"Know Your Friends Well, but, Know Your Enemies Better".  When anxiety attacks debilitate your life and you have already experienced a few times, it is time to start knowing your anxiety very intimately and consider the various factors that trigger and alleviate it - so that you know how to stop anxiety in its tracks.  Your best defense is your intimate knowledge about anxiety.

For starters, it is a good idea to keep a diary and keep track of all aspects of your anxious experience, so you are very well armed.  Some of the things you want to observe and keep notes of would be around the following:

-  What times of the day have your normally experienced anxiety?

-  What was the weather like when you experienced anxiety in the past?

-  What were your preceding thoughts before you experienced anxiety?

-  What tasks were you normally engaged in when you experinced anxiety?

-  What sort of foods have you been consuming for the last one week before experiencing anxiety?

-  What were the key events during the week you experience anxiety?

-  How long does anxiety usually last?

-  When do you normally feel better?

-  What was your preceding events when you felt calm and happy?

If you have a good collection of data, you can definitely see a pattern that evolves.  Here's where you can pattern interrupt and do something entirely predictable to interrupt the chain of events that precedes the anxiety attack.  This would certainly enable you to stop anxiety.

Your next step is to identify symptoms that bring on the anxiety attack, so that when you start to recognise the symptoms you can take steps to stop anxiety.

Some of the symptoms can be:

- tightness in your stomach

- dizziness

- coldness and numbness

-  hypersensitive to what people say and feeling overwhelmed and very emotional

- heart beat going faster

- shortness of breath

- tightness in abdomen

Finally, it is usefull to know the well known factors that usually triggers of anxiety such as:

-  Stimulants (coffee, tea, chocoloate, sugar, energy based canned drinks)

-  Lack of sleep

-  Stress prompting events

-  Lack of nutritious food

-  Time poor

-  Excessive worry

-  Saying 'Yes' to everything

-  Incorrect breathing habits

  Here are some tips that will show you how to stop anxiety:

1.  Don't Worry, Be Happy:  Sometimes it is hard to be able to stop worrying especially if you are going through a sensitive and emtional phase.  That's when you start to generate more worries, especially the one's starting with, 'What if'.  Here's a really great tip for you to recognise faulty thoughts - Instantly stop and rectify the thoughts that start with 'What if' - they are the ones that will start the avalanche of worry that generally leads to anxiety.   Replace all 'what if' thoughts with "It will all work out all right in the end".

2.  Say 'No' more frequently:  Saying 'yes' everytime to please people not only sucks your self-esteem and your energy, it also leaves you time poor.  Recognise when people are wanting more out of you for their own benefits,  at your expense.   It does help to know yourself very well, because if you don't know yourself - it becomes easy for other people to manipulate you.  You need to know what you stand for and what you dont, importantly, what makes you happy or unhappy and what options you have in any given situation.

 Keep a few handy phrases handy that will help you to extricate yourself from situations where you compromise yourself by saying 'Yes'.  Learn to become highly skilled in negotiating for  timeframes, other options, resources etc.  Remember, there are at least 6 different options to arrive at a certain outcome in any given situation.  Practise looking for these options - it helps you line up all your ducks in a row  - and boldly present it forward.

"I would love to do this for you, however, I will only be able to deliver it in 3 weeks time..."

"Have you considered Option A, B, C"

"If I take up this job, it means that Project A will be delayed by 2 weeks, where would you like me to prioritise"

When you assert yourself, your self-esteem will dramatically increase, you will command respect and you will also find that you can free up a lot of time for yourself to do things that matter to you.  How about that?

3.  Create 'Me' Time:  Having even 30 minutes a day to yourself to unwind and get your energies and your thoughts together dramatically makes a huge difference in being calm, collected and centred in your thoughts, behaviour and actions.

Make sure that you convey to people around you that at a certain time of the day/evening you are not to be disturbed.  Keep the phone of the hook, find a quiet place and just be yourself.  You may choose this time to self-reflect, meditate, read a book, write in your diary or simply choose to do nothing.

4.  You Are What You Eat:  You need to ensure that you eat regularly and not skip meals.  Ensure that you eat the right foods that are calming and soothing to your body.  Certainly, Vitamin B based food is great to improve anxiety levels such as: chicken, tuna, salmon, mushroom, spinach, bananas, yoghurt, sunflower seeds.

5.  Avoid Stimulants:  When you are going through an anxious phase ensure that you avoid all kinds of stimulants - you may have to phase out gradually - coffee, tea, chocolate, energy based soft drinks, marijuana, cigarettes etc.  This will only exacerbate your anxiety drastically.

6.  Posture:  Not carrying yourself correctly can prevent your breathing.  This prevents free flow of oxygen which would increase anxiety levels.  So ensure that you always hold a correct posture - head up and straight, chest open and shoulders squared, back straight - this would certainly encourage correct breathing and a better flow of oxygen to irrigate your blood vessles.  This would certainly help you relieve anxiety.

7.  Avoid Negative People:  Finally, avoid negative people who drain your energy - like the plague.  Watch out for people who put you down, make demands of you, complain about everything in life.  Replace them with people who are calm, uplifting and supportive - even if you think you do not have them in real life - read books about people who fit the description.

These techniques would certainly help you with tips on how to stop anxiety.

The author is an experienced trainer/facilitator and coach based in Melbourne and has over 15 years experience in coaching people on out of anxiety.  She is also an author who has recently published an e-book "How To Overcome Anxiety in 7 Days Or Less".   For more information please visit http://www.howtoovercomeanxiety.com/