I wanted to share with you three simple things that can help you to combat anxiety. Now, I know that anxiety is an issue that causes problems for many people, not just young people but adults too. What I’m going to share with you today isn’t necessarily going to solve all of the anxiety issues, but if you use it consistently and proactively then you will start to minimise and reduce your anxiety – and could possibly eliminate it completely! These tips and tricks that I will share with you are real techniques that I teach my clients in my Hertfordshire therapy clinic – so I know that they work! Here are my three tips to help you combat your anxiety:

1) You need to start taking control of your ‘Self Talk’. What I mean by that is the way that you talk to yourself inside your head, when you are sat quietly thinking to yourself. That voice may be using the wrong terminology; it can be using words that freak you out or going over worst-case scenarios and disasters that could happen, or it could be that your inner voice is talking to you in quite a panicked tone of voice.

So here’s what to do. If you notice that you have an inner voice that is saying panicky things or talking in a panicky voice, you need to take control of it. I’m not going to say to you ‘just stop doing it’ because I know that it is not that easy. If and when you notice that voice showing up I want you to have a response to it. You are going to have a bigger, stronger, more powerful voice that tells it to SHUT UP! When you talk to that inner voice in that way you can start to minimise and shrink it so that it feels far less powerful than it did before. This is a really useful technique but you have to make sure that the things that you say, and the way that you say it, really shut up that annoying wingeing anxiety voice that you might have had before.

2) The second thing that is really helpful for you is a good old, straightforward distraction. When someone is in a state of anxiety their body produces loads of adrenaline that goes whizzing through their system. So next time that you feel your anxiety building up and your heart rate rising, instead of curling up and hiding under the duvet (which is tempting) I want you to use up that adrenaline. The adrenaline that your body produces is meant to be used to make us move if we don’t use it up in the right way then it is just left there going stale in your body and really won’t do your anxiety any favours.

So, what I want you to do next time that you feel yourself getting into an anxious state. Instead of curling up and hiding away, I want you to go out there into the world. Run, jump, skip – whatever you need to do – but do something that is high energy, because that is going to help to use up the adrenaline. If you can begin to do this on a consistent basis then you will find that the adrenaline starts to become much more under control, and as such, so does your anxiety.

Read next month’s article for part 2.

By Gemma Bailey

www.NLP4Kids.org/gemma-bailey