Compiled: Jack Kee
According to CDC data, the proportion of adults who recently experienced anxiety or depression symptoms in the United States rose from 36.4% to 41.5%, with the largest increase in adults aged 18 to 29 years old. According to US professional researchers estimate that about one-third of women and one-fifth of men in the United States suffer from severe depression at the age of 65.
. Recent statistics in China also show that in the three years of the epidemic, the proportion of anxiety and depression among the 18-50-year-olds in China has also increased significantly. Although anxiety is not an anxiety disease, and depression is not equivalent to depression, the existence of this bad mood is not a good thing.
Many professionals have published popular science articles on how to treat anxiety and depression in different media, but there is very little about preventing anxiety and depression.
How to prevent anxiety and depression? If you have had anxiety and depression in the past, how can you prevent anxiety and depression from happening again? The following nine tools may help.
1. Understand your own warning sign.
Understand your body and pay attention to your body's feelings, which may be an early sign of anxiety and depression. People often describe a feeling of tension, like the coiled springs of the abdomen, often accompanied by deep emotional discomfort. Some people describe the feeling of hollowness in their abdomen.
Since everyone is unique, different people will have different warning signals, which is the key to pay attention to. For some people, there are appetite warning signals, so be careful whether you eat more or less than usual. Others are extremely tired, have difficulty sleeping, are inattentive, are more irritable, or are more likely to be attracted to alcoholic beverages or drugs.
If you encounter these signs, don't wait until the situation gets worse. And, if anxiety and depression are about to begin, reflect on the recent changes in your life: What’s unhappy? What needs to be changed?
Consult a psychotherapist as early as possible to help yourself with these thoughts and need to be clear when it is recommended to consult a psychiatrist (you can prescribe medications) may be more useful.
2. Listen to people’s comments on you.
Some people will not realize their anxiety and depression signs, but family members or friends will easily notice your changes , especially those who are close to you in life and work. Usually they will find a certain change in your recent past, emotional or behavioral ones than you.
If someone familiar with you asks, "Are you okay?" "You don't look good..." At this time, you need to examine your heart, discover your true state, and find out the causes of the change, or events that happen to you, especially those that affect your emotional state.
3. Look at your recent photos.
people need to reflect on themselves. They will help themselves clarify their current status at this moment. Checking their recent photos is a good way to help themselves reflect on themselves.
When you view the recent photos, you need to observe and compare yourself. Is there any change in your face? Do you look extremely sad or anxious? If this is the case, you need to think about what kind of reactions your body and mind have made, and why these reactions are made?
This self-reflective method will allow you to directly see the impact of your emotional changes on your body's external body. When the appearance of your body changes, this means that the content must have been affected.
4. Release strong emotions.
If you are stressed in life, if you are angry, depressed, sad or have other strong emotions, please vent by talking to friends, family or therapist.
There is no need to say much, everyone's emotions need to be vented. Emotions are like a reservoir. When the water level rises to the alert level, excess pressure needs to be discharged to ensure the safety of the reservoir. , the emotional cordon is required to be checked regularly through the first three methods of this article.
Of course, everyone vents emotions in different ways, and you can also express your emotions safely by writing, painting, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments or participating in sports or other activities.
But the key here is not just catharsis, but safe catharsis. Safety is very important. When choosing catharsis methods, those high-risk catharsis methods must be eliminated, such as: alcohol stimulation, stimulation of illegal drugs, etc.
If you don't vent these emotions, the body uses a lot of energy to suppress them without your knowledge, which can cause you to feel exhausted and may open the door to anxiety and depression.
5. Turn negative to positive immediately to avoid a vicious cycle.
The longer people endure in pain, the harder it is to get out of the predicament. This painful torture will form a vortex. This will lead to a long-term trapping of people in this pain and unable to extricate themselves.
Everyone feels stressed at some point in their life. What makes people different is their response to stress, and many become helpless and lose control of their lives, resulting in anxiety or depression.
What is important is how to view things. What is doing in all negative and stress? Can you learn to dance, sing or play musical instruments? Can you start swimming or other exercises? Can you learn to meditate? Try to focus on the present and appreciate the little things in life that can bring you happiness.
Of course, for some people, it is difficult to get out of the pain at this moment. Many people do not have the ability to get out of the "fire pit" in one go, because the pressure consumes the energy of the human body. However, we might as well think from another perspective. If you choose a healthy and beneficial thing, treat it as an indispensable task in your daily life, and do not think about it in a future, and start immediately. This will complete the first step to break out of the "fire pit". After that, just stick to it.
Studies have shown that if a person recalls and remembers negative facts over and over again, the final result will lead to depression; If people only choose to recall or remember positive facts, beautiful things will help relieve depression. For this research result, what we need to do is not to question its rationality, authenticity and scientificity, but to directly accept it and implement it. After a period of time, you will find that miracles will happen and your emotions will gradually improve.
6. There is a social support system.
Choose to listen to your inner friends, partners, or family as your own social support system. Choosing people who care about themselves, agree with their own values, and trust each other will help you get rid of bad emotions.
Choose to hang out with people who have a sense of humor and can laugh with themselves. Choose people with positive attitudes and kind hearts to interact with and build your healthiest social support system. This is the best gift for yourself. We need to care for ourselves in all aspects, not just to get more in our material life.
Starting to build your own healthy social support system is the greatest care for yourself. In this social system, you should have your family, your best friends, your work partners who deserve mutual trust, and your good teachers and friends... You need to choose those with a healthy mindset, interesting soul, and kindness into your social support system. You need to choose those with good and healthy personal hobbies, no problem with character, and correct values into your social support system; you need to exclude those with negative emotions and negative impacts from your private life as much as possible, and create a healthy and optimistic private relationship network for yourself, which is the greatest responsibility for yourself.
Of course, many people don’t like to communicate too much with others, and keeping a pet is also a good choice.
7, sleep.
National Sleep Foundation recommends adults to sleep 7 to 8 hours a night, and also recommends that adults maintain a regular routine: sleep and get up at about the same time every day. This is the most scientific way to sleep.
Maintaining sufficient high-quality regular sleep is the most basic condition for physical and mental health. If your sleep cannot meet the three important basic conditions of high quality, sufficient and regularity, then you need to be vigilant, and bad emotions may slowly grow here.
Many times, it is not easy to meet these three sleep conditions at the same time. People need to give up some important things, such as working hours cannot guarantee sleep time, excessive life pressure cannot guarantee sleep quality, and complex and changing living environments cannot guarantee sleep regularity. Many people sigh that this is difficult to do!
Yes, it is precisely because it is difficult to do that many people feel anxious and depressed. It is precisely because it is difficult to do that the number of people with anxiety and depression will become more and more as the pace of society becomes faster and faster. What about you, do you want a healthy self? Or should you be a self that has been eroded by complex social factors?
8, anti-inflammatory diet.
may be the first time you hear the word, usually we all say: eat healthy. And what is an "anti-inflammatory diet"?
University of Alberta researchers found that depression may be related to inflammation, so one way to prevent depression may be to eat anti-inflammatory foods, which is also good for your joints, lungs and intestines. Note: It is an anti-inflammatory food! food! Not a drug!
Harvard Medical School has a list of anti-inflammatory foods, which includes a variety of berries, ranging from strawberry to blackberry to cranberry to blueberries, which are also rich in antioxidants.
Other anti-inflammatory foods include cherries; citrus fruits such as lemons and oranges; apples; stone fruits, such as peaches and apricots; grapes; pomegranate ; nuts, especially walnuts and almonds; fatty fish such as salmon and black cod; green leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale ; tomato; olive oil; and green tea. It is also recommended to stay away from alcohol and drugs.
9. Exercise regularly.
The benefits of physical exercise needless to say. When it comes to using physical exercise methods to adjust emotions, the key to pay attention to is: persistence, regularity, and suitable for yourself. Such physical exercise can not only reduce anxiety and depression, but also have anti-inflammatory effects.
A study published in the journal Nature in June 2022 showed that regular physical exercise increases a compound in the blood called Lac-Phe, which reduces appetite and helps lose weight. Losing weight will also help people feel better about themselves.
Use these nine tools to prevent anxiety and depression, and you should be prepared to resist the stress that will inevitably occur in your life. Remember that preventing symptoms and preventing them before they occur is usually easier and faster than treating established symptoms.
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