9 ways to deal with anxiety and stress

At many points in our life we may experience something that causes us a great deal of stress & anxiety, and given how hectic life can be these feelings can often last for a long amount of time. The turbulent nature of 2020 has been especially stressful for many of us, so it has become even more important to be able to prevent and cope with these feelings.

Here at Carisma Spa, we want to ensure that people experience both physical and mental wellness, so this article will take you through some ways to manage these negative emotions and to help prevent them from taking hold in the first place.

Understanding Anxiety and Stress

Anxiety can have physical, mental, and emotional effects on you. When you experience anxiety, you can feel scared or apprehensive, you can have negative emotions and you can even experience intense reactions like sweating, shaking or shortness of breath.

​Anxiety and Stress are often the result of something that has already happened, or something that you are worried will happen, so tackling these feelings can start from approaching these events in a different way.

​Planning in Advance

If future events are causing you anxiety, it can be very helpful to plant for them in advance. Knowing that you already have ways to cope with this event, if it were to happen, can take a great deal of weight off your shoulders.

This can be as simple as writing down your daily routine in advance, listing your short term and long term goals, or writing down some ways to cope with an event that you fear will happen. Consider talking about these worries with people you are close to, as they may have perspectives that you are not seeing at the moment or solutions that you are not aware of. Often the act of simply talking with someone can relieve some anxiety.

Rewarding Yourself For The Small Goals

Many of our goals in life require a great deal of time and effort; getting a good job, buying a house or succeeding in education, for example, can all require years of work. As a result, we can lose motivation and feel like our goals are too far out of reach, so it’s important to list small goals and reward yourself for them. Exercised or ate a healthy meal today? Reward yourself with some moments of relaxation. 

Even small achievements have their value, and it’s important not to forget this! Focus on what you can change right now.

Focus & Breathing

Experiencing a moment of high anxiety or stress can be overwhelming, so it’s important to know what to do beforehand. When you feel overwhelmed, try to sit down and take a second to clear your mind. Close your eyes and focus only on your breathing. These calming breathing techniques are surprisingly effective, relieving intense emotions in a matter of minutes.

Question Your Negative Thoughts

When we focus on our negative thoughts, we can give them a great deal of power and make them feel worse than they actually are. When you experience negative emotions, take their power away by listing them either on a piece of paper or in your mind. Ask yourself what is bothering you, why it is bothering you and whether you can do anything about it. 

If the problem is something you can change, try and list what you can do to solve it. If you can’t figure out a solution, ask others for advice or even see if you can get some useful information from the internet.

Often, this process can relieve your anxiety even before you actually start doing anything to fix your problem, since it grounds you in the present and makes your feelings tangible. Once you understand something, you can deal with it more easily.

Aromatherapy

Creating a relaxing environment can help with anxiety and stress, and aromatherapy is a useful tool in your arsenal. By burning incense, using a scented oil or a warmer, you can diffuse a relaxing scent around the room to ground you and relax you. 

Specific scents like lavender, jasmine, chamomile, rose, frankincense, and patchouli have historically been used to relieve anxiety, depression, and stress.

​Anti Stress Treatments

If you feel like you would prefer a more hands-on approach to tackling your tension, you can choose treatments designed to relieve these negative emotions. A facial, for example, can relieve tension and allow you to step away from life’s worries for a while. 

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Meanwhile, a massage that targets anxiety like the Hot Stone Massage or the Antistress Massage is designed to relieve the symptoms of stress in your body to refresh your physical and mental energy.

Meditation & Exercise

Keeping up with meditation and exercise can also be a useful tool to relieve negative emotions. They lower the body’s levels of stress hormones, improve your sleep and make you feel more confident in yourself. In addition, they can be a great distraction that allows you to focus on something other than the way you are feeling.

Wrapping up

​In conclusion, there are many approaches you can take to manage your feelings in these stressful times. You may choose to try one or more of these techniques or even all of them, so we hope that they will be of help and lead to your mental wellness.