It makes sense for anxious people to manage anxiety with food--after all, we’ve all heard the saying “you are what you eat.” When it comes to mental health, knowing foods that help or hurt you is especially important. Partaking in some foods or drinks, such as alcohol, can make us anxious and depressed in the long term. Consuming others, like the ones below, can calm our minds and help manage anxiety with food.

Nearly all of us with anxiety disorders have a specific fear or phobia that sends our anxiety into overdrive. For some people, it may be a fear of public speaking. For others, the specific fear or phobia may be the subway or dentist appointments. Whatever it is, the fear sends our hearts racing and this specific fear or phobia makes managing our everyday levels of anxiety that much harder.

I use a tapping tool to calm my anxiety when being mindful of my breath doesn't work. Breathing techniques do often work, and as a yoga instructor, I know they can be powerful tools to calm the nervous system. Yet, through my anxiety journey, I also know there are times when breathing through anxiety just doesn’t work. When breath work doesn’t help, try this tapping tool to calm anxiety.

  Our mind's response to anxiety affects our self-esteem, sense of control, and how we see the world around us. When we experience anxiety symptoms, our feelings and thoughts get so wound up in the body’s stress response that we may want to run. We want to shed this thing that won’t leave us alone. In my own struggle with anxiety, I’ve found a seemingly counterintuitive response to anxiety that helps me shift my experience and reduce anxiety.

Evidence shows that using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat anxiety works. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on replacing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors with positive, healthy ones. Patients are taught to recognize, question, and refute negative behaviors and thought patterns, and then to replace them with more adaptive versions. By learning to do this, we engage in new ways of thinking and acting. Using CBT to treat anxiety helps us more effectively manage our anxiety symptoms. 

I’m Melissa Renzi, and I’m excited to write for the Treating Anxiety blog at HealthyPlace. While I’m a licensed social worker and yoga teacher, my greatest credential is my personal story as a sensitive soul learning to transform the anxiety I’ve experienced since early childhood. It is easy to feel overwhelmed and alone as we cope with anxiety. I believe there is great strength and healing in sharing vulnerability and I truly look forward to connecting with you and hearing your story.

I've been seeing a therapist for a while to help decrease my anxiety. We generally just talk, but, today, we tried something new. Well, it was new for me, anyway. He's been using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for a number of years with his other clients. We did a session today using EMDR, and my therapist really helped me decrease my anxiety levels.

You probably know that 12-step groups help with things like alcoholism and codependency, but did you know 12-step groups can also help anxiety disorder? Such groups are a great way to alleviate loneliness, plus they help with building self-esteem and gratitude. Over time, 12-step groups can help the pain of anxiety disorder.

We live in a time where mental health issues like anxiety disorders are being taken more seriously as the illnesses that they are. Real progress has been made in recent years in reducing the mental health stigma surrounding anxiety. We're talking about it more and learning to treat anxiety better. There's also an overall softening of social attitudes about it. Anxiety disorder is the most common form of mental illness, and people are finally starting to recognize the devastating impact it can have on parents, children, families, and friends. Except, one population with a huge increase in anxiety diagnoses is being neglected: anxiety in elderly people.

Treating anxiety you have to teach yourself not to be dismissive, learn not to auto-pilot the waves of panic. Not everything's about 'getting over it'. It's about getting up today, not making yourself sicker. Or it's convincing yourself reality is somewhere stiller, softer, kinder than the one you suspect's lurking round the corner. Just reading the newspaper can cause a blood pressure spike, and sitting down to ‘relax’ I have to trust myself to cope. That's what you do.