days in the UK are lost due to anxiety and depression.

So what can we do to combat and overcome anxiety?

How to Treat Anxiety

The great news when it comes to overcoming anxiety is that there are millions of successful case studies and roads to success.

Planning your first moves

Overcoming anxiety often multiple tiered approaches, using a range of mindfulness practices and much more.

A three step approach like the below could be a good place to start:

  1. Speak with a doctor: You should consult a doctor or GP to measure and quantify the type of anxiety you might be suffering from. From this diagnosis, you’ll have a more defined state of your anxiety with recommendations from a healthcare professional about how to control, manage and suppress your anxiety.
  2. Try a range of treatments: You’ll need to spend time with a range of treatments to find out what works best. From here you’ll be able to define the most effective treatments for you and the least effective. Remember that there will not be a single recipe that works for everyone. Check out some ways to overcome anxiety below.
  3. Weekly review: Set a time at the end of each week to discuss your progress. Spend some time looking back at the week. This simple process will provide you with a recall to your anxiety, progress you’ve made and help you set a course for the next week to which treatments to double down on or alleviate.

Overcoming Anxiety: 5 Treatments to Help You

Treatment 1: Herbal Methods

Herbal remedies won’t fix the problems overnight, but they can contribute to the big picture by providing a treatment method that avoids standard medicine.

Using herbal methods or medications to reduce the feelings of anxiety is a traditional way to use outside of mainstream medicine.

As natural remedies, there is a broad selection of teas, sprays, flowers, vitamins that can help assist your everyday efforts to curb your anxiety.

A few popular suggestions include;

  • Chamomile Tea – This popular brew has been noted for its health benefits. From soothing an upset stomach to reducing blotches on your skin. The tea not only reduces stress and anxiety but plays a major role in controlling your sleep, and sleep is a big factor when it comes to taking control of anxiety.
  • Lemon Balm – This calming herb is part of the mint family. The balm retains its classic mint flavor with a hint of lemon. Lemon balm is used to reduce the stress cortisol levels and brings relaxation in your body without drowsiness. Lemon balm is also used to help bring your mood up as well to combat your anxiety all round.
  • Green Tea – You may have heard of Green Tea and its benefits of weight loss. Well, Green Tea is a source of L-theanine, perfect for creating calming effects and relaxing your mind and body.
  • Valerian – Valerian Root, in small dosages, can be an effective way to reduce anxiety and stress. The remedy has been used for centuries, even in the Ancient Roman and Greek era, to help with stress, nervousness, insomnia and lots more.
  • St John’s Wort – With the botanical name, Hypericum perforatum, St John’s Wort is an over the counter remedy for anxiety, sleep issues and depressions. By increasing brain chemicals like serotonin and noradrenaline, the brain activity can react and regulates your mood.
  • Common Lavender – A simple one, for women, this can act as sleep inducer helping young people and females get to REM sleep and stage 2 sleep. According to research, the effects are reversed for men. Lucky for some.

Many of these remedies have been used for centuries as a way to naturally counteract our stresses like anxiety, sleep, and depression.

According to research, herbal medicine is the most popular complementary therapy, with the UK 34% of all of complementary medicine users turning to herbal treatments (Ernst & White, 2000).

These natural solutions can provide an individual combatting anxiety with some control of their feelings and emotions by taking them with a small break away from the noise.

Treatment 2: Meditation

Meditation has a multitude of benefits.

The effects of meditation on stress and anxiety have been documented over the last 20 years and is shown to be one of the most effective treatments for combatting anxiety.

Last year, a study from John Hopkins looked into the relationships between stress and meditation practices. The results uncovered that meditation could play a fundamental role in reducing the emotional effects of anxiety, stress, and depression. This study stands alongside many others that indicate the positive effect meditation has on mood and anxiety.

From extensive surveys of those who meditate and also suffered from anxiety, 60% of anxiety prone individuals after 6-9 months of meditation showcased notable improvements in their anxiety and stress levels.

As you can imagine, meditation won’t solely cure your anxiety but provides a sustainable way to help improve your mood, well being and stress levels.

Here’s how you can get started:

Try a 5-minute session

Starting with something simple like a 5-minute mindfulness exercise for anxiety can be an excellent way to get started. Find a place in your house, flat or somewhere quiet, and sit in a comfortable pose with a good posture. Set a timer for 5-minutes on your smartphone and attempt to blank your mind best you can. This easy 5-minutes will be a starting pillar to control your morning and evening routines. To enhance your meditations you could also try listening to some meditation music.

Attend a local practice

Your local area will typically have some form of meditation practice running, whether it is a community-run event or in your local Buddhist center, attending might be a nice step forward for your meditation. Being around others who want to improve themselves and escape anxiety might help you overcome your fears by listening to others. Try using an application like Meetup or Eventbrite to find all your local events.

Download a meditation app

Try a meditation application like Therachat (free), Headspace, Mindfulness, Aura or Calm to get started with a guided meditation. Guided meditations can help beginners get started with a simple meditation practice and help divert their attention during the meditation to something positive, further toning down feelings of anxiety.

 

Treatment 3: Yoga

Yoga is one of the fastest growing trends in the US and around the world as people are beginning to see the benefits for their everyday well being.

For anxiety, practicing Yoga on a weekly basis can help you to detox and improve your mental and physical strength.

Yoga is beneficial for those overcoming anxiety. For example it:

  • Helps to regulate your breathing
  • Reduces tension with from the body
  • Distracts our attention from concerns
  • Allows us to accept discomfort with our bodies
  • Detoxes the mind by following a set routine

The great thing about Yoga is that is easy to get started with. You can try downloading an app to help or even grab an older Yoga poses book from a charity shop, totally up to you.

According to a study in the US, 43% of those who do Yoga practice at home (US) and the other 40% attending Yoga studios with a trainer.

Thankfully Yoga is a very open experience and easy to get going.

Treatment 4: Counseling

Counseling is one of the best forms of support for those suffering from a combination of anxiety and depression.

Speaking with others provides an outlet to express emotions, worries, concerns, situations, and ruts that you may be in. “Talking therapy” as it’s known in the healthcare space can help to reduce feelings and the pressures of anxiety.

If you’re struggling with any of the following, talking therapy is recommended;

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • An eating disorder
  • Addiction
  • Phobias

Whether the counseling session is a family member or with a healthcare professional specialized in this form of therapy, providing this feedback helps to uncover hidden issues and speed up the rate of success, overcoming your anxiety.

Apps like Therachat go further with supporting the emotion tracking between psychologist and patient by providing a comprehensive app to track progress between each meeting to improve diagnosis, reporting, and treatments.

If you’re looking for progressive apps to help you with your anxiety management, try of these ten app recommendations.

Treatment 5: Reading

Like taking therapy, hearing other people’s experiences can provide you with a safe haven when suffering from anxiety.

Hearing that someone successful suffered from anxiety and managed to make it through might be an inspiration to you as you begin your journey.

Reading can be a great way to find these stories and help benchmark your emotional state and intensity of anxiety against the experience of others. Find biographies, self-help books and even health specific ones to kick start your insight into control.

Here are a few recommendations from the health care community;

We wish you all the very best as you get starting combating and treating your anxiety.

Kouris Kalligas

CEO & Co-founder of Therachat

Meditation Music: The Science Behind How Music Helps us to Relax

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Whether it’s a slow ballad to get the day started or a classical melody with a cup of tea before bed, music has long been recognized as one of the best ways to de-stress, relieve anxiety, and take your mind away from certain situations.

Music can enhance many experiences. From helping runners keep up their pace to helping writers and stay focused. It can even play a key role in mindfulness practices such as meditation. And that’s what we’re going to focus on here in this post.

Weaved into the most popular apps, courses and many more meditation practices, meditation music is becoming increasingly popular as a way to derive more value from the sessions.

Meditation music was initially introduced to heighten the senses during a mediated state and since then has been further researched to reveal a host of benefits to the practice of meditation.

With chimes, bells, instruments being used in traditional Buddhist meditations for many years, the 20th century has brought a host of new composers that have developed scores and series’ of music to accompany meditation practice, composers like John Cage, Lawrence Bell, and La Monte Young have become popular creators in the space of meditation music.

In this piece, we’ll be exploring the scientific studies behind meditation music and how it can benefit your sessions. [Read more…] about Meditation Music: The Science Behind How Music Helps us to Relax

The 7 Types of Anxiety Explained in Plain English

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Every now and then, we all experience a little anxiety.

But what exactly is anxiety?

The origin of anxiety can be sourced from millions of potential situations but is unique to each of us. Some of us build-up anxiety from work-related stress, others will formulate their anxiety from family pressure, or even from being in a negative relationship.

With so many possible causes, specialists and psychologists have been working for many years to categorize all forms of anxiety into types. Types of anxiety can help you to diagnose, get help and build a better understanding how to overcome your anxiety.

For healthcare professionals, anxiety types help to decipher the intensity and status of your anxiety. This, in turn, helps them to prescribe solutions and advice for their patients. [Read more…] about The 7 Types of Anxiety Explained in Plain English

Why Emotion Tracking is Important

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“How are you?”

You probably encounter this question on a daily basis. But, how often do you answer truthfully?

My guess is that ninety percent of the time – no matter how we feel – “How are you?” is met with “Fine, thanks. And you?” or any number of similarly generic answers.

It can be hard to open up and share your true emotions. However, being in touch with, and honest about, your emotions can have a huge positive affect on your mental health.

Emotion tracking is an incredible way to monitor and measure how you feel and importantly, why you might feel that way. It’s also unique in that it provides everyday individuals with the chance to actively monitor their well-being and mental state throughout the day.

So how exactly does emotion tracking work? [Read more…] about Why Emotion Tracking is Important

10 Apps To Help You Cope With Anxiety

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Staying connected to everything and everyone during the 24 hours of our day is one of the biggest mistakes we make when it comes to avoiding anxiety and stress.

A 2015 APA report uncovered that adults feeling stressed in the U.S. have only slightly increased in the last year, but reports of adults describing extreme levels of stress have increased more.

There are plenty of reasons associated with why stress is on the rise; many point fingers at the increase of digital noise interrupting our daily routines, as a result people have increased anxiety to keep up with this rush.

Over the space of 24 hours, we touch our smartphones, on average, 2,617 times. This obsessive amount of interactions with our smartphones is said to be driving some of the digital mess, combined with email pile-ups, media consumption and instant messenger, to mention a few.

With all types of anxiety on the rise across the U.S. and other first world countries, so are the efforts to attempt to alleviate the noise with practical solutions. The likes of meditation and yoga have been on the rise, with a mainstream push to reduce stress and anxiety on a daily basis.

Despite the noise of your smartphone, apps have also become one of the leading solutions to anxiety reduction.

With this, we thought it’d be good to bring together a list of applications that can be used to reduce your anxiety and stress levels, wherever you may be. These hand-picked applications should provide you with some escapism from your hectic day, and recharge your batteries.

Anxiety Apps: 10 Must-Download Apps To Help Reduce Anxiety

(Note: These apps are not substitutes for professional treatment.)

1. Mindfulness


Meditation. This age-old practice, originating in Asia in the early 5th and 6th century, has become “the hottest new trend” in the mainstream world.

According to a 2014 review, 47 trials of 3,515 participants suggested that mindfulness meditation programs showed a moderate evidence of improving anxiety and depression.

With over 18M Americans practicing meditation on a regular basis, the focus on meditation is an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety that has sparked the interest of 8% of the US adult population.  The growing need for meditation apps has been genuine, with Google searches up over 200% in the last five years. But why have meditation apps been so successful?

Meditation apps provide an ease of use, they are portable, provide a guided and non-guided experience as well as an easy way to get started.

Providing a clean user interface and an easy-to-set-up experience, Mindfulness is a great place to get started with your meditation practice.

Mindfulness is available on Android and iOS for free.

2. Pause

If using meditation doesn’t sit well with you. *No pun intended*. There are plenty of other mindful solutions that can be used.

Being mindful doesn’t have to be a static process and can be a much more interactive through the likes of games and free-moving activities. The next anxiety app, Pause, provides a unique way to practice lowering your anxiety.

With a unique approach, Pause aims to replicate an ancient meditation-style practice by triggering the body’s “rest and digest” system.

Pause is very simple. Grab your earphones and place your finger on the screen. Your finger will create a ripple-like effect on the screen, pause and bring your focus and attention to this visual experience. The goal of Pause is to freeze your attention onto this and bring all of your focus on being in the present moment.

After 5-10 minutes you’ll feel relaxed. The audio-visual feedback provides a great way to de-stress and bring your full attention back into the moment. Many of the App Store comments provide a good indication to how much this app helped to reset their anxiety after a long hard day in the workplace.

Pause is available on both iOS ($1.99) and Android ($1.99) for a reasonable one-off cost, proving you with unlimited use at the price of a morning coffee.

3. Therachat

 

Therapists and counselors have become inundated with requests to help these 40M American citizens with a mental health problem. That’s the population of New York and Florida combined!

Therachat aims to keep clients engaged in between therapy sessions by providing a seamless way to report emotions and much more to their therapist. Including a secure way to self-reflect during the day to help improve the session quality. Tracking this progress can boost productivity during a therapy session, achieving better client outcomes faster.

Therachat can also be used without a therapist. In that case people suffering from a disorder can try clinical activities daily that will help them

Get started with Therachat today.

4. Pigment

When we think anxiety-reducing apps, we typically think meditation and yoga apps. That’s quite natural, but mindful practice apps come in vastly different shapes and sizes.

One of the most popular physical practices in the last 24 months has been coloring books for adults. This simple activity has driven a lot of attention as a way to de-stress from the business of the work day.

Only in the last few months, sales have fallen for bookstores selling the traditional coloring books. However, in the previous 12 months, colouring-in apps have become more vibrant on the App Stores for Android and iOS where apps like Pigment have been thriving.

Pigment provides a neat way to start coloring in, with one of the biggest color book libraries, updated weekly to choose from. Pigment is portable too, and many people enjoy the experience on iPads where sketches are much bigger.

Pigment is available on both iOS (for iPhone and iPad) and Android for free.

5. Prune

Games are a great way to keep people focused, as we all know all so well. Games also provide a fantastic way to de-stress after a hard day or week at work.

Research from University College London in 2014 proved just this, showing that video games have reduced stress levels. Of the almost 500 surveyed they found a correlation between hours of gameplay and recovery to work-related stress.

That proves it! Games are a smart way to relax. For our recommendation, we’d like to share a tame smartphone game with you, something that will help soothe your anxiety from a relaxing standpoint and that can be used in the office for some relaxation. Prune is that recommendation.

Beautifully crafted, Prune provides an artistic approach to maintain your trees. This zen-like approach to stress and anxiety reduction is constructive for short-bursts of gameplay without disturbing your workflow too much.

With 12 levels and a few challenging stages, Prune is the perfect balance between relaxing and difficulty allowing you to get some real de-stress time under your belt.

Prune has been crafted exclusively for the iOS App Store and priced at $0.99.

6. Calm

Defining what makes a great meditation application is tough. Some of the features might sound obscure, but after using them for a few weeks, you might find benefit from their different approaches.

One of the leading applications in the meditation space is Calm.

This easy on the eyes application provides users with a way to meditate, breathe, relax and improve their sleep. Calm tries to blend a few experiences into one stress-reducing application.

Mediations are easy enough to get started with, whatever the length or intensity, Calm seems to provide a middle ground experience. One of the stand-out features is the “Sleep Stories” that the app provides.

These soft short-burst stories can be anywhere between 3-10 minutes long and provide you with a relaxing audio experience to help induce sleep in the evenings. You’ll be asleep in no time.

Calm is a free application on iOS and Android with a subscription nested inside with pricing as low as $4.99 per month.

7. Sleep Better


Everyone loves to sleep, but many people don’t know the correlation between sleep and anxiety.

Poor sleep patterns or lack of sleep can push your brain into a more primitive state causing more stress and fight or flight reactions, according to experiments by Assistant Professor Matthew Walker’s of the University of California Berkeley.

For many, this might be a paradox. Worrying about work problems, financial situations or family issues might push you into issues like insomnia and further anxiety during your waking hours due to lack of sleep.

To improve your sleep, you could try to do two things, boost the quality of your sleep by exercising, eating well and lowering your interaction with light before bedtime and track your sleep progress.

Tracking your sleeping progress is a fairly new practice that has been very beneficial for those looking to quantify their health movements. Many of the modern health tracking devices (like a Fitbit) bring a sleep monitoring experience into the equation, however, for those who don’t want to commit to a wrist-tracker, Sleep Better might be a cheaper solution.

Brought to you by Runtastic, the successful sport tracking application, Sleep Better provides a free way to start mapping your full sleeping pattern and give actionable feedback on how to improve it. This insight into your sleeping pattern can be incredibly useful for honing in on your anxiety and culling any bad sleeping habits.

Sleep Better is free on both iOS and Android and easy to get started with.

8. Happify


Back to games now. Happify provides a fluid way to start working on your happiness. Happiness is naturally a core part of reducing your stress levels and anxiety when you are happy; you are more productive, level headed and more likely to reduce your stress levels.

Daily happiness is possible. As BJ Novak quotes “Happiness is a muscle”, it requires attention and is something you can mold every day. The app Happify aims to be the science-backed solution to improving your day-to-day smiles. Happify is a combination of games and activities to help you quantify and improve your learning of how to be happy.

Happify is packed with games to keep you busy and learn about happiness. Keep track of your happiness using your profile and boost your ranking on the leaderboard as you use the app more and more, all of these insights are gathered to provide you with useful data each day.

Think of Happify as your virtual well-being assistant!

Download the Happify iOS and Android app today!

9. Asana Rebel


Yoga has been popular for a long time now, with the first recorded practices taking place during the late 19th century in India.

Evolving into the modern day, yoga is now practiced by millions around the world as a way to relax, reduce anxiety and improve well-being. To lower anxiety, many people try to use yoga to detox from a hard day’s work. Other practices like pilates, tai chi, qigong are all trendy alternatives to yoga that can be used to reduce anxiety at home or in classes.

According to YogaJournal, 43% of all yoga sessions occur at home, and that’s where Asana Rebel, our yoga app recommendation aims to help. With $2.5B spent on yoga classes every year in the US, Asana Rebel seeks to be a cheaper more cost-effective option for practicing yoga at home.

Workouts, programs, and coaches are some of the features that Asana Rebel provides allowing you to get on the yoga mat at home to help work on your well-being and reduce some stress. Sessions range from 5 minutes to 40 minutes depending on the intensity you’d like to work with.

Yoga can be an effective way to reduce stress and well-worth exploring. Remember you could start doing something like this with a friend to help make things easier as you get started.

Asana Rebel is available on iOS and Android with a premium subscription necessary to access the more advanced features and sessions.

10. Stop, Breathe & Think


Breathing is one of the most underrated ways to relax.

When anxiety kicks in, one way to control it is through your breathing. This is why most mindful practices from meditation to yoga include some form of breathing method that assists in the stress-reduction process.

Stop, Breathe & Think helps you to challenge your mindfulness efforts by helping you track day-to-day how many activities you’ve completed through the app, there are sessions from healing to chilling and everything in between, some of the most popular sessions orientate around breathing.

Winner of The Webby Awards in 2017, this new Planet of the Apps application provides a neat way to get started with your mindfulness practice.

Stop, Breathe & Think is available on iOS Android, and the web too for free.

All of these applications are great ways to get started with improving your anxiety. To add some additional benefit we put together a few more resources that you can start using to reduce stress, get organized and get things done! Enjoy!

Notable Mentions

Bonus: Here are a few extra applications that can help reduce your anxiety:

Headspace


The most popular meditation application on the App Store. Headspace is the leading application in the field with a host of free classes. The courses they provide are world-class, providing you with the tools you need to reduce anxiety and stress with just 10-minutes.

Download Headspace on iOS and Android today!

Lifesum


Stressing over food can cause you anxiety. Whether you are worried about your weight or even what you are eating, Lifesum can help you track the foods you eat across your day. If you are looking for some control on the area of nutrition, Lifesum is a great option.

Download Lifesum on iOS and Android today!

Blinkist


Enjoy learning new things, but always starting too many books? Blinkist might be a good way to find out more without the stress of balancing your reads. Building your knowledge on new areas can help to reduce anxiety as you get stronger with each topic.

Download Blinkist on iOS and Android today!

Evernote


Is your desk piled with papers? Or your desktop PC covered in files? You might be overwhelmed and this can be very stressful. Try using Evernote to get organized, create notebooks and neatening things up.

Download Evernote on iOS and Android today!

Proud


To-do lists can get pretty messy, this, combined with email can affect your stress levels. Proud provides a gesture-based stress-free experience to getting things done. With Proud’s breathe and timer features you’ll detox from the stress of the day in no time.

Download Proud on iOS and Mac today!

What are your go-to anxiety apps?

Thanks so much for checking out our list of apps to help you reduce anxiety. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you have any recommendations that didn’t quite make our list—we’re always on the lookout for new apps to try.

What are your go-to anxiety apps? Let us know in the comments.

How to Talk to Your Kids About Your Anxiety

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Wendy Bradley is a Child and Family Therapist with a Master’s degree in Art Therapy and Child Development and a rare skill set, honed by years of experience working with children and their families. “The great thing about working with kids is that each time they come in ready to roll. Even if I spend only six weeks with a child, I feel like the impact I make can last a lifetime. This positive experience with me and learning that they can express themselves safely will carry forward for them in some small way,” says Wendy. [Read more…] about How to Talk to Your Kids About Your Anxiety