Anxiety symptoms can change if you can embrace healthy changes.
Situational COVID anxiety seems to be the elephant in the room. While it’s plastered all over the news, not many casually talk about the invisible spreading virus that has changed and threatened our health, daily lives, and world. Our world has been tipped sideways with people walking around anxious about their situations, work, health, relationships, and future.
Did you know that at least 50% of anxiety comes from situations, habits, thoughts, words, actions, or attitudes? In essence, some you can control, and most things you can change. You can exchange your anxiety for better mental health.
You don’t have to live anxiously, or hold onto fear, worry, or uncertainty. That is not the new normal. You can thrive despite the times and your circumstances.
So What Now?…
Do you have a positive outlook despite future uncertainty in the world and in your life?
Do you have a plan if the pandemic radically shakes up your life (work, relationship, health, finances, etc.)?
If you answered no or a weak yes, then you’re most likely a victim to your anxiety and anxious feelings.
Here are 7 better ways during difficult times:
1. Be in control of your situation.
Have a backup plan in your mind. This helps because to put your mind currently at ease. This helps you sleep better at night.
First, what is the bare minimum you can live off of and still find joy and happiness? Before you answer, consider there are so many free resources and free things you can safely do these days… watch nature, get outside and change your scenery, work on home-based hobbies, learn and research on the internet, and read. These activities and your ideas can all set you on a path towards your progress.
Second, don’t plan the details of your life. Have viable ideas, be willing to pivot if needed and jump on or take baby steps when the right opportunity comes along. If you stay active, the areas you focus on in intention and attention, naturally become part of your life.
2.Find a side hustle or volunteer gig.
Find a side work activity that brings you encouragement to impact and get involved with the world outside of you. You can find this doing research online or through your work where they have an intranet. Maybe you were too busy before to look into, and now is a good reason to pause what you’re doing and look at other alternatives.
One size doesn’t fit all as you want to stay safe and go about doing good work. You don’t want to add more anxiety to your life. You can’t help others (or yourself) well, if you’re in a state of anxiety. Consider the thought: a good opportunity for a friend or co-worker may not be a good fit for you or for you now. Your time is valuable.
Find a side activity that interests you and maximizes your gifts and skill learning potential. You never know, it may develop into something greater for you.
3.Take note of your habits you have been doing to cope with anxiety.
Are they working or are you getting more anxious? Journal your thoughts around your anxiety for greater awareness. We have a tendency to identify that we have been anxious all our lives or we were born this way. That may be the case, but you want to step out of this thinking so your anxiety symptoms can change.
People with anxiety may wake up (if they slept) with anxiety or have anxiety in the evening when worry starts to kick in. In the daytime, you’re being productive, at work, or getting sunshine that helps with avoiding anxiety.
Learn to be proactive to handle those moments when you can expect anxiety to flare up. This is your opportunity to bring in new, healthy habits so your anxiety symptoms can change.
4. Choose to change and be the solution for your anxious life.
If you have anxiety because of feeling overrun or other self-induced reasons, you can help yourself by eliminating self-imposed ideas or limiting beliefs of what you think you should be doing. Keeping your life simple helps you to eliminate overwhelm. You may find you can cut most activities or big categories.
Work on having less on your plate. Saying no to others and unessential activities can be the best advice for a undesired busy life.
Remember the 4 basic human living needs, are: water, food, shelter, and clothing.
So, an income or a job is needed to financially support yourself and your dependents for these needs. Everything else is non-essential.
I’d add sleep to the list, but stay calm if you are lacking sleep. As an adult, you only need 4-6 hours of actual restful sleep to feel recharged, with 7-8 hours of total sleep. For me, whether I sleep 5 total hours or 8 total hours, as long as I get 5 restful hours per night, I feel rested. This is where a tracking device can help to witness your health patterns and potentially help you change habits or life situations that aren’t serving you. You don’t want to add worry to your precious ‘lil head that you’re not getting enough beauty sleep!
There’s no one size fits all for everyone and as you age, you need less sleep. Some people are naturally morning people and others are night owls. And you could be just going through a season. They come and go.
And that goes for relationships. The most important one is the one with yourself. That’s the one you can count on. Loving others is important also, but you can feel love first by loving yourself in a healthy way that God designed in his love for you.
If someone else in your life is creating anxiety for you, such as a boss or co-worker or a love relationship you’re in, then come up with solutions for yourself for your happiness. You can’t control the other party. But you can control what you think and do.
Try and think objectively and take control of your life.
Also, find better information. It’s out there. If you’re anxious over health for no good reason, don’t create additional mental health anxiety on yourself. Health changes could come from your natural age or environmental reasons, such as allergies that you didn’t used to have. Some will go away on their own and some won’t. Health prevention is the best way to be proactive, and improve your mental health.
You can research online most health ailments, symptoms, and get good information before you need to go see a medical professional or use the tele-medicine systems.
5. Create soothing anxiety habits.
What calms you?
Deep breathing is a known exercise for calming anxiety. It helps especially if you have anxious symptoms in your chest, throat, or heart area. If you tend to have an anxious stomach or intestinal symptoms, then peppermint tea can be better to soothe anxiety. It’s not one size fits all. Anxiety symptoms can change when you put preventative habits and measures as a priority.
If frustration with a situation or a person creates unrest, anger or worry in your mind, then purge and journal all your thoughts in a journal. If you’re afraid someone may pick up your cathartic writing, take sheets of notebook paper and write on them.
Then tuck your writing in a book, and keep adding until you no longer have strong feelings or negative thoughts. As days go by, and the feelings/thoughts wear off, then you can shred the papers. They served the purpose of calming you.
6. Choose to change your thoughts.
Just like you can choose to change your anxiety life, you have a choice to transform your thoughts. Emotional freedom is where your happiness is. Even though your thoughts may tell you that owning a car, house, clothing, shoes, sneakers, or going on a shopping spree will make you happy. You realize after doing this over and over again, that they give you an instant gratification and then the feeling goes away, hours or days later.
You may still get happiness from the stuff, but then you’re off chasing the next “high” feeling. I call this the roller coaster. Because that’s what it is.
7. Find healthy accountability partners.
If you stick with people who are just as anxious as you are, then you’ll stay in anxiety together. You can stay stuck. Anxious friends can help you feel better, as a shoulder to cry on, but it would be better to find friends who are naturally encouraging, can see outside anxiety, and provide healthy wisdom.
Today, louder than the invisible COVID virus (being called a disease), stress in America is the largest silent killer as measured over the years.
In any given year, 120,000 American work deaths are attributed to stress. We can change this statistic, and your anxiety symptoms can change in trajectory. Be proactive for your change. Don’t lose another day. You don’t have to keep living with debilitating anxiety — anxiously waiting for or expecting the next anxiety attack. And you don’t have to do it alone. Get encouragement and help from others who have gone before you or have learned the better way.
You can learn how to restore and prevent anxiety.