For many adolescents, living with anxiety can make it challenging to find balance in life. Learning about different activities to help with anxiety can provide a lifeline for youth who have difficulty coping with their symptoms. Understanding self-care for anxiety is a crucial skill that can help curb anxious feelings and enable teens to discover how to work through anxious feelings.
At HillsidesCares, our teen anxiety treatment program is thoughtfully designed to help introduce young people to the importance of self-care for anxiety. Our team understands that using self-care to reduce stress is a powerful tool that can help teens develop healthier coping mechanisms that lead to more holistic and mindful lifestyles. When appropriately applied, these skills can allow teens to adapt to a healthier lifestyle that mitigates chronic anxiety and promotes balance. For more information on our teen anxiety treatment program, contact our team of experts today at 323.641.4842.
Self-Care for Anxiety
Understanding how to lead a healthy, holistic lifestyle and take care of both body and mind is a crucial skill that can help teens find relief from anxiety during the tumultuous growth period of adolescence. For many teenagers, this period is full of significant life changes, societal pressure, and uncertainty. By teaching teens how to take time for themselves and engage in beneficial self-care activities, they can be well-equipped to adapt to these changes and develop a healthy lifestyle that curbs chronic anxiety.
One of the critical approaches is to help teens understand what anxiety is, why it happens, and how it can affect their lives over the long term. When teens learn that anxiety is tied to the body’s natural stress response and that it can be harmed by overthinking and chronic stress, they may be more open to adopting healthier habits. It is very common for teens to feel anxiety, which makes it important to arm them with useful knowledge they can use to feel safe and able to lead a normal lifestyle.
Activities to Help with Anxiety
Learning how to cope with anxiety is a valuable life skill. The first step is understanding that anxiety is natural and that everyone must learn how to cope with these feelings without letting them get the best of them.
Some important activities to help with anxiety include:
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are a simple yet effective method that can help adolescents learn how to immediately reduce anxiety in times of difficulty. When you begin to feel anxious, this is a great opportunity to pause and take a few slow, deep breaths.
Try to take calm breaths and allow your heart rate to settle while doing so. By connecting with the breath and allowing their bodies to calm down, teens can experience instant relief from mild bouts of anxiety. Practicing breathing exercises regularly may also help alleviate chronic anxiety and make it easier to welcome a calm, relaxed mental state throughout the day.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the act of being aware of how the body and mind feel. Learning to notice how anxiety affects the body can help teens understand what the stress response naturally does to the body. While these feelings may be uncomfortable, they are not dangerous.
Encourage your teen to notice anxiety in the body without becoming angry or upset that these feelings are present. This can enable more control over anxious feelings and may help to curb chronic anxiety. Over time, it may become easier to notice the presence of anxiety and let it be in the background rather than completely take over your thoughts and feelings.
Confronting the Uncomfortable
For many teens, anxiety occurs when faced with daunting new experiences they may be afraid of. This can include speaking in front of a class, starting at a new school, or trying out a new sport or activity.
Teens need to understand the value of working through their fears and facing them and that it is very safe to do so. Educating teens on the power of facing their fears and how this can help them learn and grow into strong, mature individuals is an invaluable skill to possess while navigating the challenges of adolescence.
Discover Activities to Help with Anxiety at HillsidesCares
At HillsidesCares teen anxiety program, we understand the importance of helping young people understand the realities of anxiety and how to work through it holistically. Our programs are designed to teach teens the realities of the stress response while helping them develop coping skills that work for their unique needs. Our skilled and compassionate team strives to equip teens with knowledge they can use to develop a growth-oriented mindset while helping them feel safe and secure. By teaching activities to help with anxiety, we promote self-care and empower our clients by instilling anxiety tips for teens and adolescents.
To learn more, reach out to our team of experts today at 323.641.4842 or contact HillsidesCares online.