Do You:
❓ Sometimes get overwhelmed by anxiety?
❓ Worry about being worried?
❓ Wind yourself up feeling anxious about being anxious, or get stressed about being stressed?
Stop it. There's nothing wrong with you experiencing anxiety or stress. While it's uncomfortable when anxiety takes up residence in your life, the solution is to turn the volume down, not up. Hyping yourself up by becoming anxious about being anxious does you no good.
Turning the Volume Down on Garden-Variety Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are normal--and even helpful physiological signals--that help us more effectively deal with the challenges of life. Turning the volume down on feeling anxious begins with accepting the uncomfortable feelings as a normal reaction to life.Used properly stress and anxiety focus our attention on getting busy meeting the current challenges that are creating the anxiety.
Used improperly--at the first whiff of anxiousness--we catastrophize the situation, hyperventilate, and blow up our ability to function effectively.
All is Well
Learn to turn your attention away from 'feeling anxious about being anxious' by reframing how you interpret those feelings.
Change how you talk about anxiety. Try naming your creeping anxiousness as 'everyday garden-variety' anxiety instead of 'something's terribly wrong with me' anxiety. Choose to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and change your viewpoint so you see anxiety is serving a useful purpose--as it's intended.
If you let it, anxiety can serve as a penetrating signal for you to act and move your life forward instead of turning you into a nervous wreck. The key is to respond to the annoying signal with appropriate action.
Let Anxiety Work in your Favor
None of us likes feeling anxious but we can learn to befriend the feelings. Yes, free floating anxiety is a bit like someone continually poking you with a hot poker. After a while it gets on your nerves and all you want to do is get away from it and lash out at someone.
But just like the physiological feedback you'd get from touching a hot stove, anxious feelings show you what you want to move away from as quickly as possible at the same time it prods you to step into actions that move you towards what you want quicker.
Become a Master at Quieting Anxiety
It doesn't matter how anxious you are. What matters is your ability to deal with anxiety.Never underestimate your ability to master the art of dealing with anxiety through consciously choosing to change your outlook, logical reasoning or circumstances to turn the volume down.
Sometimes your life circumstances demand great persistence to overcome road blocks to your goals turning your anxiety up. But every time you persist and overcome those challenges you strengthen your mastery of life--showing yourself you have all the ingredients to successfully handle life and quiet anxiety.
As Anna Freud noted:
"It is not the presence or absence, the quality, or even the quantity of anxiety which allows predictions as to future mental health or illness; what is significant in this respect is only the ability to deal with anxiety." Anna Freud, 1965
In her new book 'Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls', Lisa Damour, Ph.D. sheds more light on who gets through the stressful experiences better:
"The children whose outlook for mental health is better are those who cope with the same danger situations actively by way of resources such as intellectual understanding, logical reasoning, changing of external circumstances...by mastery instead of retreat."
Sometimes life can feel like a high-wire act, with one wrong move and it all comes tumbling down. But to train for a high-wire act you focus on developing the skills and mastering the moves to keep yourself up and moving forward rather than focusing on the fear and self-doubt created by looking at the ground.
Cope with anxiety-producing situations through mastery instead of retreat, by use of intellectual understanding, logical reasoning and changing of external circumstances.
Stop 'awfulizing' your situation. Choose a life strategy for dealing with anxiety-producing situations head on. And keep on keeping on.
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For more than 35 years, Susan Meyerott has been helping people lighten up and step over invisible barriers to change one step at a time. She speaks to your heart, puts you at ease, and makes letting go and moving forward with life easier than ever before.
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