I Am an Anxious Person!
Anxiety, worry, stress, fear…..all the same, and also by far the biggest complaint that people bring to a therapist. It has become the enemy of us all and ironically, the cause for, well, anxiety. This is actually the entire point of this blog:
We don’t have to feel anxious about feeling anxious!!
You know how it goes: you realize that you are feeling anxious because you probably noticed some physical sensation that you know means that you are stressing out about something. Next: PANIC!!!!!
“Oh my gosh, I am feeling anxious! OH MY GOSH, I am feeling anxious!! OH MY GOSH, I AM FEELING ANXIOUS!!!!!!!!!!”
Not too helpful when the anxiety completely snowballs into an avalanche and then your system takes you into fight, flight, or freeze mode. (I am a freezer. Just ask my husband.)
So here are the answers:
Do not freak out when you feel anxious. Anxiety is part of everyday life, because, HELLO, this world is super scary! It is not going to be the end of you. In fact…..Fear is not all bad. We need fear in order to navigate this scary world in order to keep us alert to protecting ourselves. It is only unhelpful when it gets a little out of control because we panic.
We can use anxious energy to our advantage. Some of us, depending on how we grew up, are going to have (at the very least) a low level of anxiety every day. The great news is that we can use this extra energy to our advantage, as opposed to our detriment. Use it to clean your house, organize, exercise, chase your animals or children, you get the idea.
BREATHE
BREATHE
BREATHE! Seriously. The way you do this for it to work is for a MINIMUM of 5 minutes in order to give your body time to calm itself down. Once you start having anxious thoughts and feelings, your body begins to respond by feeling like you are running a marathon internally. It is too far gone to just think or reason your way out of it, so you have to first calm your body. Deep breathing takes practice, so ideally, you would practice breathing by looking at a clock for 5 minutes, concentrating on breathing into your stomach, twice per day, every day. When you are practicing it on a regular basis, your brain knows that the minute you start to breathe deeply, you will be relaxing soon.
Do what I call a body scan, which means that you check your body for muscle tension. Most of us know where we hold our stress, but it can help to do this when you are looking at that clock and breathing deeply. You might be surprised that you curl your toes or something else surprising, when stressed (I was!).
I tend to get stressed when I am driving, not actually because of driving, but because it is one of the few times in my day when I am by myself. This means that I am alone with myself, which means that being an anxious person, I start freaking out! At some point, I started realizing that I looked like a crazy old lady: hunched over the wheel, gripping it tightly, shoulders up to my ears, brow furrowed, toes curled in my shoes. All I have to do to begin to relax is to take a huge deep breath, drop my shoulders, unclench my hands and toes, and sit back in my seat. I feel immediate relief because I practice this all of the time.
There you have it! Go be wonderfully anxious people, who aren’t anxious about being anxious!
by Jennifer Yaeger, LPC, CPCS, CMAC