How To Help An Anxious Person?

Helping and supporting an anxious person requires a lot of tact, empathy, and intelligence. In these situations, useless phrases like “ calm down now, yes it’s about it” or “ this is nothing serious, you just have to see things the other way” are completely useless. Those people who suffer from anxiety have clung to a difficult-to-deal series of physical and mental emotions where it is not easy to think and see things clearly. So how could we really help an anxious person?

With this theme should be clear. When we talk about stress or anxiety disorders, there is no quick way out of it. There are no miraculous tips and strategies for treating such diseases and disorders that will bring immediate relief within just a few minutes.

First and foremost, we must understand that the human brain functions differently when it lives this psychological reality. All the structures in the brain are saturated with norepinephrine and cortisol, two hormones that obscure our thoughts and hold us in the same solutions, which are avoidance and escape.

If we want to help a person who is suffering from anxiety, the first thing we should apply to that person is empathy. Second comes patience.

In anxiety disorder, the tonsil nucleus and hippocampus of the brain take absolute control, so the only thing an anxious person feels at the moment is exactly two things. The first comes from fear and the second from the perception that he is surrounded by constant threat.

In addition, the body begins to suffer from almost endless physical symptoms such as tachycardia, excessive sweating, abdominal pain, and muscle tension among many other symptoms. Now that we know all this, how could we possibly help an anxious person if we just repeat that it’s time to calm down?

Our good intentions or intended tact do not matter here. Sometimes the only thing we achieve with these sentences is to build walls and increase the distance between the person we love and ourselves. Because of this, it would be good for us to learn a few strategies that can help us help an anxious person.

1. Understand an anxious person’s own reality

Living with a person suffering from anxiety is not easy. Moods change, motivation weakens, and the signals and approaches they send suddenly become very negative. Add to this a psychic hypersensitivity, in which case even the smallest thing can lead to shock and the daily interaction is full of misunderstandings, poor concentration, confusion and even bad mood.

If we let the feelings of an anxious person permeate us, we will get nothing out of it. If we give up and take action to defend against all the symptoms of an anxious person, we may only increase anxiety even further while creating suffocating environments. Therefore, the first thing we should do to help an anxious person is to understand his or her own reality.

Our partner, father, brother or sister, or good friend can go through this complex moment. When a person close to us suffers from anxiety, we need to be more sensitive and understand several different aspects.

• For example, we can search Google for what anxiety means. Keep in mind, however, that everything we read may not always apply to what a person close to us is living and experiencing at that very moment.
• Next, be aware that there are many types of anxiety, the most common of which include panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• It is recommended that helping an anxious person always start alongside professional help. Only when we have got the right diagnosis for that person can we have a deeper understanding of what is going on in the lives of our loved ones.

2. Weigh your words carefully

This was already mentioned at the beginning of the article. There are still people who try to help a person with anxiety by repeating these usual phrases like change your attitude, try to pick up, you are always like that, try to understand that many are going much worse than you …

Such expressions are like a B52 bomber bombarding the self-esteem and feeling of a constantly anxious person. Those people who go through this critical moment don’t care that someone else may be in a worse shape. They are unable to care about famine or wars. At that moment, they can only see their own (and repressive) inner reality.

The following tips are part of the way we should communicate with an anxious person.

• Give your loved one unconditional support ⇔ Whenever you need me, I am here with you. I support you and love you. I am with you every moment .
• We should never judge; the anxious person has not wanted this situation, nor does he want to cherish it.
• To normalize the situation, anxiety disorder should not be a stigma on a person’s forehead. It is a disease that can be encountered, treated and controlled. We should not forget to talk about it.

3. Be patient, don’t put pressure on, and don’t expect results too quickly

Often when we want to help an anxious person, we do not hesitate to obtain various related books and search for information on the internet. Therefore, no matter how good the intention, we are not afraid to give numerous pieces of advice to a person suffering from this complex disorder. For example, we recommend various breathing techniques, mindfulness exercises, sports, yoga…

• When we give these loved ones these tips, we are at the same time waiting for this person to do them right away to see the immediate results. However, this is not always the reality, as living in anxiety is sometimes also about wanting to spend the whole day at the bottom of a bed in a dark and quiet room. And this can also easily frustrate those people who surround an anxious person.
• At the same time, we also need to understand another aspect. Overcoming anxiety and the healing process always depends on the person in question, with progress often taking place in small steps.

For this reason, the most essential in these cases is to always strive to apply empathy and be patient. It should never be taken for granted that an anxious person will follow all the suggestions and advice we give. At that moment, he needs our understanding and intimacy the most, completely without pressure.

4. The support of a loved one is always positive, but the help of a professional is essential

We may want to help an anxious person, but we just don’t know how. We do not always have specific clinical training for the treatment of anxiety that will enable us to provide an effective response to such conditions.

• An anxious person should always be encouraged to turn to a professional.
• Overcoming anxiety always requires the right diagnosis and a workable therapeutic strategy.
• In these cases, it is also imperative that the person suffering from anxiety follow the expert’s instructions: go to therapy, take the prescribed medication (when the medication is prescribed), and eat properly. At this point, we step into our role and work to ensure, without pressure, that all instructions given by the professional are effectively followed.

It is important that we are aware that we always want to wish only the best to the people close to us we love. When it comes to mental health problems, we are not all experts and sometimes, even if we act out of the deepest affection, we can cause the exact opposite reaction, the one we least wanted to achieve.

To help an anxious person, we need to work to normalize the situation and turn to an expert. Only then can we act and approach the situation in a sensible way and always choosing the right words and advice. Likewise, sharing every step of progress and even a small profit with a distressed person provides a stimulating reinforcement for both, allowing progress to be tracked and each new activity and mental approach to be explored more effectively.