Dealing with Anxiety
Just start writing, I think to myself as I try to work past the effects of anxiety. My anxiety doesn’t just present itself when starting another writing project, but rears its ugly head throughout the day, from one event to the next. I feel it while driving as I approach a four-way stop, in my personal relationships, in decisions, etc. Anyone who pays the smallest amount of attention to the news has seen studies stating that anxiety is on the rise. For example, newsscientist.com has an article titled, "Anxiety Really Has Increased Over the Past 10 Years - But Why?" My question is, is anxiety actually getting worse or have we just gotten bad at dealing with it?
No doubt the increase in entertainment has exacerbated our abilities to deal with anxiety. We’ve heard of doom scrolling social media. Hours and hours spent flipping from one short video to another, anticipating the next video to hold increased value over the previous one. At the same time, we falsely presume that the lives of these media influencers are better than ours. What’s the saying, comparison is the thief of joy? It’s addictive too, which only adds to our levels of anxiety, making us disappointed in our inability to control how we spend our time. However, this is part of the design of social media. The more time we spend on their platform, the more revenue the company makes.
Who’s teaching new generations how to live a healthy mental life and how to deal with anxiety? Ideally, parents would step up and set an example and teach their children, except many of the parents have fallen into the same traps, unaware of the cause and source of their anxiety. Awareness is a key concept in all of this. How can there be a solution if we are not aware of the aspects that have caused the epidemic of anxiety?
What I want to do now is provide tools that I have found to be beneficial to me in my mission to calm my anxiety. The goal should not be to eliminate anxiety, but deal with it and not let it control us. Anxiety will never go away because it is useful and people have experienced anxiety long before it had a name. Quickly, let’s define what anxiety is and why it’s part of the human experience. According to the American Psychological Association, “anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” Now defined, what is the evolutionary purpose of anxiety? At the right levels, anxiety's purpose is to drive us to prepare for a real or perceived event in the future. Anxiety motivates us to study for tomorrow’s math test, run through conversation scenarios for the date we are having later tonight, or write down our worth to the company before asking for a raise. Anxiety is the motivation to prepare for the future, whether real or imagined. The problem arises when anxiety debilitates us instead of motivating us.
With the rise of unhealthy anxiety have come strategies to deal with it. The goal is not to get rid of anxiety, but to curb anxiety from debilitating anxiety to useful anxiety. The following are the strategies that I have found to be useful.
STOICISM: As I began to experience anxiety shifting from a motive to take action to a force that impeded progression, I first stumbled upon stoicism. I was introduced to stoic philosophy through Ryan Holiday’s writing (dailystoic.com) and his work has been my primary source for all things stoic. His work introduced me to a couple of concepts that I continue to apply to my life. The first is the idea that humans tend to suffer more in imagination than in reality. That is to say, we suffer before it is necessary, and often that suffering we place on ourselves is worse than the reality. Think of your own life. How often have you made a mistake or a poor decision and beat yourself up mentally, only to find out that the mistake was correctable or that the consequences were really not that bad? In my personal experience, this is usually true. By knowing that we can make ourselves suffer more worrying about a future event, we can be aware to stop the suffering and use the anxiety to take action.
The second and last stoic philosophy that I am going to discuss is, “the obstacle is the way.” Anxiety will rear its ugly head when we hit a roadblock in our pursuits. Many of us take this as a defeat and become anxious about what the future repercussions will be. However, taking a stoic approach, we should attack the obstacle and find the solution to get past it. If the two concepts that I have discussed interest you, I recommend that you look into Ryan Holiday’s books on stoicism.
MINDFULNESS: I was already working to apply stoicism into my daily life when I was introduced to mindfulness through a behavioral health provider. In one of our early sessions, he recommended some apps to me that narrate the user through useful mindfulness meditations. Mindfulness is a tool that gives you the tools to reduce worrying about the future and ground yourself in the present. During mindfulness meditation, you learn awareness of yourself, your body, your sensations, and your environment. The awareness of these things becomes tools to use to bring yourself back to the present when you become aware that your mind has drifted off to worrying about the future. Over time, and with daily practice, your time is spent less in anxious thoughts and more in the present, enjoying life’s experiences. A great resource to learn about mindfulness is the Healthy Minds app that can be found in app stores. There is a free version and a paid version.
STARE AT A WALL: Really. Take a chair and face it towards a blank wall and stare at it for a certain amount of time each day. There should be no distractions. Turn off the podcast, music, radio, and the television. This practice should be done in silence and isolation. The purpose of this is to reconnect with ourselves and who we are. There are so many ways to keep ourselves entertained throughout the day. We entertain ourselves through Netflix, Amazon Prime, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or any number of ways. Our lives are so full of entertainment that we do not take the time to connect with ourselves. Thus, turning it all off and staring at a wall. It will be tough at first as your entertainment addiction urges you to reach for your smartphone. Resist the urge and sit with your feelings and emotions. Reconnect with yourself, your feelings, thoughts, and learn how to take back control. If you feel like you’ve lost yourself, this is a way to find yourself again. I recommend following Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K) to learn more about mental health at healthygamer.gg.
In conclusion, there are many ways to take control of anxiety and use it to your benefit. The concepts that I have discussed are a few that I have found to be useful in my own life and in managing my own anxiety. As we go through life, we face challenges and deal with anxiety. I’ve learned that it is not necessary to suffer alone. People have suffered with anxiety since humans evolved and have developed tools to manage it. We can learn from each other. Take action now. Take back your life and turn debilitating anxiety into motivational anxiety.
