Coping Strategies - How to Deal with Anxiety

‍

As humans, we use various coping strategies to help us deal with the difficult situations we find ourselves in. This is a natural part of our development as a species & ultimately is linked to our survival instincts. At charisme, we want to show you that some coping methods can prove to be very successful at alleviating anxiety and others understandably are not successful.  

Indeed, there is a tendency for people to use unhealthy and healthy coping strategies to deal with anxiety. In our in-app video in the lesson on Dealing with Anxiety, you can learn to spot the differences between healthy & unhealthy coping strategies.

‍

When watching this lesson, ask yourself, which coping strategies do you use when you are under stress? Healthy? Or unhealthy? It’s very human to resort to either one, especially if the level of stress that you are under is very intense.  

‍

So, try to be patient and understanding with yourself when answering this question, but also be honest with yourself. In this lesson, you can find out which methods are the most effective for you and identify which strategies you are already using.

‍

Liked the below video, why not download our iOS or Android apps to access the full exercise on this topic?

‍Why Anxiety is Normal

‍

Anxiety is a term which refers to feeling ill at ease about certain situations. For example, some people often feel anxious when they experience new, unfamiliar situations or if they have to meet lots of new people in a short space of time. Feeling anxious can be different for everyone. What’s important to recognise is that anxiety is a completely normal human emotion and is rooted in our biology. Remember the charisme blog article which shows the wheel of emotions, let’s look at where anxiety sits as an emotion in the wheel. 

Why We Feel Anxiety

‍

Looking at the zoomed in version of Wheel of Emotions above, we can see that anxiety is a fearful emotion, which means it originates from the feeling of wanting to be protected from a danger of some sort. When we realise that anxiety is linked to a primal feeling of fear, then we understand that anxiety is a very reasonable response to either an imagined or real danger. So our basic human instinct to protect ourselves during dangerous situations is being triggered when we feel anxious. 

‍

 Physical Symptoms of Anxiety

When we feel anxious, our body releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which causes physical symptoms of anxiety such as an increased heart rate & sweating. Any of the below symptoms are our body’s physical reaction to anxiety.

The 4 Aspects of Anxiety

In our in-app exercise on how to cope with anxiety, we walk you through the 4 aspects of anxiety. Would you like to find out more about the 4 aspects of anxiety? Download our  iOS or Android apps  to access our exercise on this.

‍