“Hi my name is Stephanie Grobstich, and I’m a marriage and family therapist at Cedar Rapids Counseling Center. Here are some ways that you can cope with anxiety symptoms, a lot of my clients come in and they chat with me about anxiety symptoms. One of the things that has been brought to my attention is that a lot of people Google search how to calm anxiety or what even is anxiety. And anxiety is one of those things where it affects everybody differently, meaning that one person may experience it in a little bit of smaller way versus another person where it may be more debilitating and there’s many different forms of that. What I kind of tell my clients is that it’s not one size fits all, as far as how to calm that anxiety. Unfortunately, there’s no magic potion that we can give you that’s going to cure all of your anxiety symptoms, no one’s figured that out yet. It’s really just what is going to work for you.
A lot of clinicians talk about mindfulness. What this means is, being able to be with yourself in the here and now focusing on what’s going on for you without necessarily judging yourself in the process. I feel like we do a really great job of being self-critics and kind of knocking ourselves down a peg or two. And so, using mindfulness can really allow you to be in the here and now and focus on what’s going on for you. Anxiety just isn’t simply mental, it can be very physical as well. A lot of my clients tell me that they feel increased heart rate, increased breathing, you know, you start sweating, you start not feeling so great in your stomach and stuff like that, so it really focuses on everything. Another tool that’s really great if you are feeling pretty intense stress and anxiety, there are some really wonderful apps out there, like Calm, Headspace and Insight Timer that really can help you in those moments to kind of calm yourself down which can be super convenient and useful whenever you kind of feel those symptoms maybe creep up.
So, if you are experiencing anxiety or anything that’s troubling you or causing you some concern, please know that it’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to say, I’m not fine, but I’m working on it and that’s really important. Know that there are people out there like us therapist at Cedar Rapids Counseling Center that would be more than happy to work with you to try to figure out what’s going on to alleviate some of that stress, and to get that, ‘I’m not fine, I’m working on it’ too, ‘I really am fine, I’m doing really well’, and that’s what we want to see for you. If you are experiencing any symptoms of anxiety that are causing any concern for you or causing you distress or even if you would like to chat with someone about any coping skills or just developing different things for you, please feel free to reach out to me via our website or give us a call. We’d be happy to chat with you and set up a time for sessions just to see if we can help you through this journey with anxiety and get you feeling better.”
