How to Learn to Relax from Anxiety and Nerves

Have you been feeling nervous or anxious? Stress and worries are major burdens in our lives, but it doesn’t have to be this way, and learning how to relax from anxiety or nerves is completely possible. With this in mind, today, we’re looking at some of the key tips on how to relax that you need to know. Hopefully, this will help you learn how to calm down when nervous or when your anxiety begins to make things harder than it necessarily needs to be.

How to Calm Down When Nervous or Anxious

If you’ve been feeling nervous or anxious, it can often seem like an impossible challenge to overcome these worries and struggles. However, with the following seven tips on how to relax, you might be able to make things a little bit easier overall – helping prevent feelings of worry from taking over your life. You deserve to be happy – and we’re here to make sure that this is a reality for your own lifestyle.

#1 Take Deep Breaths

Absolutely one of the first things you should do when you begin to notice yourself getting stressed or anxious is to take deep breaths. Now, we know what you’re thinking here: how cliché can you get? Still, while this might be an often spouted tip, that’s only because it’s genuinely effective for helping you overcome your worries.

What is it, then, that makes deep breaths so effective? Well, when we begin to feel nervous or stressed, our heart rate naturally increases. In doing so, our body is preparing for a “flight or fight” situation – however, while this may have been an effective response to stress back when humans were still living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, it’s substantially less effective in our modern society. With this in mind, the first factor you need to address when feeling stressed is lowering your heart rate to help get your body out of that on-edge state.

Fortunately, calm, controlled breathing is often one of the most effective ways to go about this! With controlled breathing, you effectively tell your brain that the “danger” has gone, helping lower your heart rate. What’s more, this strategy also helps ensure that you have a few moments to yourself just to let the worries pass by, which could be a valuable option to consider.

#2 Listen to Relaxing Music and Sounds

Once you’ve gotten your breathing under control, the next step you should consider is how to calm your mind, which may still be racing. For this, we’d highly recommend listening to relaxing music and sounds to help.

Relaxing music for stress relief is specifically designed to be soothing. The slow, gentle tempo helps calm your mind and ease worries, helping you forget about your stresses and instead just focus on yourself for a little while. Meanwhile, listening to relaxing music can also help by giving you a different focus, helping prevent you from overthinking the source of your stress.

Of course, to get the most from this tip, it’s crucial to start out with the right music. This might seem like a simple point to make, but it’s nevertheless highly influential in terms of your overall experience. As such, you should ideally lookout for tracks that aren’t going to be regularly disrupted by adverts and the like; in many scenarios, for the most effective stress relief, paid relaxation music could hence be a better option.

#3 Talk it Out

Sometimes, one of the most effective ways to find relief from your stress is to talk it out with someone else. So, when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, and if you know the cause of your worries, it’s advisable to reach out to someone who you know you can count on to help.

This may also be helpful in scenarios when you don’t know the cause of your stress; in some instances, just having someone by your side who you can talk to and spend a little time with can be a great way to find relief.

Bottling up your worries and concerns can be one of the biggest challenges many people face in terms of stress. As such, to reduce your feelings of anxiety and nervousness, be sure to talk it out with someone close to you. It’s a little change, but one that can often go a very long way toward your recovery.

#4 Create a Mantra

Did you know that something as simple as a mantra can be enough to “nip stress in the bud” if you notice it soon enough? This is generally most effective for anticipated sources of nerves or anxiety, but creating an optimistic mantra to hang on to can help you find a happier outlook overall. Some common examples of effective mantras could include:

• I am enough

• I can do this!

• I don’t care what other people think of me

• I’m worth this

• I’ve done my best, and that’s amazing

Simple mantras like this can help give you something to focus on when you begin feeling stressed, and while they often won’t be enough to help you overcome feelings of worry alone, they can go a long way towards improving your optimism and outlook on life. Alternatively, why not turn a favorite quote into your top choice of mantra instead – this simple change can significantly help boost your confidence in many cases!

#5 Go for a Walk

Sometimes, you just need to get away from the cause of your stress – but if you’ve been finding it hard to overcome feelings of nerves or anxiety, we’d recommend going for a walk to help clear your mind. Going for a walk offers new sights and sounds to help you take a break from the worries plaguing your mind.

Furthermore, this also offers a gentle form of exercise that can effectively boost endorphin production. Endorphins are directly linked to happiness, so if you’ve been struggling to overcome your feelings of stress, this might be a valuable option to consider.

Finally, getting out and about for a walk is also an excellent way to clear your mind and take a break from the cause of your stress. Sometimes, this simple change can be all it takes to overcome worries, so this could be well worth considering as part of your decision if you’re otherwise finding it hard to stop worrying. After all, sometimes, learning how to relax to calm your nerves or feelings of anxiety is as simple as getting away and thinking about something else – which is exactly what a walk can help with!

Tackling Anxiety Starts at the Cause

Thus far, we’ve considered several key tips on how to relax – but while learning how to relax is valuable, it should only ever be a back up for when things get on top of you. Indeed, it’s often better to tackle anxiety at the root of the cause in most scenarios rather than simply trying to recover after the damage has been done.

What do we mean by this? If possible, we highly recommend that you try to identify what is causing you to feel nervous, anxious, or stressed. Sometimes, this might be easy – for example, an upcoming presentation. In other scenarios, it’s not always so straightforward; for example, the causes of your stress could be due to numerous different factors.

Whatever the case might be, it’s crucial to tackle your feelings of anxiety and worry to truly overcome these feelings. Taking steps to avoid triggers for anxiety and stress, or if that’s not possible, learning how to cope with these feelings can be among the most helpful long-term solutions for how to learn to relax from anxiety and nerves.

Or, failing this, we’d highly recommend that you strive to lessen the symptoms of anxiety at the earliest possible opportunity. Taking simple steps such as incorporating relaxation music or taking deep breaths can help ensure that your feelings of worry and anxiety don’t become overwhelming, which in turn helps make them substantially easier to handle.

Final Thoughts

None of us like to feel stressed or anxious, but it’s critical to consider what this might mean for your wellbeing overall. Indeed, in many scenarios, feeling anxious can seem like an insurmountable challenge to overcome – but with a few simple changes, you can learn how to relax when feeling nervous or when your anxiety begins to creep up.

However, while the steps and tips we’ve outlined today on how to relax can be hugely valuable, it’s always worth considering that the best way to relax is inevitably still to tackle the source of your frustrations head-on. Fortunately, this is something that our experts can help with. So, why not reach out today if you’d like any further guidance or ideas on how to learn to relax. After all, it’s not impossible, but it still takes a little thought to ensure you’re implementing the solutions you deserve.