Anxiety Relief Practices
Last week, in a matter of 36 hours, I was bullied on my Instagram after posting videos of Beau being silly on my story telling me that there are “rumors” going around that I don’t love my dog; followed by text threats to Christian’s family from the same person; followed by losing my job; followed by personal-record-levels of anxiety. Just a week prior, I had journaled about how lucky I feel to have such a genuine and nice community online, and the night prior, I dove into one of my anxiety-releasing practices, creating a gratitude list (if only in my head) to allow my mind to stop racing so I could fall asleep by 2am on a Tuesday night. On my gratitude list that night was my full-time job and feeling like I (finally) had the autonomy, despite the grim circumstances, to create meaningful content with the resources I needed. While I had a full day of good cries, asking important questions, and laughing off the bullies in my DMs realizing how minuscule that situation was in comparison, by the time I woke up on Thursday, I was so overwhelmed with gratitude for the things I do have, that I felt well-equipped with my own resources to be able to conquer my next steps.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that I deal with frequent and recurring general anxiety, sometimes to the point where I am fully unaware of my surroundings because of my overwhelm. As we are all amidst an unprecedented time, it should come as no surprise that many of us are dealing with anxiety with the uncertainty of what’s going on and what’s to come.
I am extremely analytical by nature and when I feel a trigger of uncertainty, I convince myself that those doubts are the source of truth, causing me to become short-sighted and unable to be present. It wasn’t until college when I seeked therapy to understand better the reasons why I couldn’t take a deep breath for years, and learned that this feeling of a shadow being held over me for as long as I could remember, was called anxiety. In these years, I learned that a lot of my anxiety stems from environments or situations that were normalized when I was too young to understand how they would impact me in the long term, and while there is no way to block those moments out of my memory, I feel secure knowing that I can always lean into my go-to exercises to allow myself to breathe, and that I am in full control of my life.
While I am no health expert, and I urge you to see a healthcare professional to properly deal with anxiety, I have compiled my tips and exercises that have helped me greatly, and which I rely on daily or as my anxiety spikes. Please consult a healthcare professional if you are dealing with overwhelming levels of anxiety.
Journal Without Commitment
When I chat with my closest friends about journaling, one of the biggest critiques I often hear is, I just don’t have time or things to say to journal everyday. While I respect your need for commitment and consistency, journals should not be confused with a needy significant other, or a high-maintenance plant. The only time that I journal nearly everyday is when I travel, and otherwise, I tend to journal when big things happen that I want to talk about, or to put things out into the universe that I am bottling up. Similarly, there is no right or wrong way to journal. My journal takes on a plethora of different entries from formal letters to bulleted lists of things that are causing me anxiety or that I am grateful for, from quotes that moved me to lists of wins over a period of time. After my “week from hell” last week, I wrote when I was feeling anxious to talk through why I had so much anxiety about losing my job, and I also circled back at the end of the week to write down all of my wins of the week to push forward this week with motivation knowing I have so many places to go from here.
Practice Gratitude
The most effective way of combating anxiety is by practicing gratitude -- by practicing gratitude, you focus your attention on the things that bring you happiness, bringing you back to the present. A lot of my anxiety comes at night -- I’ve spent all day going nonstop which on the one hand has distracted me from anxieties for hours, and on the other hand, has caused it to bubble up right as I am unwinding and tucking in for the day. When my anxiety surfaces, I often find myself thinking through a scenario and overanalyzing it, replaying it in every way possible, and deciding that the worst case scenario will be how it ultimately ends. If it’s not a specific scenario, it comes in the form of a pit feeling in my stomach having bad feelings about anything and everything. The common denominator in both of these types of anxiety is that the feelings pertain to something that already happened, or something that I am anticipating happening, and none of them have anything to do with my present circumstance, and probably can’t be changed while I am laying in bed at 11pm on a Tuesday night. The gratitude exercise forces you to think about three things that you are grateful in that moment and put the same level of energy and thought into them that you were putting into your anxieties. Frequently at the top of my list of gratitudes are:
My health and the work I put into myself on a daily basis
My creativity and a specific project that I am working on that is fostering my creativity
My relationships with my best friends, Christian, my family, and my online community
A project that I am working on or recently finished that I am proud of
The fact that I am literate and thus have access to learn about anything I ever dreamed of
Enough to put food on my plate when I am hungry, and to put clothes on my back when I am cold
Please note! This is not a creativity exercise -- you do not need to always be thinking of new things! These should be first things that come to mind and let your mind wander into spirals of other things that you are grateful for or that cause you happiness. When I struggle to come up with things, I begin to think of the things immediately surrounding me - for me, that is the warmth of Christian, the unconditional love of Beau, and the love I receive from my family everyday.
Write Down Your Anxieties
While practicing gratitude is a great way for short-term anxiety alleviation, oftentimes general anxiety lasts longer than a single few hours of panic. When I notice anxiety creeping up consistently, I pull out my journal and begin writing down the things that I am anxious about or the things that come to mind when I think about not being able to be present (sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on exactly what is causing our anxiety). Once I list the things out, I go through each one and write the best case scenario and the worst case scenario. What happens in the worst case scenario? In that scenario, how will I deal with it? By writing these things down and spending 20 minutes on this exercise, my type-A brain convinces me that I just organized my problems and my spiritual self is satisfied by my releasing these anxieties into the universe. If I still experience anxiety after this, I’ll tune into a guided meditation focused on gratitude or loving kindness.
Meditate
This must be the most dreaded tip anyone anticipates when seeking anxiety relief. I remember the first time my mom ever told me to meditate as if it solved world hunger and I rolled my eyes and moved on with my life and didn’t even give it a chance until a year later. Similarly, I can recall many times when I suggested taking up meditation as a long-term solution for helping anxiety, and friends having similar reactions - “To what extent can sitting still for 10 minutes really help with my debilitating anxiety?” “I just can’t sit still, it’s too hard for me.” “I just sit there and think about the things that I’m already anxious about.” Like anything else, we can create all the excuses for not trying meditation, but the proof is in the numbers. In a 2012 review from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, of 36 trials of people with anxiety, 25 of them noticed significant improvements after meditating compared to the other 11 in control groups. I began my meditation practice in 2016 when I spent 3 months in Bali after college graduation and experienced spiked levels of anxiety with regards to my relationships back home. While I’m definitely not perfect with my practice (and luckily there is no “perfect” to achieve as this practice is solely for you and your relationship with yourself), meditating even just a few times a week has drastically improved my general anxiety. There are so many amazing guided meditations on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes, as well as apps such as Headspace, Calm, and Inscape, and currently Oprah in collaboration with Deepak Chopra is leading a meditation on hope through the current circumstances we are all living through. To start: set a small goal of 5 consecutive days of meditation for 5 minutes each. You spend hours scrolling social media each day - I’m challenging you to take 5 of those minutes to tune into you.
Do Something Kind for Someone Else
So much of the time, we are so concerned with how we are being perceived by others, feeling overwhelmed at the thought of trying to accomplish multiple things at once, or trying to solve issues that are out of our control. When I first started addressing my anxiety, similar to my gratitude lists, I practiced writing down the things that - without fail - make me feel good. That list includes things like getting outside for 30 minutes, working out, and doing something kind for someone else without expecting something in return. We are in a time when many of us may feel anxious about being alone, not being able to properly socialize, and the thought of not seeing some of our loved ones for weeks to months. That said, there are endless small acts of kindness that can be done in a matter of minutes at the drop of a hat and will instantly make you feel better:
Let someone you love know how much you love and appreciate them
Venmo someone to treat them to a bottle of wine on their next errand run, on you
Send someone your favorite book
Donate to a charity that helps people in need during these times