Anxiety often arises due to stress, and ironically the more anxious your senior feels, the more her stress levels rise. Stress doesn’t do good things for the body or the brain, so it’s vital to work to help your senior to reduce both anxiety and her stress load. These are just a few ways you and her senior home care providers can try to do that.

Help Her to Learn to Recognize Anxious Thoughts

One of the biggest steps in managing anxiety for your senior is for her to be able to recognize when those anxious thoughts are cropping up. When she starts to experience catastrophizing, which is jumping to conclusions about what’s going to happen, or other unwelcome and irrational thoughts, she needs to reframe them right away. If she doesn’t, her brain can run away with those thoughts and they just grow bigger and bigger.

Practice Mindfulness Techniques to Become More Present

Mindfulness techniques can be very helpful. Some of the best for anxiety can involve consciously altering breathing patterns so that every breath is deeper and slower. Other techniques help your senior to get out of her mind and into her body, like stopping and using all five senses to describe what’s going on around her. Even standing up and stretching or walking in place can help.

Help Her to Accept What She Can’t Control

Often older adults start to develop anxiety because much of life is now out of their control. If that’s the case for your senior, it may help to work with her about learning acceptance around some of the situations she’s facing. Health issues are a great example of this problem because your senior can do all the right things and still be facing an illness.

Consider Hiring Senior Home Care Providers

Some of the things your senior can’t control can include her immediate environment and her ability to continue to do certain things. In those situations, it might be helpful to hire senior home care providers to make life easier for your senior. Your elderly family member may find that having someone there with her may also be enough to alleviate a great deal of her anxious thoughts and feelings.

Anxiety is not necessarily easy to manage, but there are techniques that can help significantly if your senior puts them to good use. She may need to try a combination of tricks to help her brain and her body to let go of the anxiety.

If you or an aging loved-one is considering Senior Home Care Services in Woodbridge VA please contact the caring staff at Apex Classic Home Health Care today. (571) 275-9547

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Susana Sekyi

Owner at Apex Classic Home Health Care

We were inspired to open Apex Classic Home Health Care by the wealth of experience working in the nursing and medical fields. We have seen, first-hand, the type of care people need to maintain their health and hope. We use our knowledge and experience to provide all our clients the type of services, guardianship, and comfort they need to live at home. We are expert caregivers, stress relievers, and the trusted source for medical attention and hope that exists in the comfort of our clients’ homes. We work from an overarching philosophy of trust and compassion and strive to be THE premier source for in-home care in our community, and beyond.​

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