Functioning with Anxiety!

Hey guys, sorry it has been so long since I last wrote. I am trying to get everything in order to bill insurance. I think I am finally there! My goal is going to be to do a new post at least every other week. This week I decided to focus on anxiety. I would say that at least 90% of my caseload is people dealing with anxiety and I believe it is something that is just not talked about enough. There are a million memes about anxiety and we are finally talking about what it looks like, but there is just not enough talk about solutions. I have had several new clients tell me that they have been on meds for anxiety for years or been seeing a therapist for years and they still report that they don't have any coping skills. This breaks my heart because most of us with anxiety have what I call functional anxiety. We still get through the day and we still do what we need to do, but we do it while carrying the weight of anxiety. It is heavy and exhausting and we don't really know what to do to try to lessen the effects.

Today I am going to share a useful skill for dealing with anxiety. Most people with anxiety are also overthinkers. It's like we can't find a way to turn off our minds. One of the things that I have found helps the most is to learn to be mindful and recognize our thoughts. Once we can learn to be mindful of what is happening in our brain, we can then learn to compartmentalize our thoughts. "Is this something I have to deal with right now? Is it something I have enough information to process right now? Is there truth to this? Can I change or control this?" Most of the time if we can acknowledge the intrusive thoughts we can quiet them as well. Thoughts are kinda like a toddler saying mom, mom , mom, mom.....if we acknowledge them and say, "hey I see you, give mommy a minute and then I can help you," it is often enough to quiet the thought. Once we can recognize what the thought is, we can then decide what we need to do with it. We can ask ourselves ," where is my evidence?" If there is evidence, then move onto what is my worst case scenario? Once you know the worst case you can make a plan of what you would do in that situation and then the thought can be put in the already handled mental compartment. If there is no evidence then we can say I know this is just a thought that I was having and now I can put it in the dismiss mental box because I have nothing that points to this happening and I know that sometimes my thoughts can be misleading. So an example of this is I am having problems at work and I am having a lot of thoughts that tell me I am going to get fired. Where is my evidence? Have I been getting written up at work? Have I been being talked to about my performance? If my answer is no then I get to dismiss the thought and know that this is likely a story I am telling myself. If the answer is yes then I look at what could I be doing different and where can I improve and then take it a step further, if they did fire me what would I do? I know that I am employable, I know that I fight for what I need so I could probably find a job pretty quick. Once we have a plan for our worst case scenario then it doesn't need to take up space in our head, so now we can put in the already have a plan mental box.

Becoming mindful of the intrusive and ruminating thoughts in our head takes away some of their power. They only remain powerful when we try to fight their existence. Calling out our thoughts, saying I see you and I can challenge what you are saying allows us to gain control again. Sometimes our thoughts are regarding things we can't change or can't control the outcome of. This is the same concept, acknowledge the thought, but then put it in the no control box. There is no point in worrying about something that we can't change, but if we don't call out the thought we can't control the thought.

I hope this is helpful to someone out there. Living with anxiety is exhausting, but the good news is there are coping skills that can help. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions and please share this post. You never know who may need to hear this :)