When you suffer from anxiety, life can be difficult. While your doctor is the best person to help you to get your anxiety under control, there are a few things that you can do to reduce your anxiety levels considerably. This article contains a few anxiety-busting tips that you can start trying today. Avoid leaning on drugs or alcohol to treat your anxiety, as this will only lead to other problems. Anxiety should be treated professionally, or dealt with in a manner conducive to your well being. In addition, relying on substances to get over anxiety will cause you to become addicted and even worsen your anxiety. Learn how to distract yourself. As soon as you feel the anxiety starting to overwhelm you, find something that offers a distraction. Make sure that it's something that takes up a lot of concentration or energy, such as a difficult puzzle or a brisk workout. By concentrating on something other than your anxiety, you will find that it disappears quite quickly. Listening to music can help with your anxiety. Once you feel the anxiety starting to take hold, play your favorite tunes. Pay close attention to the melody or the lyrics. After a little while, your mind will begin to relax. Keeping your mind occupied can really be helpful in treating anxiety. Starting a gratitude journal can go a long way in helping you cope with your anxiety. Write down things you are thankful for each day, and elaborate as much as you can. This gives you things to refer back to when you are dealing with your anxiety. A journal can really help you focus on what is most important during these times. Watch how much alcohol you drink. If you are going out with your friends to drink, then try to reduce your alcohol consumption. Alcohol can do damage to your body while increasing the amount of stress that you have in the long-term. Also, alcohol puts you in many dangerous situations that can yield more anxiety. To conquer any situation in which anxiety rears its head in a seemingly debilitating manner, do your best to characterize the situation you are facing as something far more positive than you ordinarily might. By viewing a stressful situation as a valuable opportunity to gain personal strength, you will find it far easier to handle than it would ordinarily have been. Stay busy; the more you have to do, the less time you will have to think about what might be bothering you in your life. You will be able to then set some time aside to figure out your issues, without constantly having to worry about them throughout the day. Many of those who have been professionally diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder will receive great benefit from joining and being active in a support or self-help group. Within the group, your day-to-day problems, plus personal achievements, can be shared with those who understand best, the ramifications of this disorder. Find some reasons to laugh at the world. You can watch a funny movie or television show and this will also take your mind off of any worries you might have to deal with. So find a comedy on the television, sit back, and do not forget to let out those laughs. If you are constantly feeling anxious, take a day for a professional massage. This will help to loosen up all of the knots in your body, and help eliminate the extra tension that you feel. Staying healthy physically is one of the best ways that you can improve your mental state. If you are having anxiety about one particular thing, ask a friend to exaggerate the issue to epic proportions. Although this may seem counter productive, after a few times of making up crazy stories about what may happen, it starts to sound really silly to anyone who is listening to it. Regular exercise can be remarkably effective at fighting back against anxiety. Exercise is nature's stress buster and can relieve symptoms of anxiety. If exercise is an option for you, target a half hour of aerobic exercise each day or every other day. Have a mantra to repeat when you are feeling some anxiety. When you start to feel anxious, repeat this mantra until you begin to calm down. This will help you deal with those feelings before they get on top of you and you have a full blown anxiety attack. Get proper amounts of sleep. Not getting enough sleep can be detrimental to your condition so it's important that you sleep enough. Anxiety can cause increased discomfort without sleep. You should sleep at least eight hours every night. Stay up to date on your credit card payments. This can reduce your anxieties. Worrying over payments made after the due date can be a major source of stress and anxiety. If you pay all of your credit card bills on time, you will not have to worry about financial problems in the future. Surround yourself with people you can trust. There are some people who don't realize how serious anxiety can be, and how hard it can be to deal with. Avoid those people! Keep people around who are supportive and make you feel good about yourself. That will make everything much easier to handle. Have a plan in place for when you feel anxious. When you start feeling anxious, it can be hard to feel anything else. That's why it's a good idea to know what you will do when you start feeling that way. Being prepared for an anxiety attack will make the attack easier to get through. Start a journal. Keeping a journal is an excellent way to combat anxiety, as it provides an outlet that listens, without judgment, whenever you need it. The simple act of writing out your feelings and seeing them in print can help put your fears into perspective, and being able to read past entries can lend insight into what causes and what helps your anxiety. As previously discussed, when you suffer from anxiety, life can be very challenging. Hopefully, the anxiety-busting tips featured above will help you to get your anxiety levels back under control and allow you to start enjoying life again. So, make sure that you try a few of these tips the next time you start to feel anxious.