Almost every person normally feels anxious at some point or another due to certain stressful events. 

However, individuals with generalised anxiety disorder often experience intense and excessive fear almost every day, making it challenging to do regular activities and impair their work and personal lives. These feelings are usually accompanied by behavioural, cognitive, and physical symptoms, are uncontrollable, and can last for a long if left untreated. 

Anxiety can manifest differently in different individuals with varying severity. However, there is one thing for sure- you can manage everyday anxiety and stress with effective strategies, even if it seems uncontrollable. 

So, read on to learn five simple-to-follow daily anxiety coping strategies.

What is Everyday Anxiety?

Occasional anxiety is quite normal, with almost everyone worrying about things like family, health, money, etc. However, everyday anxiety, can be defined as individuals worrying extremely or feeling nervous more frequently about even basic, daily routines. 

Also known as generalised anxiety disorder, daily anxiety involves a persistent feeling of stress, anxiousness, or dread that interferes with how one lives one's life. Although it develops slowly, daily anxiety disorder can turn into a long-term challenge if not treated on time. 

What are the Symptoms of Everyday Anxiety?

Anyone, whether a child or adult, can develop daily anxiety. But how to know that you are experiencing generalised anxiety disorder? Look for these listed daily anxiety symptoms to determine your health condition and its severity:

• Persistent stress, worrying, or anxiety about regular events
• Struggling to control your worries or feelings of nervousness and anxiousness
• Overthinking all possible worst-case outcomes of everyday activities
• Perceiving even normal situations and events as a threat
• Finding it challenging to handle uncertainty 
• Feeling restless and having trouble relaxing
• Indecisiveness and fear of wrong decision-making
• Having trouble concentrating or feeling your mind going blank
• Being easily startled
• Having headaches, stomaches, muscle, or unexplainable pains
• Struggling to fall or stay asleep 
• Having a hard time swallowing
• Going to bathroom frequently
• Feeling irritated or on edge
• Sweating a lot, feeling out of breath, or lightheaded
• Trembling or feeling twitchy

Effective Strategies to Manage Daily Anxiety

Consider trying the following strategies to manage anxiety whenever feeling anxious or stressed:

1. Identifying your anxiety triggers

The first step to following the everyday anxiety management routine is to identify the triggers that cause anxiety attacks. You can observe your behaviour and recognise your anxiety triggers yourself or seek help from a professional therapist. Some triggers can be obvious and thus, easily identified, but others might require in-depth mental counselling.

Here discussed are some common anxiety triggers:

• Family, work, money, and other life stresses
• Side effects of specific medication
• Withdrawal from alcohol, certain medications, smoking, or drugs
• Exacerbation of childhood trauma
• Chronic pain

2. Make dietary adjustments

Making changes in your regular diet or taking quality supplements are among the most effective long-term anxiety management strategies. 

The mineral magnesium is researched to help your muscle tissue relax. Therefore, magnesium deficiency can accelerate your anxiety feeling, depression, and even insomnia. Moreover, insufficient intake of calcium and vitamin B can contribute to the feeling of anxiousness or nervousness. 

So, see to it your daily diet is rich in foods like leafy green vegetables, wholegrain cereals, and low-fat dairy products. You can also include the following supplements into your diet:

• Omega-3 fatty acids
• Valerian root
• Lemon balm
• Ashwagandha 
• Green tea
• Kava kava 

Besides this, caffeine, nicotine, and stimulant drugs can pressurise your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, which is researched to be the main stress chemical. Hence, avoid consuming them and foods containing extreme salt, sugar, and artificial additives. 

3. Exercise regularly

The ‘fight-or-flight’ response primarily triggers the physical symptoms of anxiety feeling by flooding the human body with adrenaline and other stress chemicals. 

Physical activity is another long-term strategy to cope with anxiety. Regularly working out for 30 minutes to 1 hour can help burn up stress chemicals and promote calmness. Therefore, try to do varying exercises at least 3-4 days a week to live a stress-free life.

4. Go for behaviour therapy

The feeling of anxiety is usually accompanied by behavioural symptoms that you can manage with the help of behaviour therapy. 

Exposure therapy- the main component of behaviour therapy- involves deliberately making the patients confront their fears to desensitise them. Undergoing this therapy, you will learn to redefine the danger or fear triggered by a certain situation. 

Exposure therapy might include the following steps:

• Ranking your fears, with the first being the most threatening and the last one being less threatening.
• The therapist trains you first to handle your least-threatening fears.
• You need to imagine yourself experiencing the feared situation and analyse what you are afraid of.
• Devise a plan that includes multiple small steps, like gradually decreasing the distance between the feared situation and yourself.
• Use breathing or relaxation techniques to manage the anxiousness.
• Finally, appreciate that nothing worse happened.
• Repeat these steps as many times as possible to overcome your fear and build confidence.
• When ready, move on to the next feared situation and practice the same steps.

5. Practice meditation daily

When feeling anxious, an individual gets caught up in anxiety-provoking thoughts for an extended period. Mindful meditation for anxiety can guide you to bring yourself back to the present moment and break free of negative thoughts.

While it might take multiple attempts to practice meditation successfully, meditation, when done daily, can potentially help you train your mind to manage stressful thoughts.

Final Takeaway

Anxiety tends to be a part of almost everyone’s life; however, it shouldn’t be extreme enough to impair your regular life. There are many things you can try to cope with immediate and long-term nervousness and anxious feelings. 

While home remedies can be beneficial and can help identify your anxiety disorder triggers and follow long-term strategies through dietary change suggestions, medications, behavioural therapy, and more.