Tips for Dealing with Anxiety

My grandma always says, “Laugh today and cry tomorrow.”

It’s the ebb and flow of life. 

Two weeks ago I was having the best week ever. Like seriously. I was floating. 

Last week though, not so much floating. In fact, very much the opposite of floating.

Even after the stellar week I had had, this last one decided to rock me back a little bit. That’s fine. It’s life. I can’t change that. I can change how I respond to it though. After years of dealing with my bipolar disorder, I’m pretty confident in finding my way out of these waves. It doesn’t mean that they don’t suck though.

We just had a week where the hits kept on coming y’all.  

Our brains are wired to always sense danger. In the way way back days, like beginning human days, we had to always be on the lookout for things trying to kill us. Even though we don’t really have that anymore, our big ol brains don’t know that. 

The way we’re wired to perceive danger is very literal. It’s why we can creep ourselves out by thinking there’s someone standing behind us. That’s how literal our brain is about interpreting things. 

It responds the same way to the news, to stressful movies, reading intense books, etc. So when we do have these weeks *cough*years*cough* where it’s just one horrible thing after another, we’re constantly being put into fight, flight, or freeze mode. 

We cannot be in these states for prolonged periods of time without our bodies screaming at us to find safety. It just wants to have a minute to not be on watch.

This is why I had to tap out. I very literally could not handle processing new information. Not just the news either. School was impossible because I couldn’t retain information or focus. Forget figuring out what to eat because I couldn’t, for the life of me, put together a meal in my head let alone actually make it. Don’t even ask me about future plans because I am not even hearing real words when you speak. Anything coming at me was garbled and didn’t stick in my brain long enough to figure out.

It is okay to tap out when you get to this point. It’s okay to tap out well before it actually. 

I know with social media, it feels like we have to keep up with every injustice, every tragedy, and every outrage because if we don’t, it means we don’t care. That is not it at all. 

There is absolutely a limit on what you can handle at any given time. 

Once that limit is reached, you are just plain done, honey. 

There is no judgment in that. Your entire body is doing exactly what it has evolved to do, which is keep you safe and alive. 

When you hit these points, remember, your body is working exactly as it should. That’s amazing! It works!

There are ways to deal with the physical response to all this external bullshit to get yourself to a stable spot again.

There’s a build-up and a comedown.

The first thing to realize is that this progression is shaped like a hill. It has an uphill portion and a downhill portion. This means that there’s a space where you ramp up and come down. It’s important to remember this because sometimes it might feel like whatever technique you’re using isn’t working because you still feel that, “aaahhhh!” feeling on the other side of that hill as you come down. That’s totally fine. Think of it like an airplane. It has to pass through the same shit to fly as it does to land. That is what you’re nervous system is doing. The difference is once you start using tools to come out of those fight, flight or freeze modes, it doesn’t take as long to come down.

Call it by it’s name.

If you are feeling anxiety or panic, acknowledge it. Ignoring it will only keep you in that state longer. Take a minute to realize, “Ah shit. I’m feeling anxious right now.” It’s much easier to deal with something when you can name or identify what you’re dealing with.

What did you do or consume recently?

Once you acknowledge that you are in fact feeling anxious, go through your recent activities to see where those feelings might be coming from. I know for myself, last weeks flight and freeze moments were because of seeing everything happening with the California fires, Hurricane Ida, and the flooding on the east coast on top of the Texas abortion ban. It was a lot of external factors. Your triggers could be completely different and honestly not what you expect them to be. 

Sometimes it’s because you just had too much caffeine in one day. Other times it’s because you’ve been binging a high-stress show for a few days. Remember, the brain interprets everything very literally. Even if we KNOW that episode of Criminal Minds is just TV, our nervous systems sometimes don’t and it can have an effect. Try and find what those triggers are and reduce them as much as you can. Step away from news and social media, limit coffee intake or switch to a less stressful show. 

Take slow, measured breaths.

I know taking deep breaths sounds like bullshit, but it actually does work. Like it’s been scientifically proven. When we get anxious, our sympathetic system is kicked on. Literally, the thing that tells us to flight, flee or freeze. It causing our breathing and pulse to increase in case we need to get away from whatever thing is triggering the response is. By slowing down our breathing, we are switching back to the parasympathetic system. This is our normal resting state. It’s not like our normal breathing btw. If you’ve taken a yoga class, it’s very similar to how they instruct breathing. You’re going to breathe in through your nose for a count of 3 or 5. It’s a slow, deep inhale. Then you hold for a count of 3 or 5 and release through the nose for a count of 3 or 5. Again, a slow and measured breath. Do this three or four times to get that breathing and heart rate chilled out. 

Release trapped energies.

Anxiety has a physical response. There’s energy in it. Instead of keeping that energy bottled up, let it out. Go for a run, dance it out, do some weird bodily movements, sing in your car. Let it out of the body. It will not just release the tightness in the body that anxiety caused, but it will tire you out and force you to take deep breaths which, like mentioned before, switching those systems to get you back to level.

Lower your body temperature.

Anxiety raises body temp to get the blood pumping for getting the fuck out of danger. Lowering your body temp requires your body to converse energy and lower your heart rate. This can be done by taking a cool shower (fuck cold because that’s too much), eating an ice cube, splashing your face with cold water, or placing a cold cloth on the chest, face, neck, or wrists. 

Progressive muscle relaxation.

Progressive muscle relaxation is a favorite of mine because not only does it help with anxiety, it just feels real good. All progressive muscle relaxation is, is squeezing and releasing all the muscles in your body in a measured way. Starting with your toes, squeeze and release each part of your body and work up. You know how you do one of those big “good morning” stretches when you wake up? It’s like that. It releases muscle tension and helps your body work adrenaline out of your system. This is also just helpful to do whenever to relieve tight muscles.

Because people are stupid and ruin it for everyone, I have to say I’m not a doctor and this is just my personal experience. I will add though, I’ve been diagnosed bipolar for 7 years and these have been tools I’ve leaned on HEAVILY to help with panic when it comes up.

There are tons of tricks out there to get your body back to a relatively calm state. Some work and some don’t. Just depends on what you personally like and respond to. If you need more suggestions on anxiety management or how to incorporate more restful and relaxing practices into your routine, check out this post by Rebekah, creator of Blissful Wallet. They have a whole list of 38 FREE things that while small, have a big impact on overall mental health.

It’s also important to know that this won’t “get rid” of anxiety. Anxiety is normal. Anxious thoughts are normal. What these techniques do is help get your body from a state that it can’t make rational decisions to where it can. It’s hard to solve a problem when you have a very scared parrot squawking in your ear. We’re trying to quiet that parrot so you can deal with a problem as rationally as possible.

Whether you have a mental illness or not, it’s important to know how to recognize when your body needs a break. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about what’s going on. It means you can’t effectively care about what’s going on.

Tap out for a spell and bring all that energy down to a manageable level.

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