Coping with your anxiety can be hard work. Sometimes, the best method for dealing with anxiety triggers is to avoid them entirely, saving yourself the stress and frustration of dealing with your anxiety at all. For many, the best path will be to attend an anxiety treatment center to get professional help for coping with anxiety.
If you’re ready to take this step, contact the professionals at Illumination Mental Health by calling 747.285.7504.
What Are Anxiety Triggers?
Anxiety triggers are different for everyone. Common anxiety triggers include:
- Public speaking
- Relationship conflict
- Health problems
- Thinking about traumatic events
Preventing anxiety can often mean avoiding these triggers when possible and taking steps to ensure that you are in a healthy space before your anxiety starts. Below, we’ve listed three helpful tips for preventing anxiety and helping you to cope.
1. Reduce Caffeine Intake
Caffeine is a stimulant drug that can make anxiety worse. Drinking coffee, tea, or caffeinated beverages regularly can put your body on edge before any triggers occur, making it all of the more likely that your triggers will result in an intense emotional response.
Cutting down on caffeine is a great way to increase your resiliency to anxiety triggers and can help many people reduce their symptoms.
2. Get Regular Rest and Exercise
Regular rest and exercise won’t stop an anxiety trigger from happening, but they will leave you better prepared to deal with it. A poor night’s sleep can make you more prone to anxiety and leave you ill-equipped for coping with anxiety when it occurs.
Incorporating sleep hygiene habits, which are regular routines around bedtime that facilitate sleep, can keep you feeling your best and more resistant to anxiety.
Exercise works in a similar way. Regular exercise works the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, making them stronger and more capable of handling sudden shifts. This strengthening can lead to you being better able to handle the physiological effects of anxiety, such as a racing heart and shortness of breath.
An anxiety episode will feel inherently less stressful by building up these systems. Your heart and lungs are used to being exerted and can calm down faster after they get triggered by anxiety-inducing events.
Frequently, having just the physical symptoms of anxiety reduced is enough for people to overcome the mental challenges of anxiety as well.
3. Speak with a Therapist
Speaking with a therapist is one of the best options for preventing anxiety. A therapist can help you to:
- Identify your anxiety triggers
- Learn healthy coping mechanisms for anxiety
- Identify behaviors and thought patterns that lead to anxiety
- Help you to avoid anxiety-provoking situations
Therapy is remarkably effective at helping people overcome the negative symptoms of anxiety. Decades of research have shown that talk therapy is just as effective as prescription medications and works even better when used in conjunction.
In addition, a therapist can help you to find support groups and systems that can help you overcome your anxiety. Group therapy can be tremendously beneficial, as it shows people that they are not alone in their struggle and gives them access to a community that truly understands.
Get Help at Illumination Mental Health
When you’re ready to start seeking the help you need to truly overcome your anxiety, contact the therapy experts at Illumination Mental Health by calling 747.285.7504. Our mental health treatment programs can help you to recover from an anxiety disorder, as well as help treat co-occurring conditions—like PTSD or depression—that may be playing a role in your anxiety.
Recovery is possible for anyone, no matter how severe your anxiety is. We can show you the way—but you need to make the call.
