Expert Advice: How to reduce anxiety

Host Amber Smith: Here's some expert advice from psychiatrist, Dr. Nayla Khoury from Upstate Medical University. How can someone reduce anxiety?

Nayla Khoury, MD: I would say, first and foremost, checking the facts about what is making one feel anxious. Right now in this day and age, there are a lot of things to be anxious about: the pandemic, dual pandemics, war. But the question to really ask oneself in a moment of suffering with anxiety is, is this anxiety serving me right now? So worry has a purpose. It helps us to plan. It helps us to prevent. And, we want to be able to turn it off when we need to, to be able to sleep and enjoy ourselves and calm down and engage with our families.

So if it's the case that the anxiety's not serving you, then there's a number of things that one can do. You can use either your body, your mind, or relationships and behaviors to reduce anxiety. In terms of the body, we can, engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the hormone response in our body that is activated when we're calm and when we're doing things we enjoy. And so that can be activated by taking deep breaths, which sounds really simple and is not easy to do. Some people find yoga, or different types of exercise helps them to access the breath, particularly the exhale, to be able to find a sense of calm. Some people find changing their behaviors. In this day and age, for many people being constantly on their phone, looking at the news, is a source of great anxiety. So even for myself, I have to remind myself to turn off, to unplug, that I don't need to be constantly checking every moment of the day.

Similarly, when certain things are making us anxious, if it's not something that in fact should make us anxious, then we want to try to approach that thing slowly and with support so it doesn't have as much threat. So while many people have restricted their life because of the pandemic, they may want to slowly begin to leave their house again and find ways where they can manage the risk, but also prove to themselves that the world is not a scary place, even though there are lots of scary things.

And then lastly, connecting with supportive relationships. So whether that be a friend, a colleague, a counselor, I would say if anxiety is overwhelming, if someone is feeling like they can't function or having thoughts of suicide, even, those are reasons to seek professional help for anxiety. So there's a lot we can do for ourselves. And it's also a great thing to ask for help when we need it.

Host Amber Smith: You've been listening to psychiatrist, Dr. Nayla Khoury, from Upstate Medical University.