Stress, anxiety and depression. Ten ways to fight your fears

Whatever it is that scares you, here are 10 ways to help you cope with your day-to-day fears and anxieties.

1. Take time out

It feels impossible to think clearly when you're flooded with fear or anxiety. A racing heart, sweating palms and feeling panicky and confused are the result of adrenalin. So, the first thing to do is take time out so you can physically calm down.

Distract yourself from the worry for 15 minutes by walking around the block, making a cup of tea or having a bath. When you've physically calmed down, you'll feel better able to decide on the best way to cope.

2. What's the worst that can happen?

When you're anxious about something – be it work, a relationship or an exam – it can help to think through what the worst end result could be. Even if a presentation, a call or a conversation goes horribly wrong, chances are that you and the world will survive. Sometimes the worst that can happen is a panic attack.
If you start to get a faster heartbeat or sweating palms, the best thing is not to fight it. Stay where you are and simply feel the panic without trying to distract yourself. Placing the palm of your hand on your stomach and breathing slowly and deeply (no more than 12 breaths a minute) helps soothe the body.
It may take up to an hour, but eventually the panic will go away on its own. The goal is to help the mind get used to coping with panic, which takes the fear of fear away.

3. Expose yourself to the fear

Avoiding fears only makes them scarier. If you panic one day getting into a lift, it's best to get back into a lift the next day. Stand in the lift and feel the fear until it goes away. Whatever your fear, if you face it, it should start to fade.

4. Welcome the worst

Each time fears are embraced, it makes them easier to cope with the next time they strike, until in the end they are no longer a problem. Try imagining the worst thing that can happen – perhaps it's panicking and having a heart attack. Then try to think yourself into having a heart attack. It's just not possible. The fear will run away the more you chase it.

5. Get real

These tips are designed for people who are coping with day-to-day fears and anxieties. If you have been diagnosed with an anxiety-related condition, see our page on generalised anxiety disorder.

Fears tend to be much worse than reality. Often, people who have been attacked can't help thinking they're going to be attacked again every time they walk down a dark alley. But the chance that an attack will happen again is actually very low.
Similarly, people sometimes tell themselves they're a failure because they blush when they feel self-conscious. This then makes them more upset. But blushing in stressful situations is normal. By remembering this, the anxiety goes away.

6. Don't expect perfection

Black-and-white perfectionist thinking such as, "If I'm not the best mum in the world, I'm a failure," or, "My DVDs aren't all facing in the same direction, so my life is a mess," are unrealistic and only set us up for anxiety.
Life is full of stresses, yet many of us feel that our lives must be perfect. Bad days and setbacks will always happen, and it's essential to remember that life is messy. 

7. Visualise

Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine a place of safety and calm – it could be a picture of you walking on a beautiful beach, or snuggled up in bed with the cat next to you, or a happy memory from childhood. Let the positive feelings soothe you until you feel more relaxed.

8. Talk about it

Sharing fears takes away a lot of their scariness. If you can't talk to a partner, friend or family member, call a helpline such as the Samaritans (08457 90 90 90, open 24 hours a day). And if your fears aren't going away, ask your GP for help. GPs can refer people for counselling, psychotherapy or online help through an online service called FearFighter.

9. Go back to basics

A good sleep, a wholesome meal and a walk are often the best cures for anxiety. The easiest way to fall asleep when worries are spiralling through the mind can be to stop trying to nod off. Instead, try to stay awake.
Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to self-treat anxiety with the idea that it will make them feel better, but these only make nervousness worse. On the other hand, eating well will make you feel great physically and mentally.

10. Reward yourself

Finally, give yourself a treat. When you've picked up that spider or made that call you've been dreading, reinforce your success by treating yourself to a candlelit bath, a massage, a country walk, a concert, a meal out, a book, a DVD, or whatever little gift makes you happy.
Source: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/overcoming-fears.aspx

Dealing with panic attacks

A panic attack is an experience of sudden and intense anxiety. Panic attacks can have physical symptoms, including shaking, feeling confused or disorientated, rapid heartbeats, dry mouth, sweating, dizziness and chest pain.
The symptoms of a panic attack normally peak within 10 minutes. Most episodes (attacks) will last for between five minutes and half an hour.
Phobia sufferers will try to avoid whatever is causing their fear, but in some cases, such as agoraphobia, this can seriously restrict their movements.
Professor Paul Salkovskis, a psychologist at King's College London, says it's important not to let your fear of panic attacks control you.
"Panic attacks always pass and the symptoms are not a sign of anything harmful happening," he says. "It's important not to restrict your movements and daily activities."

Confront your fear

During an attack you experience a whole range of frightening symptoms, and worrying thoughts may go through your mind.
"Many people have a sense of impending disaster, and think they're going to faint, lose control or even die," says Salkovskis.
"You need to tell yourself that this is not going to happen and the symptoms you're experiencing are caused by anxiety."
He says don't look for distractions. "Ride out the attack. Try to keep doing things. If possible, don't leave the situation until the anxiety has subsided."
"Confront your fear. If you don't run away from it you're giving yourself a chance to discover that nothing's going to happen."
As the anxiety begins to pass, start to focus on your surroundings and continue to do what you were doing before.
"If you’re having a short, sudden panic attack it can be helpful to have someone with you, reassuring you that it will pass and the symptoms are nothing to worry about," says Salkovskis.
"Then you need to try to work out what particular stress you might be under that could make your symptoms worse.
"There's no quick fix but if your attacks are happening time after time, seek medical help."

Relaxation techniques

If you have panic disorder, you may feel constantly stressed and anxious, particularly about when your next panic attack may be.
Learning to relax, which isn't as easy as it sounds, can help to relieve some of this stress and tension, and may also help you to deal more effectively with your panic attacks when they occur.
Regular exercise, especially aerobic exercise, will help you to manage stress levels, release tension, improve your mood and boost confidence.
Phobia support groups provide useful advice about how you can effectively manage your attacks. Knowing that other people are experiencing the same feelings can be reassuring.
Antidepressants and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are the two recommended treatments for panic disorder.
Cognitive behavioural therapy aims to identify and change the negative thought patterns and misinterpretations that are feeding your panic attacks.
"CBT is particularly effective. Most people will be completely free of panic disorder at the end of therapy and will remain that way," says Salkovskis.
Source: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/coping-with-panic-attacks.aspx

How to Calm your Fear Reactions

If you don't make it your business to overcome fear, you'd better believe it'll try to overcome you. Most people are subservient to this emotion though they may not know it and may even actively deny it's an issue. Fear in this article is defined as the emotional response to danger, no matter whether it's perceived or real, and the subsequent biological, or physical responses that harm your well-being and reinforce general emotional unhappiness. What underscores fear in all its permutations is the feeling that you won't be all right. You can lessen these feelings by harnessing your biological reactions and trying to minimize them, or even retraining them.

There are several techniques suggested in this article for harnessing your biology in order to quiet fear, as one fruitful means for achieving emotional freedom.

Steps

1. 
   1
   Practice calm biology. To short-circuit fear and turn off your fight-or-flight response, you'll need to train your brain to send chemicals to counteract them. Otherwise, fear and its hormones will keep you feeling crazed. In contrast, with a calm biology it's easier to find courage. Many of the following techniques are aimed at providing a method by which you can quieten your system by encouraging the endorphins to take over from the cortisol and other toxic fear-induced chemicals, so as to calm your usual reactions to fear.
   Ad
2. 
   2
   Do something physical and positive that has tangible results. Clean your room. Run down to the store on an errand. Letting your body do something that uses the "fight or flight" adrenaline energy will reduce the amount of toxins building up in your muscles and helps burn out the immediate emotional reaction. A sense of satisfaction from accomplishing something physical like chopping firewood or scrubbing the bathroom can raise endorphins and your confidence in general.
   • Social fears don't usually have an effective physical response the way natural disasters and physical threats do. That's what your body's prepared for, though. So literally running around, picking up things, moving them around and doing something tangible uses the adrenaline and gives your body the satisfaction that you've dealt with the threat - you're still breathing. A threat to your status or long term relationships is something best handled in a calm frame of mind. This is good for cooling off from emotional fights too.
   • If you have an habitual response to situations that involve fear for you, your body will remember this and repeat it each time a similar fearful (for you) situation arises. For example, your regular response to someone yelling at you or informing you unkindly that you're wrong and responsible for damage, might be to curl up under the blankets and want to hide yourself away on the emotional side, while on the physical side, maybe your mind goes blank, your heart rate starts to increase, you sweat, and feel your body turn tense, etc. All of these biological responses seize your mind and try to take control of the situation, making it much harder for you to think straight. They are instinct responses to physical threats, not effective ways to handle social and emotional threats. If this becomes a standard response for you whenever anything goes wrong, however mild or major, you will probably find yourself unable to break the fear response cycle without knowing some specific techniques to work around it.
3. 
   3
   Look to your diet. Dietary choices can provoke and increase a sense of anxiety and worry if you're lacking in healthy nutrients, have blood sugar swings, and you're fueling up on unhealthy foods most of the time. Caffeine and sugar are culprits in fueling your flight or fight responses. Decreasing anxiety through food can be achieved by increasing your intake of complex carbohydrates, eating smaller, more frequent meals, drinking plenty of water, and limiting the intake of caffeine and alcohol.^[1] Be careful to avoid food sensitivities as these can heighten your sense of anxiety and fear if you have a reaction to them.^[2]
   • Increase your intake of foods that are high in tryptophan. Tryptophan helps boost your brain's calm mood and relaxes you.^[3] Try such foods as bananas, soy, oats, milk, cheese, poultry, nuts, peanut butter and sesame seeds.^[4]
   • There are "anti-anxiety" diets that you might wish to consider; do an online search and talk to your doctor about the merits of such a diet.
   • Comfort eating, should not become (or remain) a habit and the long-term goal must be to eat a healthy diet, ensuring that your nutrients are balanced and moving your desire to comfort eat into yoga, meditation, breathing, and other more constructive outlets.
   • Blood sugar swings will feed fear because you lack strength and energy as a result of them, causing you to feel physically weaker. As your blood sugar soars, you feel exuberant but as it crashes, your sense of fear will return and leave you feeling irritable, unresolved, and worried.
4. 
   4
   Focus on your breathing. Breathing properly calms the sympathetic nervous system, or your "fight-flight" response.^[5] Perceived threats don't come from rabidly hungry beasts for most people anymore; they come in the form of deadlines, angry bosses, unsettled coworkers, and belligerent online users. This can mean that we don't burn off the flight-fight response, instead allowing the toxic stress chemicals and hormones like cortisol to become elevated and swim around our body unabated. And the breathing becomes stressed too, short, sharp, stabs of breathing over which you have little focus. Signs that you need to turn your focus to better breathing include a tight neck, bunched-up shoulders, shallow breathing, a tight chest, and a tension headache.^[6]
   • By starting to breathe slowly, you will signal your brain to relax, as you slow down the release of adrenalin and cortisol, and increase the release of endorphins.^[7]
   • Read How to breathe deeply, How to meditate on breath, and How to breathe like a yoga master for more details.
5. 
   5
   Avoid the fear generators. People who push your buttons and put you into fight and flight mode regularly should be avoided until you learn stronger coping mechanisms. For some people, this may mean avoiding them long-term. All the same, it may be unrealistic to avoid all fear generators, especially if they're your boss or a family member, so practice very non-committal responses when these people begin to create fear situations and quickly and politely remove yourself from their sphere of influence. Don't explain yourself, just simply make excuses to get going.
   • Balance the fear generators with emotional nurturers. For every fear generator, find an emotionally regenerative and calming person you know that you can turn to and unwind around. People who are good listeners, healers, carers, and good humored are generally excellent antidotes to the nastier, darker personalities out there. This isn't a time for trying to find the good side to the person who has generated your fear; deal first with calming down and building yourself up again.
   • Use your eyes and not your heart. Look at people to judge their real intentions and behavior. By learning to better translate body language, you will learn that much of what people say is counteracted by their body, giving you far greater insight into their real motives and even their own fears.
6. 
   6
   Ration the sources of fear. When terrible things happen, there isn't a reason to force yourself to participate. Watching endless repeats of violent newscasts or disasters will increase your fear greatly and for nothing in return than awful images and worries. Realize that doing this doesn't help the victims of such crises and it makes you feel more helpless.
   • If a disaster does set you off, get proactive and plan how you'd be prepared for a disaster if it happened, instead of worrying your socks off.
   • Find a way to drive or travel to and from work that decreases your chances of being involved in traffic jams. This can increase your fear levels if you're worried about time, accidents, and noise. Read How to cope with rush hour for more details.
   • Learn to reduce conflict by managing it. Instead of avoiding it, find constructive ways to cope and to assert yourself around others. Always remember that you don't have to provide explanations for excusing yourself or for standing up for yourself. You do not have to tolerate abusive people or situations.
7. 
   7
   Take calming mini-breaks. If you're highly sensitive and tend to get overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and activity around you, until it builds up into a fearful crescendo, make an effort to take regular breaks to restore a sense of inner calm.^[8] Sit outside for a bit, go for a walk, do a short meditation, etc. In this way, hopefully you will alleviate the build-up of fear that can be triggered through any event during the day that upsets you.
8. 
   8
   Use a progressive relaxation technique. The technique suggested next can be used in a quiet spot in the office, at home, in the lunchroom, in a park, or anywhere that you can escape to when you feel the fear mounting:
   • In a comfortable position, sitting or lying down, take a few deep breaths while letting your body go as limp as possible.
   • When you're ready, begin by tightening the muscles in your toes... hold to a count of ten... then relax.
   • Enjoy the relief of tension melting.
   • Do the same with flexing your foot muscles, and move slowly through your entire body: calves, legs, stomach, back, neck, jaw, face, contracting and releasing each area.
9. 
   9
   Have a relaxing bath or shower. Immerse yourself in hot water to relax muscular tension as soon as possible, even if this means doing it the moment you step back through the door into your home. 

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Calm-Your-Fear-Reactions

Ten ways to fight your fears

Whatever it is that scares you, here are 10 ways to help you cope with your fear and anxiety:

1. Take time out

It feels impossible to think clearly when you’re flooded with fear or anxiety. A racing heart, sweating palms and feeling panicky and confused are the result of adrenalin. So, the first thing to do is take time out so you can physically calm down. 

Distract yourself from the worry for 15 minutes by walking around the block, making a cup of tea or having a bath. When you’ve physically calmed down, you’ll feel better able to decide on the best way to cope.

2. What’s the worst that can happen?

When you're anxious about something, be it work, a relationship or an exam, it can help to think through what the worst end result could be. Even if a presentation, a call or a conversation goes horribly wrong, chances are that you and the world will survive. Sometimes the worst that can happen is a panic attack.
If you start to get a faster heartbeat or sweating palms, the best thing is not to fight it. Stay where you are and simply feel the panic without trying to distract yourself. Placing the palm of your hand on your stomach and breathing slowly and deeply (no more than 12 breaths a minute) helps soothe the body.
It may take up to an hour, but eventually the panic will go away on its own. The goal is to help the mind get used to coping with panic, which takes the fear of fear away.

3. Expose yourself to the fear

Avoiding fears only makes them scarier. If you panic one day getting into a lift, it’s best to get back into a lift the next day. Stand in the lift and feel the fear until it goes away. Whatever your fear, if you face it, it should start to fade.

4. Welcome the worst

Each time fears are embraced, it makes them easier to cope with the next time they strike, until in the end they are no longer a problem. Try imagining the worst thing that can happen – perhaps it’s panicking and having a heart attack. Then try to think yourself into having a heart attack. It’s just not possible. The fear will run away the more you chase it.

5. Get real

Fears tend to be much worse than reality. Often, people who have been attacked can’t help thinking they’re going to be attacked again every time they walk down a dark alley. But the chance that an attack will happen again is actually very low.
Similarly, people sometimes tell themselves they're a failure because they blush when they feel self-conscious. This then makes them more upset. But blushing in stressful situations is normal. By remembering this, the anxiety goes away.

6. Don’t expect perfection

Black-and-white perfectionist thinking such as, "If I’m not the best mum in the world, I’m a failure," or, "My DVDs aren’t all facing in the same direction, so my life is a mess," are unrealistic and only set us up for anxiety.
Life is full of stresses, yet many of us feel that our lives must be perfect. Bad days and setbacks will always happen, and it’s essential to remember that life is messy. 

7. Visualise

Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine a place of safety and calm: it could be a picture of you walking on a beautiful beach, or snuggled up in bed with the cat next to you or a happy memory from childhood. Let the positive feelings soothe you until you feel more relaxed.

8. Talk about it

Sharing fears takes away a lot of their scariness. If you can’t talk to a partner, friend or family member, call a helpline such as the Samaritans (08457 90 90 90, open 24 hours a day). And if your fears aren’t going away, ask your GP for help. GPs can refer people for counselling, psychotherapy or online help through a new online service called FearFighter.

9. Go back to basics

A good sleep, a wholesome meal and a walk are often the best cures for anxiety. The easiest way to fall asleep when worries are spiralling through the mind can be to stop trying to nod off. Instead, try to stay awake.
Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to self-treat anxiety, with the idea that it will make them feel better, but these only make nervousness worse. On the other hand, eating well will make you feel great physically and mentally.

10. Reward yourself

Finally, give yourself a treat. When you’ve picked up that spider or made that call you’ve been dreading, reinforce your success by treating yourself to a candlelit bath, a massage, a country walk, a concert, a meal out, a book, a DVD or whatever little gift makes you happy.

Source: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/overcoming-fears.aspx