Play a Gratitude Game to Reduce Anxiety

Mental health experts agree: feeling and expressing gratitude reduces anxiety. However, when you live with anxiety, it hardly seems possible that gratitude can lower anxiety. For one thing, it can be challenging to find things for which to feel grateful when you’re living in the grips of anxiety. For another, how can being grateful for something relieve anxiety? Once you know what gratitude is and is not, you can use it to improve your mental health. Even better, you can get light-hearted (something refreshing when you have anxiety) and play a gratitude game to reduce anxiety.

To Reduce Anxiety, Know the Depths of Gratitude

To claim to be grateful for worrying about everything or having panic attacks not only won’t make the worry and panic disappear, it would be ridiculous. Being grateful for things in your life doesn’t mean you have to be grateful for having anxiety. It also isn’t a magic wand that will poof away anxiety. What it is is a shift in how you view yourself and the world. It changes your focus from what is wrong to what is right.

Gratitude:

• Doesn’t completely remove anxiety, but does help you live well in spite of it
• Isn’t a feeling that is forced or superficial, but is a natural awakening of your ability to see past what’s making you anxious
• Isn’t a technique that’s done, but is a way of thinking and being every day

Hone Gratitude and Reduce Anxiety with a Gratitude Game

True gratitude is about more than saying thanks. A grateful mindset is developed purposefully and with practice. By playing a gratitude game with yourself, you begin to shift your focus away from anxiety and onto other, more positive, aspects of your life.

The game is an ongoing scavenger hunt. You will need:

• The below list (Print it and cut out the individual items or write them down.)
• Something to hold the challenges on the list (Cut them apart and put them in a jar, or glue them on a pack of index cards held together with a ring.)
• Something to record your findings (Use a notebook or journal, or use the pack of index cards.)

This list contains things, people, situations, and concepts to purposefully seek out. These are all positive things for which to be grateful. When you look for things like this, your thoughts begin to drift away from anxieties. Look for at least one thing every day, and approach it playfully.

Your Gratitude Scavenger Hunt list:

• Unexpected down time (what did you do)
• Someone who makes you laugh
• Spending time with a friend
• Something that went well today
• A chance to do something nice for someone else
• A personal trait
• Someone who is a positive part of your life
• A cherished photo
• A talent you have
• Writing a letter of gratitude to someone
• Stopping and smelling the roses
• A chance to do something nice for yourself
• Time spent outdoors
• An opportunity to make someone feel heard
• Something that brought a smile to your face today
• A fond memory
• An evening spent with friends/family with no electronics
• Something that someone did for you
• Your ability to perform a random act of kindness
• A teacher who inspired you
• Something someone said to you
• Someone who listened to you
• Hearing someone laugh
• Laughing

The shift of perspective that comes with gratitude reduces anxiety because it changes where you look and how you think. It’s a way of beating anxiety at its own game.

from Anxiety-Schmanxiety – HealthyPlace http://ift.tt/2jheniZ