Worry and episodic anxiety are a normal part of life, but when they become chronic, they can decrease the quality of life and make daily tasks difficult. Recent research has found an easy way to reduce anxiety simply by “cooling” the mental processes in the brain.
From worry to anxiety to panic
Worrying about things and periodic anxious states are normal. However, when these continue without letting up, you may be suffering from a generalized anxiety disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, symptoms include:
- Restlessness or feeling wound-up or on edge
- Being easily fatigued
- Difficulty concentrating or having their minds go blank
- Irritability
- Muscle tension
- Difficulty controlling worry
- Sleep problems (difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless, unsatisfying sleep)
If you suffer from most of these, it’s crucial to address them. Depending on the frequency and duration of these symptoms, anxiety could turn into panic attacks, which can severely impact your life.
How to offload worry from the brain
One of the ways to reduce worry and anxiety and perform better with more efficiency is expressive writing. According to a recent study published in the journal Psychophysiology, expressive writing can serve to “offload” worries from working memory, therefore relieving the distracting effects of worry on cognition.
The researchers found that when we try to carry out a task and are also worried or anxious about it (or other things), our brain “heats up” from overwork. Its attention is split between holding information and making decisions about the task and the worry or anxiety surrounding it. However, when we can sit down for a period before a task that requires attention, focus, and decision-making skills and express our worries by writing them down, we effectively “cool off” or relax the overworked brain.
Additional ways to reduce worry and anxiety
Besides expressive writing, there are other ways to reduce excessive worry and anxiety:
- Getting restful sleep: Sleep allows the body to repair, collate and file memories, metabolize stress hormones, and produce serotonin.
- Meditating daily: Meditation slows the mind’s thinking and allows you to feel your breath and body as separate from your thoughts. When the mind is jumping from thought to thought, as it does when worrying or anxious, we feel it in the body as tightness, shivers, chills, cramps, and pain.
- Exercising several days per week: This is an effective way to burn off pent-up energy, reduce stress, and create dopamine to feel better overall.
- Improving diet: Avoiding sugar, caffeine, and alcohol can go a long way to reducing the effects (and similar effects) of worry and anxiety.
- Practicing gratitude: Logging what you are grateful for each day can help you maintain an attitude of gratitude, which improves mood and outlook, creating a better perspective that is less easily disrupted by worry and anxiety.
In conclusion, practicing expressive writing and incorporating the other techniques to reduce anxiety can significantly improve your daily life. Give these strategies a try and see the difference they can make in managing your worry and anxiety.
