Stress and anxiety related illnesses have been on the rise over the past few years. However, this hasn’t meant that many people haven’t started finding ways to overcome – and potentially treat – many of these diseases. While many people may typically turn to medication for these ailments, there are other ways to tackle them.
Perhaps the most notable in recent years has been mindfulness. Usually, a person who practices mindfulness is much more reflective rather than reactive, as well as more present in the moment. As a result, they tend to suffer from stress and anxiety less than those who don’t.
Despite this, many people might not know much about what mindfulness is and how it might benefit them. Alongside this, some people may see it as alternative medicine that doesn’t offer any tangible advantages.
However, mindfulness has been shown to have quite a significant effect on stress and anxiety levels, with many people feeling benefits when it’s put into practice.
Does mindfulness work?
One of the first questions that anybody will have about mindfulness is whether or not it works. While there may be some people who believe that it doesn’t, there’s far more evidence to suggest that it does, with people seeing a significant reduction in stress and anxiety levels.
Essentially, by focusing your mind on the present, you should be better able to counteract stressful thoughts. This should subsequently help reduce your anxiety levels, with this being felt rather quickly. However, the majority of these benefits will be seen over the long-term.
This will typically focus on upcoming stressors, such as bills, etc., as well as things that have already happened, such as worrying about whether or not you did the right thing. By focusing on the present and staying in the moment, you should be able to cut down on a significant amount of anxiety.
Effect of mindfulness on stress and anxiety
There have been a variety of studies that have highlighted the effect of mindfulness on anxiety, stress, and depression. In the majority of these cases, research has suggested that mindfulness can teach us how to respond to stressful situations.
Alongside this, there are a few other ways that mindfulness can benefit somebody with stress or anxiety. Perhaps the most notable is that it allows for much better reactions to stressful situations. By being able to centre and calm yourself, you’ll be able to think logically and critically.
As a result, you should find that you’ll be able to make much better decisions in the moment, as well as overtime. There can be quite a significant number of other advantages that you should be able to capitalize on.
Many of these may be quite obvious, such as reducing or avoiding many of the physical health effects that stress and anxiety can have. Because of this, practising mindfulness could reap a significant number of benefits.
While some of these may take time to become considerable, you should start seeing them quite early on. As a result, you should then see your stress and anxiety levels drop drastically over time.
Mindfulness tricks that help with anxiety
Because of the various benefits that mindfulness can have with anxiety, many people will want to try it. However, they often may often not know how to do so. The main reason for this is that they might not know what tricks and techniques they should use.
This happens to quite a large number of people. However, there are a few mindfulness tricks that help with anxiety that come much better-recommended than others. Each is quite quick and easy to do and should reap a significant amount of rewards.
Some of the more notable of these are:
- Set an intention with your mindfulness session;
- Do a guided practice;
- Wish other people happiness;
- Focus on one thing at a time;
- Turn regular household tasks into a mental break, and;
- Take a break from social media, and possibly even other websites.
It can sometimes take a while to master different mindfulness techniques, which could be frustrating for some people. While this is natural, you should aim to keep practising these techniques over time, as they’ll reap greater rewards over the long-term.
Alongside this, you’ll need to make sure that you’ve mastered each of the mindfulness techniques that you want to use. Following this, you should then use them for several weeks before you start making up your mind about them.
Once this has been done, you should start seeing your stress and anxiety levels begin to decrease much more rapidly than they had previously. While patience can often be difficult when you’re feeling stressed or anxious, this could be a vital component of the process.
As such, you’ll need to make sure that you take the time required to go through each of the techniques repeatedly.
If you are suffering from anxiety or other mental health challenges, check out Beyond Blue for more resources.
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