Our country; with its breathalyzer agenda, raises another thorn every day and causes us to live with a pain that almost stings our eyes, turns each of us into a pile of anxiety.
This inextricable cycle of anxiety prevents us from breathing. Worse still, it pushes us to a point where we forget to breathe or are no longer ashamed.
Anxiety starts when we think about our worries. When we start thinking about our worries, we become anxious. This isn’t always a bad thing either. By managing our worries correctly, it also guides us to take beneficial and healthy steps. It draws dozens of scenarios in our minds and makes ‘what if’ simulations happen. In this sense, anxiety is actually an attempt to control the future, in which dozens of options are spinning in the head.
This is why makes us anxious, even relentlessly. Forcing us to deal with future uncertainties and work to make things work out…
Worry has to make us feel bad in order to do its job right. However, when the state of anxiety spirals out of control, its dire consequences arise.
In an effort to feel more control and less emotional pain, the mind begins to act like a constant worry machine. The overwhelming power of this thought and emotion raises anxiety to such levels and gets so out of control that it makes us worry even more and feel like we can’t handle all that emotion. In summary, the more we enter the spiral of anxiety, the more anxious we become.
If so, let’s prevent or suppress anxiety. Is not it? No it is not.
Suppressing thoughts and emotions never works. On the contrary, it paradoxically increases anxiety and worry, reinforcing the belief that worries are uncontrollable and prevents us from finding ways to deal with it all.
In other words, it is not right to prevent anxiety, nor is it actually possible. Suppressing and ignoring worry obviously doesn’t work, but at least it’s possible to make it healthy.
Worries can be reduced by plans and actions.
So, in case of anxiety that wears you out, start thinking about the problem step by step:
– Are the issues that you worry about and that make you anxious within your control and influence?
– If so, take time to reflect on them and come up with solutions.
– Make a good plan to try one or more of these solutions. Take notes. Detail.
– Start with small, doable steps. If you keep your plan vague or too ambitious, you are less likely to succeed.
– Start stepping. See how it goes. Be kind to yourself, not harsh and cruel. Remember that every step taken, no matter how small, has benefits.
– Try the solution and evaluate how it works.
– Be proud of yourself.
Worries beam us into the future. It allows us to see our concerns there. If there are really correct and clear steps that you can do and take today, take them. Then back to the present. Do not get stuck in the future framed by those concerns. Because life is not in the future, but in the present.
Write, draw, produce, participate in volunteer activities, benefit society, voice your concerns, hug your friends and family. Focus on your own action and influence, not the area you can’t control. Remember, it is the area where you are most free…
Believe me, as you take action with this awareness and start to take steps, the clouds of anxiety will graciously dissipate – albeit for a while!
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Reference and reading: Tracy Dennis-Tiwary “The Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even if It Feels Bad)”
