It's dark outside, it's late at night. You've been in bed for more than an hour, but you can not fall asleep in any way. Perhaps you are thinking about the conflict that has occurred in your workplace. Perhaps some troubles with children make you mentally come back to them again and again, and you toss and turn in bed, thinking and trying to find some solution. Whatever the problem, you can not throw it out of your head, day or night; you are trying to find a solution, here and now, and continue to restlessly turn from side to side. It's been an hour and more ... Now you're starting to worry because you understand: you do not have time to get enough sleep, and it will be very hard for you to work tomorrow. "I must sleep!" But it's even harder to fall asleep. Anxiety and anxiety have done their dirty deed. Do you know this picture? Have you had to find no place because of anxiety, obvious or unconscious? Most likely, it was necessary. Modern life gives us all many reasons for anxiety: divorces, dismissals, threats of terrorism - all and not to list! And very often we can not somehow influence the circumstances and change them. We can only survive, sometimes not knowing how to pull ourselves together and stop nervous, or even panic.

Why do people worry?

The feeling of anxiety remained to us "inherited" fromour distant ancestors. To ancient people, anxiety helped to avoid collisions with dangerous predators, saved their lives. Cold sweats of anxiety are the consequences of the release of adrenaline into the blood, and adrenaline still serves us well under certain circumstances. Anxiety is a natural reaction to real tension, and this reaction helps us to motivate ourselves, and sometimes gives us energy to take necessary measures if necessary. Such anxiety also helps us to protect ourselves. But, as we all know very well, sometimes it happens: there is no concrete threat, there is only the possibility of any crisis, and - it's ready! The person already "turns on" the anxiety mode, and begins: "I can not sleep at night!", "I can not find places for myself!". In this situation, we do not think about the seriousness of the danger and the likelihood of the threat. Anxiety seizes our consciousness, and the danger begins to see us, as they say, on every corner. In the case of such overwhelming anxiety, people lose the ability to make the right decisions. They begin to avoid many things, they can not concentrate on any business; anxiety on the slightest occasion pursues them day in and day out. In this situation it is important not to miss the moment and try to help yourself, otherwise you will have to resort to professional help. If you are increasingly happening that you catch yourself thinking "I can not find my own place," then try to use two strategies. They are recommended by psychologists in order to help us overcome anxiety. Here they are:

• Analysis and neutralization of negative thoughts

Ask yourself the question: are these thoughts productive? Will they somehow help me get closer to my goal? Or that I do not find a place for myself, only prevents me from concentrating and making the right decision? If you come to the conclusion that your thoughts are unproductive, then you will need to try to shift your attention to something else. It's hard to do, but it's important. (A little further we will tell you about ten techniques that will help you to distract and reduce anxiety). Try to replace anxious thoughts with more optimistic reasoning. For example, instead of being totally paralyzed by the fear of possible dismissal, try to channel your thoughts in another direction: "Maybe they'll fire me, maybe I'll have to part with the familiar environment. But I will do everything that depends on me, right now: I will save money, so that some kind of reserve will be created, I will start looking for information on vacancies. Maybe I can even find a job with a higher salary, and even closer to home! "Of course, it is very unpleasant when something goes wrong, as you planned - the presentation will fail, you will not get a conversation or you fail the exam. But you should be aware that this is certainly a worse result than it could be, but still there is a very high probability that the world will not collapse from this. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is the panic attack itself.

• Ability to relax

When people are excited, they tend totransition to shallow breathing. This only aggravates the situation, because with superficial and frequent breathing, the excitability of the nerve centers increases, while in deep breathing their excitability, on the contrary, decreases. Therefore, feeling anxiety and excitement, try to control your breathing. Put your palms on your stomach, inhale the air slowly and deeply, no more than 12 times a minute. Try to breathe with the diaphragm. This breathing will help you relax. Each of us was anxious, each of us shared with someone close to us with our worries: "I'm living ... I'm nervous ... I can not find places for myself ...". And none of us is immune from such experiences in the future. But the good news is that we can help ourselves. And this help can be more effective than the usual in such a situation the advice of close ones "not to be alarmist" or simply "stop thinking so much about ...". As a result of recent studies of anxiety, specialists developed innovative, sometimes even seemingly strange, recommendations for overcoming fears and anxieties. It turns out that most people are able to gain control over the situation if they try to change their attitude to their thoughts and feelings. Here's how to do it:

10 ways to deal with anxiety

Repeat the situation that causes youanxiety and fear, until you feel the absurdity of the feeling that arises. For example, when you go into the elevator, you begin to experience anxiety (suddenly the elevator will stop between floors or fall down?). It is understandable that you prefer to walk on the stairs rather than ride with a lift. But try to act contrary to your fear - take the elevator ten, a hundred times in a row. Eventually, the moment will come when you feel that you do not feel fear at all. Do the same with troubling thoughts. Anxiety worries you - try to think about it again and again. It only seems so - they say, I can not find a place, I think day and night. In fact, disturbing thoughts are replaced by thoughts about what to cook for dinner, then by interest in what is happening on the TV screen, then thinking about what half an hour ago, a friend on the phone said. And you try not to be distracted by anything - just think and think that the boss today did not suspiciously greet you. The show's favorite started? Once, it is necessary to think. To read an interesting book? Once! As a result, an unpleasant thought will run away from you. Do you know a bike about a white monkey that you can not think of? It's the same, just the other way around.

Pretend that everything is even worse.If you try too hard to control your anxieties, you can only strengthen them. Instead, try to provoke an event that you are afraid of, and observe what will happen. For example, you need to make a report, and you are terribly afraid that you will lose your mind in the middle of the speech. Take yourself and perebeyte their speech, and with the words: "Hmm, what I just said?" Look at the sheet. What will happen? Maybe someone will start laughing or, on the contrary, angrily stomping their feet? You can give a one hundred percent guarantee that no one will even brow, or even very kindly tell you what you were talking about. Be sure that after such a voluntary provocation you will forever get rid of the fear of public speaking.

Return to reality.Often, fears are much more dramatic than the actual state of things. For example, the husband went by car outside the city, and by evening he had to return. Already all the terms have passed, but he is still not there, and he does not answer phone calls. Then it turns out: hit the wheel, fumbled in the dark with a spare, the phone so as not to drop it, left inside, did not hear the calls, did not notice the run of time. And what about the wife? All this time in her head one terrible picture succeeded another: here he lies on the roadside, and the car is broken ... Here he takes the fellow traveler, about that he kills and steals the car ... Or here: he is really not out of town, but on the other, Here and does not answer calls ... Thoughts all come and come, where only they come from! And after all, the main thing is that we do not just contemplate such pictures here, we really experience every variant of a possible tragedy, losing nerve cells. 90% of the misfortunes that we experience happen only in our imagination. Are the imaginary misfortunes of the fact that we are poisoning our lives with experience?

Recognize the falsity of your fears.Such a "popular" fear of a fire in the apartment due to the left iron is almost never realized. And your heart palpitations do not mean the onset of a heart attack; this is just a natural reaction to excitement or physical activity, so you should not panic. Very often, many thoughts and sensations are interpreted as signals for anxiety and even panic, although we have no grounds for this. Have you seen a fire truck that rushes towards the area where you live? Let him go, help someone in trouble. You did not stroke anything today!

Turn your anxiety into the film's footage.You can disconnect from your thoughts, turning them into a kind of show. Maybe it's not you talking about how to stretch the money, so that they are enough to pay, and that funny little aunt on the screen of the cinema, while you are sitting with popcorn in the auditorium and quietly watching her? And any movie ends sooner or later!

Set aside the excitement for a while.Too often, we devote too much time to our restless thoughts. It's like an e-mail signal - after seeing that another letter has come, we stop all cases and are in a hurry to open it, even if we know that it can be just spam. And what if I did not respond immediately? Try to set some specific time, say, from 17.00 to 17.30, when you will think over your problems. If you are concerned about something at 10 o'clock in the morning - write down, and resolutely postpone thinking until the evening. Very often it happens that by 17 o'clock the problem will no longer exist. And you will spend the whole day without unnecessary alarm.

Let the events go on as usual.Sometimes we fuss, we try to solve the problem, but only more confusing. And if you wait for a while, the decision can become more obvious. It's like a sinking person: if he panics, screams, claps his hands on the water, he swallows water faster and drowns. And if he relaxes, spread his hands and stop moving - the water itself will push it to the surface. This is a paradox, but when it seems to you that you have surrendered, at that moment you get much more control over the situation.

Relax. Do not forget about breathing at the moment of alarm. In order to cultivate the ability to relax, it is very useful to meditate.

Take a jump in time.When something very much disturbs you, try to imagine what you will feel about this in a month, a year. Often past problems seem to us even ridiculous after some time. Such "time excursions" will help you ease the anxiety, somewhat devaluating in your eyes its cause. Everything passes, "and this too will pass!" (As it was written on the ring of the wise King Solomon).

Do not let worries prevent you from living your ownmany of them, as we have said, will be false, so do not waste time on them and risk your health. Do not isolate yourself from life, try to fill it with various joyful shades. And do not forget to reward yourself every time you manage to cope with your fears and anxieties.

It happens that we really happentrouble and unhappiness, and anxiety becomes a consequence of the transferred stress. We can live for a while as if on autopilot. But do not despair. If you work on yourself and on your feelings, fear and anxiety will recede, and they will never again poison our lives. We advise you to read:

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