5 Habits That Help My Anxiety
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How and when I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder
⋒ How, with the help of my therapist, I was able to create habits that have improved my anxiety symptoms
⋒ The 5 habits that I have implemented that have made the most positive impact on my mental health
Disclaimer – this blog post is not meant to be medical advice or replace getting help from a mental health professional. I am sharing my experience in hopes that it helps someone else out there!
I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder in February 2022.
I feel like the word “anxiety” is used a lot, which when that happens, we tend to lose sight of the actual meaning of a word so, I went over to Mayo Clinic’s website and snagged some actual information about GAD. I’ll link the article here but this is what I want to share from what I read:
”It's normal to feel anxious from time to time, especially if your life is stressful. However, excessive, ongoing anxiety and worry that are difficult to control and interfere with day-to-day activities may be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder.
It's possible to develop generalized anxiety disorder as a child or an adult. Generalized anxiety disorder has symptoms that are similar to panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other types of anxiety, but they're all different conditions.
Living with generalized anxiety disorder can be a long-term challenge. In many cases, it occurs along with other anxiety or mood disorders. In most cases, generalized anxiety disorder improves with psychotherapy or medications. Making lifestyle changes, learning coping skills and using relaxation techniques also can help.
Generalized anxiety disorder symptoms can vary. They may include:
Persistent worrying or anxiety about a number of areas that are out of proportion to the impact of the events
Overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes
Perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren't
Difficulty handling uncertainty
Indecisiveness and fear of making the wrong decision
Inability to set aside or let go of a worry
Inability to relax, feeling restless, and feeling keyed up or on edge
Difficulty concentrating, or the feeling that your mind "goes blank"
Physical signs and symptoms may include:
Fatigue
Trouble sleeping
Muscle tension or muscle aches
Trembling, feeling twitchy
Nervousness or being easily startled
Sweating
Nausea, diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome
Irritability"
The way my therapist described someone who has “normal” anxiety versus someone with generalized anxiety disorder is the disruption of your daily life. I was finding that I wasn’t able to focus on my work and I’d opt out of life events (like dinners with friends or birthday celebrations) because I felt so bogged down with anxious feelings. I wasn’t able to sit still and relax because my anxiety was keeping my thoughts in overdrive all the time it seemed like.
You know I like to keep it real around here so I’ll tell you that I’m not on any medication for my anxiety because, with the help of my therapist, I’ve been able to figure out habits and routines that help me healthily cope with my anxiety so that it doesn’t interfere with my daily life like it used to.
But I want to make it SUPER clear that sometimes, I do think medication is the best option for someone with anxiety. We are all so different and so it makes sense that there are different ways to cope with anxiety. Just because I don’t need medication in this season of life for my anxiety doesn’t mean I don’t think medication will support other people with anxiety.
What I discovered with my therapist that helped me figure out that these habits keep my anxiety at bay is that my anxiety tends to flare up when I feel out of control.
So we got to the root of my anxiety – feeling out of control – which meant that I needed to weave habits into my daily life that helped me feel more in control.
Now obviously, we can’t control every part of our lives – especially the external things – like what others say or do – but there is quite a bit that we can focus on that is very much within our control.
Instead of freaking out and trying to control every part of my life, which is what my anxiety wants me to believe I need to do to be calm and peaceful, I learned how to really focus on these things because they are within my control and they make me feel like I have control of my life.
These 5 habits that I’m going to share with you help my mindset and head space to be calm which helps me to run my anxiety instead of it running me:
01. Having a morning mental health hygiene practice
How I start my day plays a huge role in how the rest of my day goes. If I roll out of bed right before I need to be somewhere or just wake up and dive right into my work day, I can feel my anxiety levels creep up.
Having a simple morning routine that prioritizes my mental health is a non-negotiable for me. I view my morning routine as my mental health hygiene.
I think most of us listening are in a stage of life where we need practical morning routines, right? Like we’re not in a place where a 2-hour long, aesthetically pleasing morning routine is necessarily sustainable.
And guess what? That’s fine! Right now, my morning routine, in total, takes me around 30-40 minutes and that includes doing things like feeding the dogs, folding laundry, waking up Everly, and getting ready for the gym. It’s not glamorous and it’s not aesthetic, but it does create a foundation for a healthy headspace for my day.
I’ve learned that to have a calm headspace instead of an anxious one, I have to create margin or space in my mornings to fill my own cup before I get into taking care of other people or starting on my to-do list.
In my current season of motherhood, that looks like journaling. I still use my morning MAPPING method – which if you've never heard me talk about that, it’s an acronym that stands for
MEDITATE
AFFIRM
PRAY/POSITION
PICTURE YOUR DAY
INTENTIONS
NEEDS CHECK-IN
GRATITUDE
I do all of these steps in my Peacefully Productive Journal – I know I created it so I’m biased, but it really is my favorite tool ever for my mental health and journaling in it every morning and evening helps keep my anxiety chill.
I’ve found that using a guided journal, as opposed to a blank notebook, really helps me show up and actually journal every day. Sometimes staring at a blank page gives me anxiety so having the prompts to respond to in the Peacefully Productive Journal is so helpful.
Anyway, right when I wake up, I go into my kitchen, make my collagen half-caff coffee and drink a glass of water, then grab my journal, and sit on my couch to do my MAPPING practice. It takes me like 10-15 minutes and boom, I’ve got a strong start to having a healthy mindset for the day.
Journaling is my mental health hygiene practice and doing it every morning has really helped keep my anxiety under control.
02. Getting outside every day
When I’m having an anxiety moment, I can feel like the walls are closing in around me. Being inside too much during the day can make me feel trapped in my own mind but when I make sure to get some intentional fresh air every day, it is really grounding for me, which helps my anxiety to not feel like it’s closing in around me.
I make it a priority to get outside every day so that I can stay on top of that trapped feeling.
Studies show that levels of stress and anxiety are reduced by being outdoors. When you are outside, the fresh air can help raise oxygen levels in your brain, which increases serotonin levels. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that alters your mood. Getting some fresh air is a simple way to improve your mood! *source
Since having Everly, we go on a family walk pretty much every day – whether it’s in the morning or in the evening. It’s one of my favorite routines that we do together as a family – it’s good quality time together plus it helps me manage my anxiety so double win, you know?
Some other ideas for getting outside every day:
~ Walking your dog
~ Listening to a podcast while you water or take care of your outdoor plants
~ Sitting on your front porch for 5 minutes after you pull in from work
Fresh air is so healing and it’s so underrated – get your booty outside to help with feelings of anxiousness!
03. Moving my body every day
If you've been hanging out with me online for a good amount of time, you probably know that I used to be a certified personal trainer – fitness has been a major part of my life for over a decade at this point. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the mental health benefits of working out even more than the physical ones.
When I was really early postpartum and I hadn’t been cleared to work out yet, I could feel a HUGE difference in myself mentally from not being able to move my body.
For me, lifting weights and doing HIIT workouts are my favorite form of fitness and I can feel an actual shift in my mind (so like my thoughts and attitude) after doing a workout. This is why even on my rest days from the gym, I still go on a walk or paddleboard or something to move my body (and also why it’s part of Hustle Sanely 5).
So if you’re someone who is navigating anxiety and you haven’t made a fitness routine a priority, I really recommend trying it! Maybe you’ve had a weird past with fitness because you’ve tied it to physical goals only or you’ve approached it from a place of restriction or punishment (been there) – but I encourage you to do some mindset shifting and try to view exercise as a mental health thing more than a physical thing if that helps you.
I love going to group fitness HIIT classes 3 days a week and weightlifting in my backyard 2-3 days a week but find what feels good for you. When you actually enjoy how you’re working out, you’re more likely to be consistent with it and your mental health will thank you!
04. Planning out my goals using the Hustle Sanely Planning System
I’m the type of person who gets SUPER overwhelmed by a long to-do list or by a list of goals that don’t have a game plan with them…makes sense why I teach what I teach then, right? Lol.
But seriously, I created the Hustle Sanely Planning System because I needed it. I needed a way to plan out my goals in a way that felt doable – a way that chunked things up so I could make progress over time instead of feeling like I was constantly giving 100% to a goal and then rushing right into the next one, giving that one 100%, without paying attention to other areas of my life (like my mental health and the important relationships in it). Using the Hustle Sanely Planning SYstem to work toward my goals has helped me weave goals into my life instead of sacrificing my life to make goals happen.
If you’re a student in the Peacefully Productive Schedule course, then you’re familiar with the Hustle Sanely Planning System but if you’re not, the gist of it is choosing a monthly Focus Goal, breaking it down into action steps using the S.W.I.T.C.H. Goal Mapping Method and using those steps to help you know what your Top 3 Takss are for each week and then what your Focus 3 tasks are for each day to move the needle on your goals.
Like I said, this method helps me to know what needs to be done each day and each week to make progress on my goals sustainable so that I’m not running myself into the ground and then burning out trying to tackle all of my goals at once or letting a goal take over my whole life.
The Hustle Sanely Planning System works well for me to help me chunk up my goals and give me doable action steps which keeps me from feeling overwhelmed or burned out by goals which helps keep my anxiety in check.
05. Cutting back on caffeine
Not gonna lie, this one is kind of a bummer – mostly because I genuinely love the taste of coffee and the experience of drinking coffee – I mean hello, my husband and I are part owners of a coffee shop – like I could drink it all day long and I used to and WOW was it a trigger for my anxiety.
Now I aim to keep my caffeine intake around 150 mg a day or less – whereas I used to sit at around 400 mg a day. BIG difference there!
I know this isn’t a “fun” tip but it really was the cherry on top of weaving all of these other habits into my life to help keep my anxiety levels down. When I started monitoring my caffeine intake and being more mindful about it, I could feel a physical difference in my body’s response to situations. I used to have an eye twitch that I thought was just normal and I learned that it kept happening when I felt anxious and overwhelmed due to the massive amount of caffeine I was drinking. Oopsies.
I was reading an article on everydayhealth.com and it said that “Caffeine's jittery effects on your body are similar to those of a frightening event. That's because caffeine stimulates your “fight or flight” response, according to a 2006 study, and research from 2018 has shown that this can make anxiety worse and can even trigger an anxiety attack.”
So needless to say, when I started monitoring and being mindful of my caffeine intake, my anxiety levels went way, way down so I couldn’t not share this habit with y’all even if it’s kind of a boring one (lol).
These 5 habits aren’t groundbreaking. But together, they really have made a massive difference in how my anxiety manifests in my life. And when my anxiety does flare up, I can go back to these habits and ask myself if I’ve been slacking on any of them to see if I can step it up in any of these areas to help me get back to a calm headspace.
I feel like a lot of the time, people hear “simple” tips like these and write them off before they even try them because “they just won’t work for them” – well how do you know that if you don’t actually pause and give them a try in your own life? Why not try doing the thing someone is sharing that helped them instead of trying to immediately prove it wrong? Just throwing that out there.
Doing these 5 simple habits doesn’t “cure” my anxiety or mean that every day is anxiety-free – but doing these 5 habits regularly has helped me build a solid mentally healthy foundation so that when my anxiety does flare up, I feel equipped to cope with it.
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