How to deal with anxiety: Let life happen
Anxiety has crept into our daily lives in recent years. What used to be reserved for high-stress and high-pressure environments has become part of everyone’s normal.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines anxiety as “a feeling of worry and unease” and “a mental condition characterized by excessive apprehensiveness about real or perceived threats.”
Most of the things that cause us anxiety have low probabilities of happening. Thoughts that keep us up at night are mostly products of our imagination. The more creative one’s mind is, the more incredible their thoughts become.
People experience anxiety in different forms and intensities. For some, it could be a tightness in the chest, muscle tension and difficulties in concentrating on a task. It could escalate into palpitation, excessive sweating and extreme temper issues. Prolonged anxiety could lead to chronic stress, sleeplessness and more serious medical problems later on.
Self-induced
What causes anxiety?
The need to control. This is one of the most common causes of anxiety. When we need things to happen exactly as we plan it—we want people to act a certain way and we want everything precisely as we want it—there is perceived danger in the turnout being different. Some would label it as failure, others would call it shameful. When we do this, we are associating danger with a different outcome from what is expected. This is self-induced anxiety and can cause many sleepless nights, and even eventually cause burnout and mental health issues.
Lack of self-efficacy. First coined by Albert Bandura in 1977, self-efficacy is described as “a personal judgment of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations.” In other words, it’s believing that one can figure things out when challenges occur as they reach for their goals. Many people, no matter how capable and competent, doubt their abilities to deal with future situations, so they overprepare for every possible circumstance. This is also a major cause of anxiety.
Catastrophizing. This is a cognitive distortion where one thinks of the worst-case scenario so much that it taints the way they see reality. They’re unable to logically predict based on history and reality-based facts because they don’t trust what they see. While thinking of possible catastrophes can be helpful up to a certain extent, if it’s all we think of, anxiety will naturally take over.
Negative memories of past events. When we experience highly stressful situations, our bodies feel the stress and the tension. Sometimes, our bodies remember these sensations even when the threat has long passed. This causes our nervous system to be hyperactive. This will feel like we’re always in danger. This then causes the brain to look for danger in anything we see.
Find positive learning
How to we deal with anxiety so it stops ruling our lives?
Learn when to let go. Do what you can, plan the details as much as possible, then let life happen. The only thing we can control is what is within our bodies, anyway. Know when to say enough is enough.
Give permission for mistakes. Perfectionists have the most anxious thoughts because less than perfect is unforgivable. The amount of time, effort and mental space used to ensure things are perfect are hardly worthy of the outcomes we get. Giving permission for things to not go according to plan will ease up a lot of mind space.
Increase self-trust. Some people just need to believe they’ll figure things out because they are capable of doing so. Some may need to work on learning skills and increasing their competence so they can relax and deal with issues when they happen. Either way, believing that you can do it already increases the probability that you’d be able to.
Switch it off. Discover a way to switch off your mind whenever there’s no need to take action. Learn to focus on something else and turn off the part of your brain that thinks of all possible problems. Being able to shift to a different context is helpful in having new perspectives and solutions.
Ask for help. Surround yourself with people who can support you in the different areas of your life. It can be colleagues whom you trust, friends to have fun with and loved ones to support you emotionally. Many have found comfort in their furbabies, as well. Think of the resources you’ll need to lessen possible problems and be there to help fix them when they happen.
Find meaning. When things don’t turn out as planned, how you interpret the event will be key in how your mind creates its patterns. If your conclusion is negative, you’re bound to carry that into the future. Find positive learning and meaning through it and you’ll be more ready to embrace uncertainties in the future.
The author is an executive coach and an organizational development consultant. You may reach out to her through coachsheila.tan@gmail.com.
