What are some strategies people use to cope with anxiety outside of CBT?
There are many different websites that can tell you all sorts of different types of coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety. These start with a complete change in lifestyle (choosing different eating habits or starting an exercise routine) and end with exposing yourself to your biggest fears without supervision. However, some more approachable and easier coping mechanisms are:
- Taking some time out. Doing yoga, listening to music, reading a book, or learning relaxation techniques. Stepping away from the problem for a minute might help.
- Limiting alcohol and caffeine
- Counting to ten or more
- Accepting the fact you can not control everything
- Volunteering or being active in your community in other ways
- Talking to someone
- Eating well balanced meals
- Getting enough sleep
- Maintaining a positive attitude
Although these ARE real and completely normal coping tactics, these aren’t exactly a quick fix for a big anxiety problem. Some of these are really hard changes to adapt to, such as getting enough sleep if you have insomnia due to anxiety is almost impossible, or volunteering for someone with social anxiety could be a potential nightmare.
Some good coping tactics suggested on other places of research were distractions, journaling and relaxation strategies. These are a bit easier for people to start out with, because they do not make big changes to the lifestyle and provide enough relief to be able to get on with daily life. Relaxation strategies can be anything from breathing exercises to reading or doing yoga, it just depends on what the person themselves would like to do more and find most relaxing.
I think perhaps moving away from the idea of making a fully functional anxiety journal/log publication, a distraction/relaxation journal would be more useful for an on-the-spot remedy.