Preventing and Dealing With Anxiety

Anxiety can be overwhelming! Either it is constant or experienced under certain circumstances. Anxiety is normally related to uncertainty and stress, or we can be genetically predisposed.

Regardless of its source, taming or eliminating anxiety becomes a must. The best way is to prevent it from ever happening. As part of the prevention “lifestyle,” we have several elements. Yes, “lifestyle”. Preventing anxiety cannot just be a spur-of-the-moment effort or activity. We need to proactively manage our lives to keep anxiety from overtaking our lives.

One of the ways to best accomplish this is to lead a healthy lifestyle. Eating and sleeping right are basic. Also avoiding excessive use of some products that can induce or exacerbate anxiety as coffee, energy drinks, etc. Sleep becomes very important, but this is challenging given our high-speed society and intense focus on social media and electronics. Try to sleep at least 6-8 hours a day and facilitate this by avoiding electronics and high-stimulation movies, music, etc. prior to going to sleep.

Exercise, exercise, exercise! Not only does exercise help us look good (one of our most common New Year’s resolutions), but it also produces endorphins that have a calming effect on our mind and body. Ensuring that exercise is built in as part of our schedule and done regularly becomes a critical element.

Finally, we need to learn to manage and cope with stress. As part of preventing anxiety and stress, we need to be honest and realistic about the workload and responsibilities that we assume in life (personal and work). Signs of risk could be a very loaded schedule with few breaks between activities, being involved in high-stress situations (work and personal), and not allocating enough time to rest or recharge by participating in enjoyable activities.

Being able to address and manage the areas mentioned above, among others, will ensure the prevention of a build-up of anxiety and stress.

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