Feeling anxious is miserable. And when feelings are miserable you want them to go away ASAP. But unlike switching a light off and on, when it comes to anxiety you can’t just flip the switch. Managing anxiety is more like using a dimmer. You want to keep your symptoms from getting too high even if you can’t turn them off completely.
So to get a handle on your anxiety’s symptoms before they take control consider doing constructive rather than ineffective coping.
1. When you are having anxious symptoms:
DO THIS
Be realistic about your feeling. Consider the true impact of your anxious symptom. Although you feel uncomfortable, or perhaps quite nervous, you can often manage and even do well. Anxiety frequently feels worse on the inside than it looks on the outside or than it impacts on performance. Ask yourself if you have ever given a talk or taken a test, believing that your anxiety is messing everything up only to get complimented on how well you presented or get that grade you wanted.
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Catastrophrize your feeling. Reacting to your anxiety with catastrophic expectations that it will ruin everything is a great way to get really overwhelmed and shut down your efforts. Like snow creating an avalanche, telling yourself that if you are anxious you won’t be able to function adds momentum to the process. So a slight physical symptom or small worry, triggers a deluge of uncomfortable physiological symptoms and fearful expectations.
2. When you are faced with an anxiety trigger:
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Approach your anxiety’s triggers. A highly effective tactic for shrinking anxiety’s power involves exposing yourself to its triggers. With practice your brain gets increasingly adept at automatically managing false alarms of danger. Exposing yourself to triggers facilitates habituation, reducing arousal and allowing for a truer picture of what could happen. You take charge rather than your anxiety.
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Avoid your anxiety’s triggers. The quickest fix to feeling better is good for your anxiety but not for you. Avoiding what makes you anxious prevents you from learning to cope. The powerful relief avoidance brings can create a cycle of negative reinforcement, and strengthen patterns of avoidance. These patterns can spread like oil on water, and shrink your world.
3. When your anxious symptoms are intensifying:
DO THIS
Listen to your anxiety’s early cues. Becoming attuned to your anxiety’s early warning signs is one of the first and most valuable coping skills to develop. Once you identify your anxiety’s initial cues, for example a racing heart, tense shoulders, or a funny feeling in your stomach, you can nip its power in the bud, and start to take control. Learn and practice skills that will slow down the fight or flight response such as calm breathing and muscle relaxation. Practice will strengthen your coping habits and weaken your reactive, anxiety strengthening habits.
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Ignore your anxiety’s early cues. When that twinge of shoulder tension, tightness of breath, flash of feeling hot or any of a number of physical cues that you are
starting up the anxiety ladder hit, you may resist taking the time to use coping skills. Like focusing on a whining child it’s annoying to stop and pay attention. But like a child’s build up to a tantrum, anxiety keeps mounting, if you don’t take the time to listen and respond.
4. When you react as if any sign of anxiety is a negative:
DO THIS
Know anxiety’s useful side. Understanding why we have anxiety and the way it works can also help with mastering the symptoms of problematic anxiety. As debilitating and unpleasant as feeling highly anxious can be, it can, in the some circumstances, protect us. Besides getting us to act quickly in emergencies, at the right level anxiety can be a motivator allowing focus and energy to meet demanding situations, such as a job interview or an important meeting. Likewise stress, which is related to the development of anxiety, in the right dose, can be motivating. Researchers distinguish between challenge stress and threat stress, with the former actually enhancing performance up to a point.
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Vilify anxiety. If you have struggled with problematic anxiety, it is very easy to be sensitized to its symptoms. A spike in heart rate, feeling dizzy, or any of the many fight or flight symptoms, can trigger worry and/or fear that a wave of uncontrollable physical and emotional symptoms are going to strike. You can be sensitized to any symptom twinge and get caught in the vicious and escalating cycle of fearing fear. This cycle has been especially associated with panic attacks, as sufferers react powerfully to bodily symptoms associated with escalating anxiety and ultimately panic. Likewise, those susceptible to worry can get into the trap of worrying about their worry, and how this will negatively impact them
5. When you are trying to manage anxiety’s distress:
DO THIS
Practice constructive coping. Repeated behaviors frequently create a habit. This is true for coping skills used to manage anxiety. Practicing constructive skills, such as calm breathing, relaxation, and realistic appraisals of expected threat lays the neural pathways for effective and positive responses to unrealistic expectations of threat. The more you practice, even when you aren’t anxious, the faster coping skills kick in when you need them.
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Use quick fixes. Quick fixes to decrease anxiety’s discomfort, such as substance use, and overeating, can also become habits. These habits can result in long-term negative consequences. In the field of addictions treatment, dual diagnosis recognizes that addressing the addiction alone often overlooks the underlying mental health problems that start and sustain addiction. Anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and PTSD are associated with substance abuse.
*For more on managing anxiety constructively see:
The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, Sixth Edition. Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D.
The Ten Best Ever Anxiety Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Anxious and What You Can Do to Change It. Margaret Wahrenberg.
*Information from these sources is not meant to replace working with a mental health professional if you are in need of seeking professional help.