Physical Ways to Stop Anxiety on FOX 13’s The Place.
Anxiety can be pretty debilitating, physically and mentally. Jessie Shepherd Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor has five physical ways that you can help to stop your anxiety and help you learn to control it before it reaches that debilitating point.
- Pectoral Stretch: In an archway or with a door, put your arms up in a right angle and hold for a few seconds. Naturally, we change our breathing, but specifically, pay attention to your breath and try to notice how it changes.
- Ice Pack: Put an ice pack on your jaw/shoulders, and focus on relaxing your jaw/shoulders. Try to be mindful of the cold.
- Posture check/change: reassess your posture and hyper-extend for a few seconds to get back to an upright position.
- Sour candy: This can also be done with hot sauce/lemon juice. It is a way of shocking the senses back to awareness.
- Music break: “Eye of the Tiger” is a popular jam and a good one at that. Turn up the volume and just be a little silly. Extra points if you giggle or laugh!
For more, visit www.blueclovertherapy.com.
Jessie Shepherd, MA, LCMHC is a Mental Health Counselor in Utah. She has a Masters Degree in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Utah. Her focus is treating trauma, eating disorders and adjustment issues in adults, adolescents, children and their families. She utilizes Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Play Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Neurological Feedback. She also works with performance anxiety and performance enhancement using EMDR and Neurological Feedback.