6 Stressful Things That Cause Me Anxiety
And What I Did To Prevent Them.
If you can’t do anything else, Just Wing it!
This would be my motto, but perhaps this wouldn’t cut it as my beating heart would nearly render me unconscious at times, but at times you have to put on a facade of the display so that a bully might not pick on you. I think I have had anxiety ever since I was little but never truly got diagnosed with it. There are perhaps many things, I was never diagnosed with. But that seems like a tale for another day.
Anxiety has always been there, whenever I would make an action that would put me in the limelight, I would definitely space out, perhaps the first sign would be a sudden rush, my heart would race and I would probably find it difficult to breathe. As far as I can remember, this would be the process of me encountering this phenomenon.
At one point in time, I thought I was a coward, but soon afterward I realized that it was anxiety, it wasn’t that I was afraid, it just wasn’t in my control — this panicking feeling that I used to get. Where I was from, mental illnesses are frowned upon and are moreover classified as a case of insanity. Thus no one really ever cared to go to a psychiatrist or vice-versa.
1. In A Fight, Anxiety Sometimes Kicks in
Imagine a situation, a kid is being picked on and he has to fight two people at once — but you get your heart racing, so much so you would faint. So you lock yourself around the person tightly so don’t lose consciousness, plus they would definitely kick you — that would suck. But that would help control my racing heart.
The pain would do the trick, and in a few seconds I would regain control and then would defend my way out until the other one would tire out, or somebody would break off the fight.
In a Fight, always remember to try to take deep breaths and lock yourself like a tight hug, as hard as you can with the other guy — as hard as you can.
Advice: Better Get Some Sense Knocked Into You. Sometimes forceful blows can help you focus on what actually matters. I know it’s a risky move, you could even get a kick in the groin but even a second’s chance to spare, you can kick their teeth in.
2. When I Write a Judgement, Opinion, or Criticism.
It usually happens, when I’m either in a discussion or discourse and when I unknowingly write or pass judgment, of how this will affect the other person causes me anxiety. This is a hard fight or flight scenario.
It depends on the person, you are passing a comment towards, but what I often do is to write two or more different perspectives towards a story, so that I’m able to convey the good and the bad as well so that I can give constructive criticism. I put more time into creating a comment that would leave an everlasting impression on the other person until then.
The thing just disappears and when you do this by distracting yourself, it always works, it will calm, and perhaps no one would even read what you write. Just be courteous when you write something or write it on a piece of paper
Advice: Relax Take Deep breaths, You can delete it if you want to or let it stay. It’s up to you. It is better to delete the root cause or mute the conversation or just end it completely so that you can feel better.
3. Overthinking, a gift through my hyperactivity.
I suffer from ADHD/ADD and sometimes I can overthink a lot that causes me a lot of stress. That stress gives me a lot of anxiety as well. Thus whenever I experience overthinking I use that time to open my memos and write it all down. It’s better than just stressing yourself completely.
My drafts are perhaps hundreds of things that I have written while I overthink. When you let your hands do the talking when you overthink that can help you towards building ideas into a reality, that perhaps can make overthinking a productive activity as well.
Advice: Use that hyperactivity to good use by writing everything that comes to mind. Just start writing dissipating that overthinking to good use. The more you deviate your thinking towards writing, the easier it will get. As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword, put that overthinking to good use.
4. Family and Friends
The words they usually say at the wrong time. Imagine a person who experiences the harshest of things from the ones they love and care for. I have perhaps experienced the most traumatizing things from my friends and family. It has given me anxiety, and it has perhaps given me second thoughts when I was growing that why I do live? and who do I live for?
It hurts the most from the people you gain your hope from. We all love for something, for someone. I believe we should live for ourselves first then other people. Because our well being and ourselves matters.
We matter and You matter, yes you. Thus if you feel such negativity from the people around you, I know the pain of feeling antagonizing remarks and the stigma, it bears.
I want you to know that sometimes, it is better to release all your tears. All that pain building up inside you is bad, and it will hurt you in ways deep down because of the anxiety building up depression that will affect all the other things in your life at a slower pace if you left them unchecked.
Advice: Let the tears flow, scream if you can, or channel it through a therapeutic tool like writing.
5. Procrastination
This is perhaps something that happens to me too often. ADD gets triggered and I might leave a task altogether if it isn’t challenging. Thus, most of the time I would leave it for a long while and things get delayed till the last moment. Not that I can’t do them even then, I have still been able to achieve great results. It’s just that higher the risk, the more I am motivated to do it on time.
If the risk isn’t high, even if the reward is small. I will start working on it. But if both are low, I might delay and stop doing it altogether. Sometimes, it is a calculable error over the years, procrastination has given me a lot of anxiety. But I have managed to find another way around it.
Advice: Take small breaks in between working, like for example if you dedicate 1 hour of study, break that one hour into 15 minutes of study followed by a 5-minute break. That break can utilize procrastination energy consumption and I can easily jump back on the horse with full motivation.
Always have a 1/4 of the time for breaks in between during any work that you are hoping to do. Set small goals in that time frame and you will make ends meet.
6. Everyday health decline conditions
My health has been falling apart this year, it wasn’t always like this. It’s just when you go through the stuff I have been through, sooner or later all symptoms do arise once. Whether its a stroke, accidents, injuries, depression — I believe I have seen my fair share.
This year perhaps I got a severe dosage of anxiety, at first, I experienced a hearing loss, then I experienced vision loss, then I experienced stress headaches that lasted for days, now I have been experiencing symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Everything in my body just keeps giving me opportunities to experience anxiety.
I feel like the guy from “The man who was a Hospital” by Jerome K. Jerome — Fantastic story indeed, you should read it from his book “Three Men in a Boat”.
The main character keeps on hearing symptoms from leaflets and other people — feeling more anxious by the day, thus he opens a book one day and looks up every symptom of every disease there is. He gets terrified that he can’t find his heart, nor his brain, and everything is just fiddled in a mix. Growing severely anxious he decided to go to the doctor.
He visits the doctor and tells him he is going to die, he read things of symptoms in a book and he is scared. The doctor did a diagnosis and gave him a prescription, with no drugs but a piece of advice written on a note,
“It ran I lb beefsteak every six hours; ten-mile walk every night; bed at sharp every night; and don’t stuff your mind with things don’t understand”.
I’ll take up that advice, and so should you. It’s better to strive towards a solitude of mind as it impacts the health in such a wonderful fashion along with the mentioned prescriptions as well.
Thank you for reading.
Stay Blessed and Stay Safe!
With Love ❤️
