6 Alternative Ways to Manage Anxiety

A few weeks ago, in the Creating Money Magic group, someone asked:

“How can I handle anxiety without taking any medication?”

I chose to answer this question based on my own personal experience with anxiety and depression by sharing how I was able to change my emotional state.

I still have anxiety because I'm human, but the anxiety isn't crippling and it feels manageable and only happens once in a while, not every day.

Packing up my life and moving within a month used to unsettle me and leave me too scared and anxious to take action.

Learning to manage my anxiety changed the way I handle life events and feel about these events as they unfold.

I’m by no means a medical person so I can only share what worked for me:

1. Change your diet

I am gluten free and vegan, I know it seems extreme and new age for most people.

But I noticed something about my anxiety attacks (which were often linked to money) - they were more pronounced after eating certain things.

I started paying attention to what I ate and noticed that I always felt anxious whenever I drank coffee or had 2 cups of decaf.

I also paid attention to how I felt after eating certain foods and I noticed a spike in my anxiety whenever I ate sugar, processed foods and ny food with wheat or gluten.

Cutting out these foods made me healthier (obvs), more energetic and also calmed me down. There are tons of studies done on how the food we eat impacts the chemicals in our bodies.

Note: Alcohol is not your friend when it comes to anxiety. A drink every now and then is no problem (I'm talking like once or twice a month) but drinking constantly can also affect your mood when sober.

2. Question your thinking

Every emotion is tied to a thought. Emotions may be the things that drive our behavior and shape our reality but every emotion comes from an underlying thought.

The emotion is the effect, to change the effect you need to change the root cause, the thought.

Understand your thoughts and then question their validity.

3. GEt still and meditate

This is tied to the second point - if you want to understand the thoughts that are driving your emotions then you need to get still and meditate.

In the Creating Money Magic course we have 3 meditations just around thoughts, emotions and memories that are impacting our behavior.

Your mind is the computer that's controlling this show and you have to learn to master it, in order to master yourself.

 

4. Do yoga

A few weeks ago we had a live class discussing the benefits of yoga on our emotional state and spoke about how yoga helps to alleviate anxiety because the mind, emotions and body are interconnected.

I do yoga as soon as I get out of bed, because it's a physical exercise that's connected to emotional well-being and mindfulness and it never fails to ground me and relax me.

 

5. use Essential oils

I use Lavender essential oil because Lavender has calming properties and helps slow the heart rate.

I also use orange, lemon and grapefruit essential oils because citrus scents rewire our brain and make us happy.

 

6. befriend your anxiety

I stopped seeing my anxiety and depression as a pain in the butt (which it was); instead I started going into my body to feel where this anxiety was sitting.

I started talking to my anxiety and questioning it (something we do a lot in the Creating Money Magic course) and found the lessons it held for me. 

All emotions are carried in the body, we can go into the body, connect to them and ask what wisdom they have for us.

When I did this I learned that my anxiety was my mind's way of waking me up and telling me things.

I learned that I feel anxious when I'm supposed to be doing something and instead end up procrastinating and second guessing myself.

Second guessing, over analysing and over thinking makes me anxious.  The best way to deal with my anxiety is to follow my inner voice and take action from there. Even if that advice makes no sense, taking action makes me less anxious.

Now when I feel anxiety, I get still and ask myself:

What is my heart telling me and what is my higher-self trying to communicate to me that I'm now blocking out?

As I write this, I realize that I've truly befriended my anxiety but it took 6 years for that to happen.

My best advice is be gentle with yourself as you go on this journey, it doesn't happen overnight.

Your anxiety may be telling you something important, so don’t block it out.