What if someone were to stand next to you all the time and point out everything you’re doing wrong? Millions of people who suffer from anxiety feel this on a daily basis, and it is awful.
Researcher Sophie Magnussen offers a roadmap for dealing with anxiety. It begins with being more kind to ourselves and others.
Let’s say you’re getting ready for a party…
You feel a bit nervous, but also excited, and you have this feeling in your stomach that feels similar to a heartbeat. You’re holding yourself back from getting too happy, something is stopping you. “No, you should not get too excited. Better to be cautious, otherwise, something bad will happen.” You begin to wonder, “Who should I speak to when I arrive? What if no one wants to talk to me? What if they think I’m weird?”
The party starts when someone approaches you and starts talking to you, and as this is happening, your mind starts racing, your heart starts pounding, you begin sweating, and it feels like you are dissociating from yourself, like it’s an out-of-body experience, and you are watching yourself speak. Your mind tells you to stay calm, but you cannot.
It just gets worse and worse…
After just a few minutes, the person you’ve been talking to leaves, and you feel utterly defeated. This has happened to you repeatedly in social situations. Imagine if every time you go out, and you’re in crowded places, you feel this anxiety coming on.
Whenever there are lots of people around, such as on a bus, you can feel hot, nauseous, and uneasy, and to prevent that, you avoid a great deal of places, leaving you alone and isolated.
Either you or the person in each of these scenarios suffers from anxiety…
What I can tell you is that anxiety is very common, and people underestimate how common it is. At present, one in 14 people around the world suffer from anxiety disorders, and treating this mental health problem costs more than 42 billion dollars a year.
Just to illustrate the impact that anxiety can have on someone’s life, let me mention that anxiety can lead to depression, school dropouts, and suicide.
As a result, it is difficult to focus on a job and to hold one down, as well as lead to relationships breaking down. However, a lot of people don’t know this, which is why they brush anxiety under the rug as just nerves that you need to overcome, as a weakness; anxiety is much more than that.
There is a reason why so many people do not consider it important: they don’t know what it is. Do you think it’s your personality? Could it be an illness? Is it normal to feel this way? What is it really? Therefore, it’s important to distinguish between normal anxiety and anxiety disorders.
We all experience anxiety when we are in stressful situations.
Say you’re walking through the woods and come face-to-face with a bear. You will probably feel anxious, and you will want to start running like crazy.
You should be anxious because it protects you, it saves you, and it makes you want to run out of there, although maybe it’s not such a good idea to start running when you see a bear.
You can’t outrun a bear, I’m afraid. There are times when anxiety is helpful in meeting deadlines at work and dealing with emergencies in everyday life, but when anxiety is taken too far and arises in situations without any real threat, then you might have an anxiety disorder.
Individuals with generalized anxiety disorder, for instance, worry excessively and constantly about everything going on in their lives and find it very difficult to control their anxiety.
Other symptoms include restlessness, fear, difficulty falling asleep at night, and difficulty concentrating. Regardless of the type of anxiety you may have, you can take steps to reduce it.
Reducing anxiety is easier than you might think, and it works.
Mental disorders are often treated with medication, but it doesn’t always work in the long run. The symptoms often return, and you’re back to where you started. You may want to consider this fact: How you deal with things has a direct impact on how much anxiety you’re experiencing, and so if you change the way you deal with things, you can reduce your anxiety.
A study conducted by Science.org found that women living in poor areas are at higher risk of anxiety than women living in richer areas.
We were not surprised by these results, but when we looked closer, we found that poor women with a certain set of resources for coping did not experience anxiety, whereas poor women without these resources experienced anxiety.
In other research, people who had faced extreme circumstances, who had faced adversity, who had been through wars and natural disasters remained healthy and free of mental disorders, while other people, who faced the same hardships, but lacked coping skills, went on a downward spiral and developed mental disorders.
How can we use these coping mechanisms to lower our anxiety?
The thing about coping skills is you can develop them by doing things that you enjoy. You can take charge of your anxiety and get rid of it on your own. That’s what I think is so empowering.
Taking control of your life is the first of three coping resources that I will discuss today. It’s been shown that people who feel in control of their lives have better mental health.
Research suggests that you should seek experiences that give you more control if you feel like you lack control in life.
I’ll show you what I mean:
- You sometimes put off doing something because you feel like you’re not ready?
- Are you having trouble making decisions such as what to wear, what to eat, who to date, or which job to take up?
- Are you prone to spending a lot of time deciding what you should do, yet nothing gets accomplished?
You can overcome indecision and this lack of control in life by doing it badly.
There is a quote from writer and poet GK Chesterton that says:
“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly the first time.”
It works so well because it speeds up your decision-making process and gets you moving quickly. If you don’t do this, you can spend hours considering how to proceed or what to do.
You may feel paralyzed and afraid to start. Often, we aspire to perfection, but never accomplish anything because the standards we set for ourselves are too high, they’re intimidating, and they stress us out to the point that we delay starting or even abandon the project altogether.
First: Start badly
When you do something badly, you have the energy to take action. Because so often, we want to do something perfectly, we can’t start until the right moment, until we’ve acquired all the skills, but this can be daunting and stressful, so why not just go for it, without worrying about whether or not it’s good? This will make it easier for you to start something, do it poorly, finish it, and then when you look back, realize it wasn’t that bad after all.
A close friend of mine who has anxiety started using this motto, and here is what she said:
When I first started using it, I found I could complete tasks in much shorter periods of time than before. Do it badly gave me wings to take risks, to try something different, and to have way more fun during the whole process. It took all the anxiety out, and replaced it with excitement.
Thus, if you start out badly, you’ll be able to improve as you go along. Consider this: if you started using this motto today, how would your life change?
Second: Forgive Yourself
A second coping strategy is to forgive yourself, which is very powerful if you use it. Anxious people worry a lot about what they’re doing wrong, how bad they feel, and what they’re doing wrong. Imagine if you had a friend who constantly pointed out everything you do wrong and everything wrong with your life.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of this person right away? Unfortunately, anxiety sufferers do this all day long. They are cruel to themselves.
Therefore, maybe it’s time to start being kinder to ourselves, and that includes forgiving yourself for any mistakes you think you made just moments ago or mistakes made in the past.
When you had a panic attack and are embarrassed about it, forgive yourself; when you wanted to talk to someone, but couldn’t muster the courage to do so, forgive yourself; this will lead to greater compassion for yourself. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to begin healing.
Very Important: Find a Purpose
Last but not least, finding purpose and meaning in life is an important coping mechanism. No matter what we accomplish in life, no matter how much money we make, until we know that someone else needs us, that someone else relies on our accomplishments, or on the love we share with them, we can never be truly happy.
While we don’t need other people’s good words to get by in life, if we don’t do things with others in mind, then we are at risk of poor mental health.
Victor Frankel, a famous neurologist, said, “For people who think there’s nothing to live for and nothing more to expect from life, the question is getting them to realize that life still expects something from them.”
When you do something for someone else, you will be carried through even the toughest times. You will know the reason for your existence and will be able to bear almost any way; almost any way.
So, the question is, do you do some things with another person in mind?
You could volunteer, or you could share the knowledge you gained today with other people, especially those who need it most, and those are often those without money for therapy, and those with anxiety disorders. Share it with them, because it can really improve your mental health.
In conclusion
Another way to do something for someone else is to complete work that can help future generations. It doesn’t matter if they don’t realize what you’ve done for them, because you will understand, and this will make you realize how unique and important your life is.
P.S: Can guided meditation help eliminate anxiety?
Here’s the self-hypnosis audio high achievers use to instantly let go of worries, fear and anxiety in their lives. Listen to it every night before you go to sleep:
