ANXIETY RELIEF IN 10-STEPS
Anxiety is an unpleasant emotion. It ranges from general worry to panic attacks. Somewhere in the middle are amped up responses to unexpected situations. Covid-19 Stay-at-Home orders were sudden and unexpected in Southern California. Life changed on a dime. Why have some people adapted easily to the restrictions while others are consumed with what-if scenarios? What causes debilitating stress?
I work with clients who struggle to maintain calm, clear thinking while stressed. Early on we work on mindfulness and cognitive behavioral (CBT) skills that help them regain equilibrium and start problem solving. In this difficult time, we could all use this skill. I’ll walk you through it using an imaginary anxious client named Chad.
MINDFULNESS EXERCISE
If you feel agitated, please do the following exercise first:
1. Sit down. Notice your bottom and thighs against the chair. Plant your feet firmly. Feel the floor underneath your feet.
2. Lock onto the sound of your breath. Inhale, exhale. Slow the exhale by counting backwards in your head from four as you breath out. Inhale slowly, fill the belly with air. Exhale again the same way. Repeat until breathing is normalized.
3. If you have another mindful way to achieve calm, please use that instead.
*If you have severe anxiety, please contact your medical provider.
Anxiety exercise
Please get paper and pen and write down your answers to the following modified CBT technique:
1. Identify the Trigger
Everything about Covid-19 is a trigger. Are you specifically worried about losing your job, paying your bills, or a loved one getting sick? -- For Chad, our imaginary client, the trigger is “not being able to pay my bills.”
2. Identify Your Feelings
Ask yourself, “When I think about not being able to pay my bills, I feel (fill in a feeling)?” – Chad feels frustrated, scared, abandoned, worthless, embarrassed, and weak.
3. Identify Your Thoughts or Beliefs
What do you believe about the trigger or yourself? What are you telling yourself? — Chad shares his thoughts: “I’m going to use up all of my savings, go broke, be homeless, and have to live in my car. I’ll have to move back in with my parents. I will die of embarrassment. Everyone will think I am a loser and laugh behind my back.”
4. Identify Your Actions or Behavior
What are you doing in response to these beliefs and thoughts? Are you drinking, smoking, or sleeping to avoid the problem? Are you hiding from your friends and family? Specifically, what are you doing? — Chad is avoiding people, crying, sleeping, eating, and smoking a lot.
5. Putting it all together
Let’s write our answers as a story. Here is the basic structure: When I think about (the trigger) I feel (emotions) because I (believe or think) and I find myself (acting this way). – Chad’s anxiety story reads like this:
When I think about not being able to pay my bills, I feel scared and embarrassed because I believe I might have to live in my car or worse, move back in with my parents. What will my friends think? I just know they’ll judge me. I’m so exhausted. I smoke weed and sleep all day. If I eat, I eat junk food. I’m such a loser. I just don’t want to talk to anybody.
Sometimes writing out the negative story is enough to break the cycle of anxiety. There is something about writing it down and reading it out loud that tends to reset the mind. However, there is another step in our exercise.
Flip the Anxiety Script
Once the anxiety story is written down, it’s time to challenge it. Challenge how true, likely, or set-in-stone each belief, feeling, and behavior is. I’ll show you how it’s done using Chad’s story:
1. The Trigger
It stays the same. The problem is still the problem. Chad’s worry is “not being able to pay my bills.”
2. Challenge Thoughts and Beliefs
Are you a loser? Has your family ever said you are a failure? Are your friends cruel and judgmental? Have you ever not been able to pay your bills? If yes, what did you do about it? Have you ever had to live in your car? – Challenge all beliefs and assumptions. If any of them are true, leave them in. If not, cross them out.
3. Challenge Feelings
As you challenge and debunk your thoughts, are your feelings shifting? For example, if it is not true that your family and friends will think you’re a failure, do you feel more or less scared? Do you feel your heart rate and breathing slowing down? Is your chest and neck less tight? – Write down how you feel now.
4. Challenge Behavior
With more accurate thoughts and feelings, how do you imagine your behavior will change? Will you do anything differently? Can you move from paralysis to peacefulness, to thinking clearly enough to create an action plan? – Are there one or more things you can imagine doing to feel more in control of the problem? — Write it down.
5. Putting it all Together
Now that we have clear, realistic, and true information, let’s rewrite Chad’s negative anxiety story:
When I think about not being able to pay my bills, I still get nervous, but I feel calmer knowing I have friends and family who have always believed in me. My bedroom is empty and waiting for me at my family’s home. I will not be homeless. When I think of how much my family loves me, I feel warm and safe. When I am ready, I will clarify my company’s plans for reopening after Covid-19 passes. I will call coworkers and see what they’re doing; find out what government programs are available to me; and look at my finances and determine where I can decrease spending.
That is how we decrease anxiety and begin to think clearly. Notice that the problem still exists, but now we have the ability to think and plan.
There is one caveat to this exercise. Sometimes the problem really is something to be concerned about and we’re justified in our beliefs. However, the process still stands. Just the act of writing down our thoughts, feelings, and actions is enough to get us out of an anxiety spiral and bring clarity to any situation.
Moving from anxiety to clarity is an art, and for many of us it takes practice. If you would like to learn more please book a call.
Brigitte Knight is a Human Design educator and mentor as well as a Human Design informed counselor. She loves teaching people to use their Designs to improve their relationships.
She helps former Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others manage religious trauma, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, and depression.
Her life’s experience as a Registered Nurse, therapist, ex-Jehovah’s Witness, and Human Design practitioner since 2006 can help you start living your best life.