Monday Motivation: Feeding Your Anxiety

It’s no secret that so many suffer from and with anxiety. I am one of those who deal with bouts of anxiety from time to time. Managing my anxiety so I can live a life full of blessings isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes I find I have to feed my anxiety with the right things.

Denials Won’t Work

Learning to be honest of where you are is helpful in learning how to maintain it. For years I denied its validity. I kept telling myself it didn’t exist. Not owning it isn’t the precursor to healing it. The more I denied it; the challenge to get better didn’t align. I found myself suffering more bouts of anxiety. The silence of it all was causing me great harm. So don’t deny that you have it. I grew up in church where the rhetoric of “not claiming” negative things was real. While I wasn’t claiming it-the anxiety was claiming me.

Getting a Real Assessment

People around me noticed my anxiety. This is probably when my anxiety was at an all time high. I ignored all of the little signs and outward demonstrations. I was used to ignoring it because ignoring it would make it leave. Big mistake. Ignoring it didn’t heal or prevent the manifestation of anxiety. If anything it allowed more embarrassing acts to continue.

Get a real assessment. Talk to your doctor. Be honest with your therapist. People who are in therapy aren’t always forthcoming. Your therapist isn’t a mind reader. What you decide to hide from them only hurts you in the long run. Be honest with yourself. You’re in your body feeling it’s effects. Why lie?

Knowing your Needs

Once you accept the reality that you have anxiety you can find healthy ways to deal when it triggers. Everyone will have different triggers when it comes to anxiety. What is happening to make you feel the way that you do? What led to this overwhelming experience? I had to keep a journal to figure out my patterns of anxiety. There are times of the year where my anxiety would suffer the most. I also found that certain situations increased it as well.

Feeding your Anxiety Healthy Remedies

Once I knew my triggers it helped to find small ways to be prepared or combat it. For example, as much as I enjoy being “on the scene” here in Philly, my anxiety would increase as I was getting dressed. I had to learn to find ways of decreasing it. I would get my clothes out the morning of or the night before. Charge up my remote lights and portable chargers. Pack my bag early. Set a time to leave. Being prepared helped me focus. Having my plan of how I would get there and home would help. Instead of waiting until an hour or so before it’s time to go. Feeling unprepared was a trigger for me.

Some other helps with anxiety:

• Leaving or disengaging with problematic people
• Setting a time limit when out socially
• Setting a goal of how many people I would engage with
• Taking care that I’ve eaten as close to schedule as possible
• Getting outside daily
• Keeping a journal or using my notes application in my phone to write out my immediate feelings
• Maintaining a Work out schedule to relieve stress
• Knowing my emergency plan if any of my self help didn’t work

Anxiety isn’t the End of it All

When you tell someone or share that you deal with anxiety people think that it’s like a death sentence. There are much larger issues to have than anxiety. Anxiety can be overwhelming but it’s also not the only thing going on. Acknowledging it helps to develop a tailored made plan to combat it. Also feeding your anxiety health remedies is key.

You can’t simply take a shot of alcohol to numb the pain of anxiety. Maybe it’s just me but I would be an alcoholic if I did that. After the numbness of the drinks wore off I would still have anxiety AND the guilt of self medicating. Anxiety can become easier to manage just from learning yourself. Knowing what makes you tick or flares, helps determine a plan. As much as being a step ahead of my anxiety helps, I have to have a plan of action when I’m deep in it.

Emergency Plan

I haven’t had to enact it in months but when it’s too overwhelming or when my steps ahead don’t work I like to enact my emergency plan:

• Keeping my spouse in the loop
• Immediately stop whatever actions I’m doing
• Turn on a podcast/ song/ or self help book to cause me to settle and rhink
• Take a walk
• Call my therapist (depending on the severity)
• Use my adult coloring book
• Before reacting sit in silence for 15 minutes (regulate my breathing and assess the situation)
• Use my Calm application

These are things that I use. Depending on the severity. One time especially in the pandemic when I couldn’t really leave to go anywhere, I sat in my car for 20 minutes to regain my thoughts. Whatever works for you-do it!

No one wants to be in this world feeling overwhelmed and uncomfortable. Doing what’s best for you is key. As we start this Monday with the world being in full debates about COVID-19, variants, Back to school, and life in general, we need to enact our plan of attack to help manage our anxiety before it gets out of control.

Also remember you’re not alone. You may be fighting an individual battle but not the only one. There are others around you. Find one person you feel comfortable sharing with. Realize how common anxiety is. It’s so common that it’s believed that we all deal with it on some level!

Have an amazing Monday! Let’s do this!