It is impossible to get rid of anxiety once and for all. After all, life now and then throws up new reasons for concern. The goal is to bring it down to a level where it can be managed. Psychologist Thomas McDonagh and writer John Patrick Hatcher in the book Take It Easy, You Can Do It! share tools that helped them themselves.
High demands of teachers and parents, fear of exams, conflicts with peers… Some teenagers easily relate to such difficulties, but there are also those who are greatly disturbed by excessive excitement, fear and panic. One of these teenagers was writer John Patrick Hatcher. Anxiety attacks attacked him at school and in the gym, deprived him of confidence and led to serious injuries, until his parents sent 13-year-old John to a psychotherapist.
There, the boy mastered the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and learned many valuable tools for dealing with anxiety and even depression. He realized that out of 99 of his problems, 93 were fictitious and, in general, “anxiety is the very bully who needs to fight back all the time, or he will start commanding you.”
Here are some of the tricks that John has helped and that he shares with cognitive-behavioral therapist Thomas McDonagh in the guide Easy, You Can Do It! 101 ways to get rid of anxiety and stress” (MYTH, 2020).
1. Get yourself together. The first thing people try to avoid when anxiety intensifies is day-to-day responsibilities. Clean your room, keep your closet organized, finish your report. When we carry out the tasks that are “hanging” on us, we feel deep satisfaction.
2. Hug more often with friends and acquaintances. Hugs are free therapy. They reduce stress and blood pressure.
3. Pick a point on the floor and look at it for five minutes. Notice what happens to your vision and thoughts.
4. Stretch. Anxiety twists us into knots. Literally.
5. Go outside, find some bird and try to identify its species. Now there are cool applications that can identify the type of bird by its voice. They can even make response sounds and make fun of birds!
6. Communicate. Curiously, communication stimulates our body to produce the hormone oxytocin, which naturally reduces anxiety. You don’t have to go to a noisy party where you don’t know anyone. Instead, spend the evening with close friends or family members. Call a friend, even if you don’t feel like it. Especially if you don’t want to! John avoided panic attacks more than once when he called acquaintances, although at this time he most of all wanted to be alone.
7. Practice visualizing or creating mental images. In fact, there is nothing better than imagining your success in anything. Imagine that you set a personal record in a 10K race, performed brilliantly at a concert, or gave a stunning presentation. Scientists say that such a representation causes the same reactions of the nervous system as in the process of actually carrying out this action.
8. Doubt the validity of your worries. (Are your worries real? What could be the worst case scenario? And what’s wrong with that? Is it true or do you think it is?)
9. Find a hill and run up it, and then step down. Repeat until you get tired. It’s okay if you get tired at once.
10. Enter a room and try to remember exactly what it looks like in a minute. After a minute, go out into another room and try to draw or describe the picture that has been preserved in your head.
11. Learn to beautifully twirl the pen around your thumb.
Start a Gratitude Journal and list everything you want to thank life for.
12. Memorize a few lines or a paragraph from a famous speech (for example, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, or the opening of Shakespeare’s “Richard III”).
13. Set aside “worry time” in your daily schedule and set aside all your worries for this half an hour. And no exceptions!
14. Download an app with soothing music for meditation – especially for use before bed.
15. Take a pencil and try to carefully paint over the entire surface of a blank sheet, moving from a dark tone to a light one.
16. List as many cities in your country as possible. Don’t stop until their names are all you can think of.
17. Start taking fish oil supplements. Studies show that taking fish oil, which contains powerful omega-3 fatty acids, as well as eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) fatty acids, can help manage symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even bipolar disorder. But be sure to check with your doctor before taking it.
18. Start a Gratitude Journal and list everything you want to thank life for. Complete and reread this list. A gratitude journal is just a diary where you enter things that make you feel grateful. Focusing on gratitude is very useful: it will make you happier, healthier, more efficient, more productive, more successful and more attractive, expand your social circle, give optimism and hope, increase self-esteem, form good memories.
Or find an app that makes it easy to mark the things you feel grateful for every day.
19. Learn to cook some difficult dish.
20. Send a friend or relative a postcard or a handwritten letter, a now-lost art form.
For other ways to reduce anxiety, read the book “Calm down, you can do it! 101 Ways to Relieve Anxiety and Stress by T. McDonagh, J. Patrick Hatcher (Mann, Ivanov & Ferber, 2020).