Anxiety is a dirty word.
Ironically the disorder that causes such discomfort to its host, makes everyone else who hears it uncomfortable too. It’s easier to just not bring it up. Mentioning your anxiety is like throwing a grenade of tension into a conversation. People must wonder what the correct response is for such a confession. The truth is there isn’t one, the person more than likely isn’t telling you because they think you hold the recipe for a secret cure, they just want to tell you. If you’re one of those people, then take that as a compliment.
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Let it out.
Talking about Anxiety is the first step to battling it. I find that thoughts in my own head feel powerful and controlling up until the point that I say them out loud. The biggest, most catastrophic, life ending, completely unsolvable worries lose at least half of their significance once you say them out loud, as scary as that may seem.
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Take care of yourself.
Your mind is still a part of your body, and so if your body isn’t being taken care of then of course you mind will follow suit. It sounds like such a parental lecture to say but, getting your 8 hours of sleep, eating well, keeping hydrated and exercising is the first and easiest way to relax your mind. You can’t take care of your mental health if you don’t take care of your physical health first.
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Find an outlet.
Something that takes your focus and turns it to something constructive and enjoyable. Be it sport, music, reading and writing, anything. Find your outlet and put everything you have into it. Make it your escape and then utilise it whenever things get too much. If I was having a bad week, which I often did, I could spend hours and hours focusing on my own escape and without fail it helped to submerge at least some negative feelings.
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Stop giving yourself a hard time.
Know that it’s okay to feel anxious sometimes. It’s not your fault and it’s perfectly fine to not be fine. For me the biggest trigger of my anxiety was not being in control of things and hence having to deal with unpredictable outcomes, that may not always be the ‘right’ outcome, from my point of view. The truth is that there are no right or wrong outcomes, things just happen sometimes and no one individual solely controls all of the factors that go into these outcomes. Learn to try and let things be, whatever happens, happens and you can worry about its consequences after the fact.
A quote I recently discovered which has become my mantra for this process is,
‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’.
I know this isn’t easy, but if it is any consolation, trust me when I say that not one of my world ending worries have ever actually succeeded in sparking an apocalypse! Much to my dismay! At least not yet anyways.
Róisín Phelan
Image by dragaglioti.com