03 Jul Anxiety and Stress and how to combat it
Anxiety and Stress are probably the most difficult emotions and feelings to combat even at the easiest of times. They come in like a storm, create some upset and off they go, only to return again throughout our day.
So what is it that causes these things? Well from my own experience and learning I discovered anxiety stemmed from me living in the future, always worrying about what was going to happen next. Stress was my thoughts towards a situation and actually was me putting pressure on myself.
Overtime I learnt that my anxiety was also being triggered by past experiences I had been through and fear towards future events or events I had not healed and moved forwards from that could of been connected to my past. So the first step was working on my self-love and accepting where I was in the present moment and knowing I was always going to be ok and ‘safe’.
Feeling safe was what I needed to feel in order to prevent my emotions getting out of control and putting myself into a state of fear. Anxiety then became more recognisable as me thinking with fear and actually I HAD the control over my mind not my emotions controlling me.
The ways I started to help myself was by meditating, practicing mindfulness and doing anything to calm my mind; igniting my inner child, doing things that made me happy, not putting pressure on myself, being kind to my wellbeing and mental health. Deep breathing also helped tremendously.
When it came to stress, undeniably some things were out of my control like pressure from bosses, needing to complete tasks because of deadlines. I started to see that actually, there were deadlines on the table but it was perfectly acceptable to do my best and that was enough. Sometimes others put the pressure on because they are under pressure-but that’s when its important to be calm, practice mindfulness and learn to say ‘no’ when it all gets a bit much.
As I had been through challenging times I was applying past experiences to current situations via my emotions and ending up in state of fear and stress if a similar thing was asked of me. It was about unlearning those past experiences and knowing every experience was different and there were always new lessons to learn that would help me evolve and grow as a person.
Stress can be positive though. It can help us be productive and not procrastinate but its understanding when it doesn’t benefit us and learning ways to cope whether its mindfulness (slowing down what we are doing or stepping away from where we are in order to gain a new perspective) or whether its taking time to practice self care and look after our wellbeing.
Either way life can through us all curve balls that can seem quite frankly, scary and uncomfortable but its key to keeps ourselves calm and let the feeling pass by acknowledging it without delving too deep into feeling it so therefore allowing our emotions to dictate us. Our minds are precious things and we must take care of them like we would our children or pets- show it love and peace not argue with it or get angry.
They key to feeling free from the anxiety and stress is to free ourselves from it by re training the mind to think another way that is more beneficial to us. This comes from a place of peace and calm that is created through Mindfulness, acceptance, love and self awareness of our emotions.