Stress and anxiety can take many different forms and the symptoms that an individual feels will also differ greatly. This will depend very much on eh causes of the stress and anxiety and any other underlying conditions.
One way in which you can help reduce your levels of stress and anxiety is to incorporate grounding techniques into your everyday life. Grounding techniques help you to stay anchored in the present moment and connected to your surroundings and body. This is something that is incredibly difficult if you are experience panic and anxiety. The aim is to bring you into the here and now rather than worrying about what may happen in the future or what happened in the past. This is incredibly useful for people who are suffering from conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where they can be triggered back to the original point of the trauma and feel like it is happening all over again.
Here are some grounding techniques for you to look at:
5-4-3-2-1
This requires you to use all of your senses and is great when people are perhaps on the start of a panic attack. Whilst the person is sitting or lying as comfortably as possible you should ask them to close their eyes and try to take some slow breaths in through their nose and out through their mouth. Ask them to then open their eyes and look around at their surrounding and name the following:
5 things they can see
4 things they can feel (this may be items in their surroundings or perhaps a crystal that you can place in their hand)
3 things they can hear
2 things they can smell (again this could be something around them or Essential Oils that you place near them)
1 thing they can taste (this is where chocolate can come in incredibly useful!)
A Grounding Chair
This is a useful technique to practice as you can take it with you wherever you go. Whilst sitting in a comfortable chair you should place your feet on the floor, if you can do this bare foot that can only help further. With your eyes closed you focus on breathing in and out slowly however is comfortable for you. For some people this may be in through the nose and out through the mouth. You then start to focus on the chair and how it feels to be sat in the chair, does it support your back, can you feel the seat beneath you and on the backs of your legs. Really concentrating on these feels against the different parts of your body you then move the focus down to your feet and how the ground feels beneath you.
There are hundreds of different grounding techniques and the ones that work for you will depend very much on the circumstances surrounding your stress and anxiety and also on the location you are in at the time. It is always useful to have a few of these in your toolbox for whenever you may need them.