We all feel anxious from time to time, but what if this comes up uninvited and happens too often? Anxiety is an unwelcome guest that we really want to get rid of, so let's do this together.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state associated with an anticipation of external or internal danger, manifesting itself as a feeling of tension, embarrassment or danger. Unlike fear, it is an internal process, not related to immediate danger or pain. However, that doesn’t mean it’s less real!
According to psychoanalysis, anxiety appears when tensions are not being released. The function of fear is to warn us about danger. Anxiety is a NATURAL emotional state that appears in everyday life. It is a normal reaction to what happens to us, e.g. during an exam, a public speech, or if we have too much workload. However, prolonged feelings of anxiety and fear can make it difficult to cope with everyday matters.
How can you deal with anxiety?
Stress and anxiety make us feel weak and hopeless, which is why it is so important to try thinking positively about our lives and, above all, about ourselves.
When you are in a difficult situation, try to step outside it for a while to recharge your batteries and get back on a more positive path that will help you handle the situation productively and creatively.
Here are 6 steps to help you overcome anxiety and manage stress:
1. Take a simple and small step – often it is a big and difficult choice that can make us feel anxious, so to reduce the stress associated with important decisions, take smaller ones automatically. Every day we make hundreds and even thousands of decisions, so it’s worth automating some of them, e.g. what to wear.
2. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 technique – when you feel anxiety coming, focus on 5 things you see around you, then 4 things you can feel under your fingers, 3 sounds you hear at any given moment, 2 smells you can smell in a moment and finally, find 1 thing that you like about yourself. This technique will bring you back to the here and now and keep your mind from falling permanently into the rabbit hole of “what ifs.”
3. Start a new, different task – we have learned how we react to stressful situations over the years, so it is difficult to change our habits. However, when you feel a wave of anxiety coming towards you, focus on something else. Start doing something, go talk to someone or go help them. Try not to sit idly.
4. Don’t apologize too often – too much apology draws your attention to mistakes, which can result in low self-esteem, leading to more frequent anxiety attacks. Distract yourself and redirect your attention to the other person: instead of “Sorry, I’m late”, say “Thank you for waiting.”
5. Overcome your social anxiety – start with small, intimate meetings with new people. Give yourself a whole month to do this, and commit to making small, even tiniest steps in this direction every day. After 30 days of practising this, even after just 7 days, you’ll see a huge difference!
6. Talk to yourself in a third person – very often we are too hard on ourselves and our self-talk is not very productive. Think about it: the way you talk to yourself, would you say that to a friend? When you are talking to yourself in the third person, your focus is on getting the message right, not on the fear, so next time say to yourself: “Barbs, it was a good job!”
Remember that stress and anxiety can signal a more profound problem you are struggling with. It is vital that you are not alone with it, so if you feel that everyday things are overwhelming, and you are unable to deal with them any more, see a specialist.
In any case, start taking action and your life will change for the better!
