9 Ways to Calm Your Anxiety (Without Meditation)

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Calming an anxious mind is always going to be a superpower, so let’s help you calm your anxious thoughts and anxiety without needing to resort to meditation for the times you need it!

Are you often overwhelmed by anxiety that gets in the way of letting you enjoy your life?

Or are you looking for better coping techniques, rather than having to resort to meditation or going to the spa to cure your anxious thinking?

What if you have anxious thoughts or a racing mind more often than you think?

If you do, then you may find it difficult to make decisions, take action, or handle any frustrations head-on, especially when these anxious moments happen!

Moreover, if you do suffer from anxiety you are not the only one who has been overcome by their nervous thoughts, however, you do need a better coping strategy in order to treat it. 

This is why these soon-to-be-mentioned ways will relax your mind and won’t have you required to try yoga or light candles in order to cure it.

Instead, there are a few clever tips on how to handle anxiety to help you have full control the moment it strikes.

Here are nine powerful ways to calm an anxious mind down without needing the use of meditation!

When you learn to calm down the winds of your mind, you will enjoy great inner peace. Remez Sasson

Similar Topics: 

• 10 Brilliant Ways to Master Self Discipline 
• How to Set Intentions for the Day – 10 Easy Steps

* Please note that I am not a medical doctor. Although these tips do help with anxiety, always seek the aid of a health provider before following any advice online. 

9 Ways to Calm Your Anxiety Without Meditating

1. See your anxious thoughts as assumptions (not as evidence!).

First off, it’s best to know that anxiety is all about how your body and mind perceive things. That is, down to its very core, anxiety is all about keeping you safe. 

For instance, when you are feeling anxious and nervous your brain will actively try to shield you from certain pain such as imagining what could happen and what the potential threat may be. 

The reason why anxiety does this is to avoid risk.  However, it doesn’t guarantee that what you are thinking will actually happen!

Moreover, this is why, more often than not, you probably assumed the worst-case scenario, especially if you have no clear evidence that the results of your overwhelming thoughts will occur.

What’s the first thing you can do if your anxiety is all too overwhelming?

Ask yourself, “Is that true?” Or, ask yourself “Will this actually happen to me?”

If you answer these questions with a negative response or a prediction that it won’t happen, you can be sure that you are imagining your worst-case scenario.

Additionally, if you start to feel these moments heading in the wrong direction, you can also use mantras to calm yourself down such as “I am enough” or “This too shall pass”.

Your anxiety needs a leader, not someone who will crumble down, so if you can lead your anxiety down the right path simply by seeing if your anxious thoughts are assumptions — not as evidence, you will have a fighting chance to overcome your anxiety faster than you think. 

2. A guaranteed way to get out of your head — stay in gratitude. 

We all know that gratitude is a sure way to calm ourselves down, however, when we are in the moment of feeling anxious we don’t actively follow it.

So for the times when you have a racing and anxious mind, feel grateful by holding a daily log of appreciation to help take some of life’s burdens away.

Because instead of feeling overwhelmed, you always have the choice to view your life in a positive way.

Moreover, if you have a perspective that comes from love and gratitude, the beauty that is life has a fighting chance to be even better!

You’ll start to see the positive side of things and you will start feeling more motivated to cultivate a life to be even more grateful for. 

Additionally, another wonderful thing regarding gratitude is that your brain wants to feel really good!

It doesn’t want to feel nervous and anxious (just as much as you do) so if you push yourself through the uncomfortable pain, by always remaining in a state of gratitude, you will start to wean your stressful thoughts away.

In return, you will be putting yourself back in the driver’s seat of your life, whether the pressure you feel comes from stress, resentment, guilt, or sadness.

Moreover, following a life filled with gratitude will truly allow you to look at the glass as half full instead of half empty.

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3. Write down your most dominant worries & fears.

Most fears are based on recurring thoughts. To help your brain deal with these recurring thoughts better, it is important to actively inform your brain to be aware of them that way you can work with them.

A wide variety of research has shown that emotional writing, or writing your thoughts about a particular situation, can be one of the most effective ways to calm an anxious mind to allow the brain to think clearly.

Set a time limit to write down what you feel. Be honest about everything that is happening in your life, how you feel in the moment, and what has happened.

Writing what you feel can help you not only calm your anxiety but also help with mild to moderate depression.

4. Reduce your caffeine intake.

Do you often feel jittery just after you drink caffeine? Or do you feel amped up, anxious way too often, or are having trouble falling asleep? 

If so, then it’s time to double-check your caffeine intake because you may have just found your anxious culprit!

Although for many of us, caffeine can be okay, however for a few it can make us feel all too nervous, and jittery, and can, in turn, lead to us feeling overwhelming anxiety and fearful thoughts. 

Try cutting back on some caffeine sources of yours such as chocolate, coffee, and tea, then gradually see if your anxious thoughts start to disappear!

Related: Adatopgens beginners guide and how to take them.

5. Get out of your head & call someone.

A common wide belief states that introverts are most usually exhausted when they are interacting with people or are overstimulated, hence why they tend to want to have more time alone. 

At times, having alone time is needed, however, too much alone time can lead to anxious thinking and a racing mind. After all, you’re alone with your thoughts and if you are not busy enough, your mind can take you to dark places. 

However, this also can ring true whether you are an introvert or an extrovert because even extroverts interact with the wrong people, personalities, and/or environments, which can lead to anxious moments. 

Additionally, anxiety and anxious thinking are both intertwined. If you’re in your head too much or have limited/wrong social interactions with others, these situations can only lead to anxiety.

So if you have an anxious and racing mind and are alone, try reaching out to someone and give them a call!

The upside to this is you will be getting out of your comfort zone by talking to someone else thus allowing you to separate yourself from what’s looping in your brain.

On the contrary, if you are alone and you still know you need to separate yourself from a particular situation or person who is bringing up those anxious feelings, chances are, in the midst of a racing mind, you may have to figure out if you need to drop a toxic person in your life. 

To learn more about the tell-tale signs of a toxic friend, check out these 9 ways to cut ties with a toxic person here. 

6. Watch your alcohol intake.

When it comes to anxiety then it comes as no surprise that when alcohol and anxiety are blended together it can disturb a lot in life.

For some drinking a casual drink can be a joyous thing, for others, alcohol can very well add to the problem. 

But when you are trying to relax, alcohol might be something you need to lean on, however, did you know that you won’t relax sufficiently as alcohol can disrupt your sleep cycle which can make anxiety all the worse?

According to studies, it has been shown that when our sleep cycle gets disrupted it can increase fear and prolong depression.

Not only that but alcohol disrupts hormones, increases blood sugar, and will make you eat highly processed unhealthy foods due to the hangover and being dehydrated.

So if you suffer from anxiety and have excessive alcohol consumption, or if your ability to think clearly is important to you, reduce your alcohol intake.

Women should limit their alcohol intake to one to two drinks per day, and men to two to three drinks per day.

Any more and you will be doing your sleep a disservice and bringing on more anxiety. 

7. Avoid overly processed/sugary foods.

This now takes us to refined food and sugar and how it is processed (within the body) that can cause even the severest cases of anxiety. 

When you eat a lot of processed meats, fast foods, fine cereals, sweets, pastries, and high-fat dairy products you are likely to feel more worried and depressed than if you didn’t.

Additionally, when it comes to anxiety and anxious thinking the only way to integrate refined foods and sugars into your life is to first know some facts about them!

Here are some foods/drinks to avoid if you suffer from anxiety and/or depression:

• Sugary Sodas – Sugary-sweetened beverages such as soda pops have a clear connection with depression. If you’re looking to quench your craving try sparkling water with lemon instead. 
• White Bread – After you eat bread that contains white flour, the highly processed white flour turns into high blood sugar almost immediately, which can cause anxiety and depression with high energy spikes and crashes.
• Foods and drinks containing aspartame – this artificial sweetener is strongly linked to anxiety and depression. Make sure to always check the ingredients for aspartame as this can be hidden in a lot of processed foods including the gum you chew.
• Sugary Condiments – 4 grams of sugar per tablespoon could be heightening your anxious thoughts if you are oversaturating your food with sugary condiments such as ketchup for example. 
• Energy drinks – These can trigger rapid heart rate, anxiety, and disturbances in your sleep cycle. If you need a quick pick-me-up, consider natural adaptogens. 
• Partially hydrogenated oils – This type of oil is linked to depression and can be found in fried foods, pizza dough, cakes, frostings, cookies, and crackers. Bottom line — check your labels!

Additionally, our brains are really responsive to the types of fuels that we provide them, therefore good natural foods that make us happy will always go a long way toward great mental health.

8. Track your mental chatter.

Have you ever been so worried about your thoughts that it keeps you up at night? Or do you still get in some “fights with the past” because you just can’t get over what happened to you?

A lot of us do! However, when this mental chatter happens, it can lead to something way worse — obsessive thinking leads to severe anxiety. 

Think about it this way, if we criticize ourselves all the time then it will make us feel bad about the things that we did, what we resent, or what happened to us.

Moreover, when this brain loop takes hold of us, we can start to obsess about them all the more, prolonging the effects of our anxiety or even worse panic attacks. 

Not only that but all of these worries can turn into an internal obsession and dialogue that can be overplayed on a continuous loop, and this is why it is key to pay close attention to your mental chatter. 

When you are suffering from anxiety you have to actively retrain your mind to automatically act as a spectator to your own internal dialogue and not as a slave. 

You can do this by actively drawing attention to your thinking process — without engaging or giving them a reaction — to get what you want out of life and ultimately feel a little better.  

So the next time your anxiety is racing, try being an innocent spectator by asking yourself questions when you feel anxious such as, “Is this the truth?”, “what do I know for sure?”, or “have I already learned from this?”

Chances are if you have already played this mental loop over and over, you’ve already probably learned what you needed to learn. 

Besides, if you know certain circumstances won’t happen again, then there’s nothing that that mental chatter is teaching you, so you might as well turn those obsessive and anxiety-stirring thoughts into positive ones so you can lead your life with more positivity. 

You may also like: 14 Hacks That’ll Help Solve Your Small(ish) Sleep Problems

9. Start serving others.

Lastly, at the end of the day, when you are feeling the most anxious and on edge then you are most likely thinking about yourself.

Sorry to say this, but you’re most likely coming from a “me” perspective and when you start thinking anxiously this way, it can turn sour in no time. 

Sometimes all we need (to stop obsessively thinking about our own problems or our fears) is to redirect our minds by focusing on something or someone else.

Serving others is a sure way to do that and will shift your concentration from yourself to someone else which can really aid in relaxing anxiety. 

So if you can make a point of contacting someone you might think may need help, spend some time in voluntary service, or develop anything you think (as a business or side hustle) that can help serve others in a more meaningful and positive way, you’ll calm the winds of your mind in no time.  

Plus, as an added benefit, just focusing on the well-being of the community as a whole can also give you a sense of purpose which can be extremely revitalizing, in and of itself!

How to Calm Your Anxiety (Without Meditation) final thoughts.

Isn’t it nice to learn that these insights are all tied up with anxiety and depression?

That what you eat and think can be changed if you just know what your triggers are and how you can help them when you are anxious?

You can have a restful mind and stop your anxiety in its tracks, however, it does take some time and some willpower. But you can definitely get there, especially if you follow a few of these sound suggestions! 

You may also like:

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• 10 Brilliant Ways to Master Self Discipline
• How to Stop Being Miserable & Be Happy
• 12 Things You Should Probably Do Every Single day
• How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling SO Depressed

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