4 More Simple Ways To Help Curb Anxiety
by Rori Porter
Back in 2018, we shared a few simple things you could to do help deal with anxiety. Well, it's 2021, and it feels like that's all we need to say, to explain why we wanted to revisit this topic.
Like before, we want to emphasize that anxiety disorders are common, and serious. If you need help, there is no replacement for the professional kind, and we encourage you to seek it out. But for those of you who are maybe at Office Space levels of anxiety (from early in the movie, not later), these could come in handy.
Hold Some Ice To Help Stop A Panic Attack
Look, we know that “hydrotherapy” might sound like some new multi-level marketing scheme your old high school friend was posting about on Facebook. And to be fair, the term is used to describe, very generally, using water for medical purposes. But we promise there's some real science here and we're not going to try to convince you to detoxify your feet or buy laundry spheres or anything like that.
As it turns out, holding ice has been demonstrated in many studies to reduce anxiety or even stop a panic attack in its tracks. It's basically a slightly less wet, but much colder version of splashing water on your face, and it can be a quick way to get emotionally grounded. The sudden difference in temperature, even on a relatively small area of your body, distracts the brain from the fight-or-flight response and can snap you back to reality with surprising speed.
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Climate may affect results.
The sciency part is that cold water or ice on our skin vasoconstricts surface vessels to prevent hypothermia by diverting blood flow to the core of your body. The sudden cold focuses your mind on physical discomfort rather than mental discomfort, giving you something tactile that you can control.
Of course, taking a cold shower or perhaps a polar bear plunge can similarly induce vasoconstriction, but we're trying to keep things simple here.
Schedule A Specific Time To Do Your Worrying
When we worry, it’s often mindlessly and without intent, which can easily lead to losing entire days from stressing out. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, commonly prescribes “worry time” to folks whose cases are more chronic or severe. And while intentionally worrying may sound counterintuitive, scheduling time for it can help us not only compartmentalize things, but also enable us to better understand and work through the underlying issues.
Imagine if you went grocery shopping only when you’d run out of food, and you also went hungry and without a list. That combination would induce utter food-buying pandemonium, with concepts like budget, health, and sanity being completely forgotten, and next thing you know you're sprawled out, food drunk, in the Valley of Nachos. All because you didn't add it to the calendar and bring a list.
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And you took Doughnut Avenue to get there.
Likewise, worrying without intent, or worrying without a list, can create similar pandemonium, but instead of buying every possible food item that looks even remotely edible, you fill your brain's cart with constant fretting, and often with silly, inconsequential things. If you know you're going to worry no matter what, why not pen it in like any other inevitable task that requires scheduled time and a plan, like grocery shopping? This is where worry awareness, worry delay, and worry time come in to help manage things more effectively.
Worry awareness is just knowing what your anxieties actually are and what stresses you out. It can involve literally making a handwritten list, or simply being mindful of the things that tend to cause your anxious thoughts. The second part, worry delay, is swatting away your anxieties like annoying flies when they pop up, as best as you can, armed with the knowledge that you have time carved out of your schedule to deal with that crap later. Lastly and most crucially, worry time is sitting down with that list and actually dealing with it; giving yourself time to acknowledge what’s there, analyzing it, then tackling those anxieties and hopefully calming the dumbass lizard brain that is apparently trapped inside all of our skulls.
For any regular (and surely legal!) cannabis users out there, you may not want to schedule that worry sesh immediately after your bong sesh, though. Because as it turns out …
You Should Probably Stop Smoking So Much Weed
Every anxious person that has ever existed has, at least once, received advice that seems like it came straight from The Dude: “Why don’t you just, like, relax and smoke a joint?” OK, maybe not all of them, but our own scientifically-adjacent statistics (read: wild guesses) show that for every anxious person in the world, there are at least two that think weed is a cure for everything, like a bunch of annoying Jon Stewarts from Half Baked.
Now, cannabis is effective for many ailments, particularly pain that would otherwise be treated with gut-blocking and highly-addictive opiates. But for relaxation, a rip from the bong is super hit-or-miss. While wonderfully and increasingly available (as it should be), cannabis is still a drug that impacts the brain, and is best in moderation. Its effects are generally unclear due to lack of studies, but it seems to fatigue important brain functions when abused, and scientists are starting to look at how it contributes to anxiety and panic disorders, and how higher-potency products can make things worse. Furthermore, daily chronic use has been shown to reduce the size of the orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for complex processing and decision making; at the very least this will complicate getting your worry time scheduled.
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Which will confuse things even more, increasing anxiety, which in turn …
In short, like many other “why don’t you just relax, man” solutions, pot can only help so much when you have actual anxiety. It's not a relaxation cheat code for everyone under every circumstance, and anybody who says so is definitely super-high and not a medical professional you should be taking advice from.
The Smell Of Citrus Is Surprisingly Effective
OK, listen; before you read what we're about to say, please know that we're not trying to pitch you on an MLM. We poked fun at those things at the beginning of this article for a reason, but … well, just hear us out.
Recent studies have shown that aromatherapy involving citrus-based essential oils can provide relief from anxiety in a number of different situations.
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Wait, come back! WE SWEAR THAT THE REASON IS SCIENTIFIC!
As it turns out, the wide range of medicinal uses for Citrus aurantium, better known as bitter orange, have been known for some time — even by science. And while the research is still early, there's some that shows promise in using this type of aromatherapy to help reduce anxiety in heart attack patients, and sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) looks to have a similar effect in other stressful circumstances. Again, we're still very much in the clinical trials stage here; but also again, the reason they're looking at Citrus aurantium is very likely because of its long history of being utilized for its healing properties. Which … oh no. We may owe an apology to that old high school friend we mentioned earlier, because it's possible she knew something we didn't.
Kayleigh, if you're reading this, please know that we're really sorry we ever doubted those glorious, tiny vials of oil you've been peddling. We're still not signing up to buy any, obviously. But just know that we know that those citrus ones are legit, and yes of course we're still following you.
If you suffer from anxiety, know that you deserve treatment, and that you're not alone. Visit halfofus.org for ways to help yourself or a loved one.
