First of all, you should give up the idea that you can get rid of anxiety completely and forever. It is normal for a person to feel anxious from time to time. Some optimal level of anxiety is necessary for a person to function well. At the same time, there are various ways to get to know anxiety, turn it from an enemy into an ally, you can get acquainted with some of them below. Anxiety Diary In our communication with anxiety, it is important, first of all, to note for ourselves the moment when this feeling acquires such strength that begins to disrupt the daily flow of life. To do this, it is proposed to keep a kind of “diary” of anxiety. Take a small notebook that you would be comfortable carrying with you along with a pen. The pages should first be divided into 4 columns. The first will record the time the alarm occurred. In the second, try to assess the strength of anxious feelings (you can evaluate them on a 5 or 10 point scale, you can write characteristics that are strong/weak/not very strong). The assessment process itself gives us the opportunity to reflect and track how much this condition really bothers us. Sometimes a well-timed question: “How worried are you really about this?” - helps reduce anxiety. In the next column of the diary (it will be the most voluminous) describe the reason for the anxiety. It can be associated both with manifestations of the external situation and with internal experiences. And then we have the opportunity to trace whether the bad thing that the alarm warned us about happened? This is why the last column remains empty. If over and over again anxiety does not fulfill its protective function, but only spends your internal strength on maintaining yourself in “combat readiness,” then increased anxiety is playing a cruel joke on you and requires special attention and influence. A kind of setting. You can try to do this yourself, calling on logic and common sense to help. Sometimes it is enough to understand the nature of a disturbing phenomenon, understand its essence, and see various aspects. This allows you to weigh possible risks and dangers, objective reasons to beware of something. Appeal to resources. One of the important aspects of dealing with anxiety is finding resources and learning how to access them. In psychological practice, a resource is something that can give a person the strength to cope with a life situation or experience, energy, and in this case, also, calmness. With severe anxiety, the internal resource becomes insufficient for a person, so it is necessary to reinforce it from the outside. Everyone has their own unique way of recovering a resource. For some, this is communication with nature, walks in the forest or park, for others, communication with animals - pets or watching them in the zoo. For some it is playing sports. Also resourceful in most cases is turning to creativity: listening to music, drawing. It happens that it seems that nothing else brings joy and energy, at such moments, do not be afraid to try new things! Everyone has something they wanted to do, but never got around to. Perhaps right now, when traditional sources for you no longer bring peace of mind, it’s time to try something else! Listen to yourself, track the emotional reactions that arise. Try to find what suits you, what gives you strength and peace, and then fix this source in some internal image, smell or melody. To do this, it is enough to regularly accompany communication with the resource with a selected smell/melody/image (which are themselves a resource); when they acquire an associative connection, the appearance of one will be enough for the appearance of the other in the mind. Now, finding yourself in an unstable emotional state, you can turn on or remember this melody, inhale the aroma, or simply visually imagine the image. And some part of the peace contained in them will pass on to you. Will prevent you from becoming absorbedanxiety entirely, move away from it a little and calm down. Also, during those periods of life when anxiety gains strong power over you, you should not neglect communication with loved ones. It happens that, closed in our experiences, we do not want to hear or see anyone. And it seems like no one can help. However, communication with people dear to your heart is one of the strongest sources of resource. At the same time, by sharing our worries with others, receiving an emotional response and support, we also reduce the negative impact. Delayed anxiety There is another simple way to subjugate anxiety. The most unpleasant thing about anxiety is that it appears at the most inopportune moment. When coldness and clarity of mind, calmness and confidence are most needed. Learning to postpone anxiety until a more appropriate time can help you cope with this. First, you need to find such time. Set aside a short period of time for this (15 minutes) in the evening, when the day is already drawing to a close, but not immediately before bed. It is important that during this time you can remain alone in a relatively quiet place, so that nothing distracts you. Try to make sure that no one comes to you or calls you at this time, turn off the means of communication. Spend this time alone with yourself. This condition is not always easy to fulfill. In our busy and intense lives, time sometimes becomes an unaffordable luxury. But by fencing off some space for yourself, you are taking an important step towards inner peace and harmony. Think about where you will be at this moment? It can be a cozy and safe place at home. If you are moving or going on a trip, choose an “anxious time” for yourself and in your new space. So, your daily routine now includes 15 minutes in the evening that you spend alone with yourself. We will call this time the “anxious period” - at this moment you can worry about everything to your heart’s content, this is a special place and time for anxiety. Now, when you experience an anxious state during the day, write down a disturbing thought (Here, an “anxiety diary” can also be useful to us. Just don’t pay much attention to writing down, leave a short note that makes it possible to remember the situation.) and think about what you have Anxiety now has its place in your daily routine, and then you’ll think about it! Put your worries aside for later and continue with your business. In the evening, re-read your notes for the day, see if they bother you now? Allow yourself to think about them in the time you have allocated for this. After which, be sure to reward yourself with something from the list of resources to restore strength and maintain calm. At first it will be unusual to separate yourself from your anxiety during the day, but gradually it will become a familiar ritual, like brushing your teeth. A kind of hygiene for the soul. Over time, the list of worries for the day will begin to shrink, and at some point it will disappear. And here it is very important not to give up the seemingly unnecessary ritual of the “anxious period”. Just like medications that continue to have a therapeutic effect even after the first symptoms have disappeared, it is very important not to give up this procedure. Is your alarm list empty? Find a reason to worry during the allotted time. Perhaps after several days without any apparent cause for alarm, new items will begin to appear on the list. When conscious reasons for anxiety stop coming during the day, continue to observe the ritual of the “anxious period” for another 2 weeks, filling this time with “imaginary”, “invented” anxieties. In this case, you gain true power over anxiety and leave it less chance of returning again. It also happens that you cannot cope with anxiety on your own. Sometimes the recommendations offered are not suitable, sometimes there are no people nearby with whom one could share or talk, but most often the reason is that from a state of anxiety it is difficult to do the most important thing - to look at oneself and one’s situation from a.