5-Simple Ways to Help Someone With Anxiety

5-Simple Ways to Help Someone With Anxiety

Anxiety is a normal part of life, with everyone experiencing it to varying degrees.  Anxiety is one of the things that has allowed the human species to survive and evolve, allowing us to assess situations and react accordingly to them.  And while it is normal for everyone to experience feelings of anxiousness at some point in their lives, many people suffer from more serious and at times debilitating forms of anxiety disorders.

Whether you or someone you know suffers from one of these disorders, we’ve put together some useful tips to help someone with anxiety.

What is Anxiety?

Before we get into the tips, it’s important to understand a little more about anxiety disorder.

As we said before, having feelings of anxiousness is completely normal, especially when trying things out for the first time or in a foreign situation.  But when these feelings of fear and nervousness remain even after the cause of the stress has passed, or these feelings occur with no reasonable cause, this may be considered an anxiety disorder.

When someone suffers from an anxiety disorder, their feelings of worry and fear dominate their thoughts, and at times, can impair their functioning, which may lead them to miss out on life events, or stop doing things they once loved.

An anxiety disorder is nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, it’s more common than we realise.  If someone close to you is suffering from anxiety, there are some simple ways you can help them cope with it.

1. Educate yourself on anxiety

If you know, or suspect that someone close to you may suffer from an anxiety disorder, trying to understand how they are feeling and what it actually means is one of the most helpful things you can do.

There are countless resources to help you understand anxiety and the best part is that they don’t need to cost anything. Organizations such as BeyondBlue have fantastic resources that are available and are explained in thorough, yet simple ways, so you don’t need to be an expert to be able to help. Many of the resources available to you suggest many different coping mechanisms and offer information on the signs and symptoms of anxiety.

Through this education, you might understand the possible ways that anxiety might present or manifest in your friend.  Because anxiety is different in every person, you might end up helping your friend more by knowing that the way they may be behaving is caused by anxiety, which might help temper your reactions if they are acting a little different from usual.

2. Understand their triggers

Like we said before, anxiety can present itself in many different ways. For some people they like to bury their head in the sand and avoid certain responsibilities and tasks, others may become overly aggressive, and others may withdraw completely.

And while anxiety can present in many different ways, it can be triggered by all sorts of things. Common triggers include:

·       High Pressured Job

·       Unpleasant work environment

·       Past traumas or accidents

·       Other mental illnesses

·       Travelling

·       Caffeine

·       Crowded places or large crowds

Being able to identify the cause of someone’s anxiety may help you in identifying times they are likely to experience anxiety and you may be able to help them avoid suffering to the full extent they may normally.

Knowing their triggers may help you help them avoid those situations where possible, or at least know that they could be triggered by something soon. You won’t necessarily be able to stop their anxiety entirely, but being aware can help prevent avoidable suffering.

3. Create an open dialogue and destigmatize anxiety

Many people struggle to talk about mental health, regardless of whether it is their own or someone else’s.   For a long time people incorrectly associated a disorder like anxiety with being mentally inferior or having something wrong with them.  That is not the case at all.

For someone who has an anxiety disorder, talking about it or even acknowledging it can be very overwhelming, which can make it difficult for you to talk about with them.  However, if you are close enough to someone to recognise that they could be suffering from anxiety, chances are you may be close enough to talk to them about it.

Try telling them that you had noticed a shift in their behaviour and you want to help them.  Or that you’ve been researching how they may be feeling to understand ways you could help.  You don’t need to have all the answers or a specific way you’re going to help them, but being able to say that you are there to talk or help however they need can open the conversation.

It’s certainly not an easy topic to broach, but by telling them that you want to help and be there for them, will be welcomed and may help them understand that other people do understand how they feel.

4. Try to help them re-channel their thought patterns

Many people who suffer from anxiety overthink and over-analyze situations.  While it is not uncommon for everyone to overthink a scenario or situation at some point in their lives, for those that experience anxiety, this is a very common, sometimes every day, occurrence.

For anxiety sufferers, it is common that they focus on the worst-case scenario for many situations in their lives, and this can often become debilitating and result in them avoiding certain tasks or events, for fear that this worst-case scenario will play out.

While it may not work every time, to help someone who over analyses a situation, you can help them by breaking the situation, their thoughts, and possible outcomes by thinking about the following questions – What is the worst thing that could happen?  What is the best?  Which is more likely?

Whether their ideas of what could happen are likely or not, it’s important to help them to understand their coping ability and how they can control and can choose how they react or respond to a situation.  Working with them to stop focusing on the “problem” but rather thinking about how they might cope with it, can help with re-channeling thought patterns, away from the negative.

5. Be there and be patient, but don’t take over.

Making yourself available to your friend is something that can be done in many ways and is often one of the best things you can do.  You might be able to spend time with them doing activities that may help them to relax, such as yoga, or you might simply be there lending an ear to when they need to talk through a scenario.

It might require some patience from you because often someone who suffers from anxiety may be a bit repetitive and focus on the same sort of fears and scenarios.  And while things might seem clear and obvious to you at times, it’s not to them.

One thing to keep in mind, if your loved one’s anxiety manifests in a way that they may avoid certain tasks, such as making phone calls (which is a common avoidance), try to resist the urge to do this for them.  While it may not seem like a big deal to you and something quick you can do to help, encourage them to do it themselves.  The more they complete these tasks, the more normal it will be to them, which should ultimately help them in the future.

While you may not be able to take away someone’s anxiety, showing support and interest in how they are feeling can help in making them more comfortable and may help them be more open with how they are feeling.  There are also professional options available that are designed to help. Brain Wellness Spa offers anxiety treatment in Perth, where they can help alleviate and relieve you or your loved one of the emotional suffering that they may be experiencing. 

*** Written by Natalie Kramer for Meridian Counseling.