Developing a personal ritual to reduce anxiety is a pleasant, meaningful way to reclaim yourself and your life from anxiety's grasp. Ritual is often associated with religion, rites, ceremonies, and formal procedures, which isn't incorrect but is also incomplete. An anxiety-reducing ritual is different. Think of it as a routine with punch: special time that you give yourself for a positive purpose. Let's explore the amazing things rituals can do for your life as well as nine things to add to a ritual to reduce anxiety. 

When you’re anxious, don't give up. Sometimes you just feel bad – oftentimes you don’t even know why you feel as bad as you do. Those can often be the worst days because if you don’t know where the bad feeling is coming from, it can seem impossible to control.

Intrusive thoughts can sometimes accompany obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Intrusive thoughts are disturbing to experience, and they can cause extreme stress and heightened anxiety. They can invade the mind without warning; further, they can be dark and downright terrifying. The previous post examined what the intrusive thoughts of OCD and anxiety are and are not. (Quick review: intrusive thoughts are not a sign that you or someone you know is a terrible person.) Now let's explore how to deal with these intrusive thoughts so you can reduce anxiety and discomfort.

My anxiety has caused me to take more time off work, and I couldn’t be happier. This is a refreshing change. Too often, this blog has become a catalog of instances when anxiety leads to hardship. Perhaps this is to be expected. But anxiety can, counterintuitive as it may seem, lead to valuable insights not often shared by those without it, as is the case here when I took some time off of work to handle my anxiety.

Experiencing intrusive thoughts is one of the most terrifying aspects of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorder such as generalized anxiety disorders (GAD). If you are bombarded repeatedly by distressing ideas and images, you might want to hide it because you are afraid that there's something wrong with you. However, that belief comes from fear and anxiety. Intrusive thoughts aren't an indication that you are a terrible person. This look at intrusive thoughts in OCD and anxiety can help you understand what's happening and learn how to deal with these alarming, unwanted thoughts. 

I’ve found that stuffed animals help with my anxiety. However, for most people, sleeping with stuffed animals is something considered appropriate only for young children. Instinctively, it does feel a bit strange to imagine an adult with an army of stuffed animals thrown about on their bed. But perhaps it’s time to condemn that instinctual judgment as inaccurate and overly bigoted –- perhaps the benefits of sleeping with stuffed animals to help with anxiety into adulthood are something we should all take seriously.

Anxiety and laziness seem unseemly because social pressure tells us it’s not okay to be lazy -- or anxious. We tend to value productivity and activity – if we don’t get as much out of the day as we can, we can be looked down upon. However, anxiety and laziness can go together, and it's okay to be lazy when you're anxious.

These five tips to reduce anxiety work because when you use them, you don't struggle against the anxiety. When you want to reduce anxiety, sometimes you have to let yourself be anxious. This may seem horrifying, but it works. When you stop fighting anxiety, you free yourself to shift your attention away from anxiety and onto other things. Letting yourself be anxious, though, doesn't mean letting anxiety run rampant, unchecked, through your mind and body. There are structured ways to allow anxiety to exist while you move forward. Use the following five tips to reduce anxiety by letting yourself be anxious. 

To get rid of anxiety, give yourself permission to be anxious. It seems counterintuitive, but it's surprisingly effective. It's understandable if this notion seems ridiculous and even anxiety-provoking. This is a logical response. Anxiety, though, is illogical, and sometimes we need to approach it in seemingly illogical, unconventional ways in order to free ourselves from it. Bear with me on this. Read on to discover why giving yourself permission to be anxious helps you get rid of anxiety.  

Anxiety can make going to school or work a challenge that seems insurmountable. Anxiety has a way of ruining your school or work day before it starts. From the moment you awaken--assuming, that is, that anxiety let you sleep--anxiety creates problems. Worries and imagined scenarios usurp all thoughts and can even make you feel physically ill. It makes sense to want to stay in bed rather than face another awful day at school and work, but going where you need to go doesn't have to be a problem with these  four strategies.