What to do if anxiety creeps up on you
Firstly, there are lots of techniques you can learn to avert anxiety, but what happens if, like the person I met on my walk, you smile politely and quietly refuse those types of things??! 🤔
Fear and anxiety in these times have sprung from a lack of routine. It’s the enforced shift in our daily activities, rather than a change that we’ve chosen for ourselves.
Having the control taken is also another factor to take into consideration.
Now, at this point, the anxiety is a mild discomfort. But to grow it needs feeding. 😈
What feeds the fear and anxiety? Being unable or unwilling to be active in a way that meets our needs.
Let me make an aside here and we’ll come back to the inactive aspect later. There are 2 extremes on a sliding scale: being ‘at cause’ or being ‘at effect’. Those at effect struggle with life in various guises. They have one thing in common, they put the blame of what’s happening to them to a reason that’s outside of themselves. They may blame others or blame the weather or whatever. Those a truly at cause (and this is difficult!) always look inside to find out how they’ve got to where they are and then find a solution. 🥰
To feed the anxiety, then we need to blame anything and everything that’s outside of us and often outside of our control. It is massively disempowering. It’s like pushing all your energy and effort over to someone or something else, there’s a loss of power and all for no good outcome. You still feel anxious and now you’re exhausted too. 😈
If you can move closer to being at cause, you grab back the power and you do this by taking action. Do what feeds you, your soul or your heart, rather than feeding the anxiety. Do something you will love, rather than something that’s a chore. This is what your mind is crying out for. 😊
Creativity, even for non-creatives, often lights up positive neural pathways in the brain . Make something, write something, make up a song or poem, sing, dance, cook, bake…….refresh your mind. 🎨🎼📜🖍
In brief:
1. Starve your anxiety with action – it grows when you’re not active in the right way for your mind
2. Be as much at cause as you can by being active in a way that delights you – creativity helps
3. Accept anxiety as a norm, it’s our mind telling us we need a re-set
You can alleviate mild anxiety using some of my free resources here or you can have a look at a very powerful and yet gentle set of techniques in Time Line Therapy®