Are you feeling overwhelmed by anxiety?

It seems appropriate to talk about anxiety right now. We are living in a time that is very anxiety provoking. Some of that anxiety is very necessary and will help us to do things that we need to do in order to keep ourselves and our families healthy and safe. An excess of anxiety may cause some longterm problems that we need to try to prevent. I’m especially concerned for people who may have some social anxiety and are now spending so much time at home. I worry that this could turn into agoraphobia as they struggle to leave their homes to be able to live their lives normally when this pandemic is over. I’m also concerned for people who already have some phobias related to germs and how this pandemic is affecting them. It is very important that we all monitor our mental health and be aware of how anxiety is affecting us and those we care about.

Anxiety is a big part of our wiring as human beings. Anxiety serves the purpose of keeping us safe. It is meant to put us on high alert so we can use fight, flight, or freeze to protect us from danger. In our distant past, danger meant wild animals who wanted to eat us. Now, most of us don’t live in situations where we are literal prey for wild animals. However, there are still real dangers that we need to be alerted to, such as cars that are out of control, fires, physical assaults, rape... We need to be aware of our anxiety and react accordingly to keep ourselves and our families safe and secure. However, sometimes our anxiety goes off for things that are not actual dangers. It’s kind of like a smoke detector that malfunctions and goes off for no reason. When this happens at home, we check to make sure things are safe and then we turn off the alarm, and either change the battery or replace the whole smoke detector. (Did you know the alarm itself is supposed to be replaced every 10 years? They actually have an expiration date on them that you should check.) When our anxiety is triggered for no apparent reason, we need to assess our surroundings, see if there is any real danger, and if there is none, we need to turn off the alarm. This sounds very simple, but if you suffer from anxiety or know someone who does, you realize that turning off the alarm is easier said than done. Or, in other instances, there are real threats, but we don’t actually have any control over them. Worrying about them does not lower our risk of harm. So we need to shut off our alarm and let ourselves go about living our lives.

There are a lot of different strategies for calming ourselves. One that I often use in my practice is a simplified version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I help children and adults learn how to change how they think about situations in order to change how they are feeling. For example, if they are anxious about a math test. Instead of saying to themselves, “I can’t do this. I’m terrible at math,” I have them think of other things they can say such as, “I will do the best I can and know I tried my hardest,” or “I’m not going to give up. I am brave and smart.” In other situations we need to learn to change what we are doing so that it will change what we are thinking or how we are feeling. For example, if you are sitting in front of a computer all day for work and start feeling anxious and fidgety, take a break, go for a walk, do something different. By doing something different, you can redirect your focus to something less stressful and calm yourself. Once you are calm, you can go back and face the tasks ahead of you using your logical mind rather than working just from your feelings of anxiety.

There are many different breathing exercises that can be used for calming. Before introducing some of the those exercises, it’s important to understand that there are two different kinds of breathing: chest breathing and belly breathing. When we become anxious we tend to revert to chest breathing. “Chest breathing causes an upset in the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body resulting in increased heart rate, dizziness, muscle tension, and other physical sensations.” (https://www.verywellmind.com/abdominal-breathing-2584115) Belly breathing comes from our diaphragm, is slower, and provides us with more oxygen. This helps calm us. To properly do belly breathing, place your hands on your stomach. When you breathe in, notice your stomach rising and when you exhale, notice your stomach going back down. Practice this a few times and you should notice a difference in how you feel, even if you are not anxious. Make sure you are sitting up straight and your shoulders are back while you are doing this, allowing your lungs to fill completely.

After you have mastered belly breathing, you can incorporate it into some other breathing exercises. One I like to use is to pretend that your fingers are birthday candles. Hold them straight out in front of you. With each belly breath pretend to blow out one of the candles. Do this until you feel more relaxed. The act of belly breathing is calming, and the act of imagining the candles and blowing them out helps distract the brain from whatever was causing the anxious feelings. Using bubbles is another great way to practice belly breathing. You can play around with what happens differently when you blow bubbles with a fast, forceful breath and when you blow bubbles with a slow, steady breath. If you are trying this with children, having them try to keep bubbles up in the air by blowing on them is also fun. Bubbles again are a great way to take the deep breaths we need to calm ourselves and also distract our brains from our triggering thoughts.

It’s important to remember that we need to calm ourselves in order to think clearly and make safe and logical decisions. We also need to be sure that we don’t ignore what is triggering our feelings. So we need to notice our feelings, check our environment for safety, and if we are not in danger, spend some time sitting with our feelings, and then work on calming ourselves. It’s ok to feel some anxiety. It’s not ok to let our anxiety control us and keep us from living our best lives. If trying some of these activities does not work for you, it might be time to seek out some professional help. These are difficult times we are living in. There is no need to go through it alone.

*Additonal resources for this blog come from previous trainings I have attended. www.Practicewise.com; www.lsci.org