How your anxiety is impacting the way you make decisions
Anxiety can destroy our lives and impact our decision making ability if we allow it to. These are the techniques that can help us thrive.
by: E.B. Johnson
Millions of people around the world live with various forms of anxiety that make it hard for them to function, or even make basic decisions. This paralysis is toxic, and can permeate across all levels of our life to create a chaos of emotions and poisonous responses that destroy our chances at happiness.
You can learn how to cope with your anxiety, and you can learn how to become a better decision-maker by embracing your fears for what they are. When we know what we’re afraid of, and when we know why we react in the ways that we do, we can become the master of our triggers and find more peace in the process. Don’t let your anxiety become the monster that determines the course of your life. Take control by finding comfort in the journey.
Anxiety is a constant hurdle.
Anxiety is a cruel mistress to live with, and a constant hurdle that we have to. face and redefine. When you live with anxiety, you live constantly with an array of various worries and fears that can paralyze you and make it impossible to make the tough decisions that life so often requires. Anxiety impacts everything from the way we see the world to the way we see ourselves. If you want to get better at coping with it, especially where your decision making is involved, you have to learn to embrace it and understand it for what it really is.
Fear and anxiety is the way our body naturally responds to stress in our environments. Those who live with or experience anxiety might experience a range of symptoms and reactions, ranging from physiological reactions like sweating, shortness of breath and dizziness — all the way to mental and emotional responses like locking up, or lashing out.
It’s not easy living with anxiety. It requires us to step up to the plate for ourselves and get proactive about finding peace through understanding. When we identify our triggers, get honest about how we fell, and start to express ourselves in more earnest and creative ways, we can often find our way back to power; but that requires us to dig deep and commit to a journey that’s as long as it is filled with ups and downs. If you’re struggling with an anxiety, that’s paralyzing you or making it impossible to thrive…read on. You can transform your life, and you can start today.
The most common forms of anxiety.
Anxiety is far more than simple nerves or feeling fearful at the idea of doing something new. When you suffer from true anxiety, it becomes impossible to function on a normal level due to your physiological response to stress, as well as your over-the-top emotional reactions.
Panic disorders
Not all anxiety bears with it the trademark signs of panic like shortness of breath, chest pain and dizziness — but the same can not be said of panic disorders. Those living with panic disorders find themselves reacting both mentally and physiologically to the stress of their anxiety. They can feel like they’re having a heart attack, as their anxiety results in dizzy spells, overwhelming feelings of rage or helplessness, and even physical symptoms like excessive perspiration, nausea, dizziness and shortness of breath.
Social anxieties
Social anxiety is a hard form to live with, and one that is truly corrosive to our relationships and personal lives. When you suffer from social anxiety, you carry a heavy fear of being criticized, and you live in terror of being humiliated, ostracized, or otherwise embarrassed or confronted in public. The person with social anxiety limits their relationships, and can also limit the way they live their lives — all in order to avoid any potential social embarrassment or confrontation.
Generalized anxiety disorder
Those who suffer with generalized anxiety disorder (or GAD) find themselves worrying about practically everything and all the time. They feel anxious no matter what they do, and they worry about things both big and small for a period of 6 months or longer. It’s an intense way to live, and one that is both exhausting and draining. It also prevents us from making the best judgements for ourselves, our families and our lives, because it disrupts the way we perceive everything around us.
Phobias
When you have a specific phobia, you might find yourself operating relatively normally until confronted with your trigger. Or, you might find yourself living a life paralyzed constantly in fear of encountering that trigger. Either way, this form of anxiety is toxic and forces us to limit both our personal experiences and even the relationships we share with others. There are hundreds of types of phobias, each as valid as the last; and each requires honest addressing in order to cope realistically.
How anxiety impacts our ability to make decisions.
Anxiety doesn’t just prevent us from getting the things we deserve, it can prevent us from making important decisions that direct the course of our lives. Stop letting your fear impact your judgement. Enhance the quality of your life by enhancing your understanding of the ways in which your fear is impacting your happiness.
Feed the need for control
Anxiety feeds our human needs for control, and our desire for precise certainty in our environment. We’re creatures of habit, and that can mean that we try desperately to control our routines and environments within these habits. The problem with that, however, is that life often has other plans in mind — which can lead to a clashing of realities that leaves us feeling frail and broken by the anxiety that then riddles our realizations.
Overwhelmed emotions
When it comes to our sense of judgement and decision making, both our emotions and our rationale play a big part. Making decisions comes down to 2 parts: what our emotions tell us to do, and what our brains tell us to do. If we’re not careful, our emotions can overwhelm our logic and lead to imbalanced decisions, and emotional overwhelm that makes it impossible to see clearly. Solid decisions, that result in positive wins for us, have to come from a place of balance between the two. Anxiety, however, makes us lean into our emotions every single time; shutting down our rational brain.
Low self-worth
Anxiety wrecks our self-esteem and perpetuates the idea that we aren’t good enough to do well, or that we aren’t worthy of doing what we want to do. When anxiety is in charge, it tells you no and it prevents you from taking advantage of important opportunities. The longer you allow this erosion of confidence to go on, the harder it is to make solid, worthwhile decisions that add (rather than detract) from your time here on this planet. It causes you to turn away from the good, in favor of bad things that reaffirm your low personal estimates of value.
Avoidance and playing it safe
Life is a tricky dance, and one that requires us to play it safe as much as it requires us to take brazen risks. If your anxiety has taken the driver’s seat, it can cause you to invest in a major game of avoidance, and the overall life tactic of playing it safe at all costs. This high avoidance shuts the door on tons of major accomplishments and life opportunities that might otherwise provide us with happiness and fulfillment. The longer your anxiety runs the show, the more you’ll find yourself lagging behind and playing it too safe to function.
Impulse control
Anxiety impacts our impulse control, and it impacts the way we cope and function with the stress and pressure of decision making. When you live with anxiety, even the simplest of decisions can manifest an intense emotional and physiological response. Over time, you might find yourself resorting to risky or unhealthy lifestyle behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse, binge eating and even gambling. The more you resort to these distractions, the greater the conflicts in your life can become, leading to increased levels of anxiety and a further erosion of judgement.
Endless what-ifs
There is, perhaps, no phrase that the chronic worrier is more familiar with than “what if”. Suffering with anxiety, you begin to use your worry as a form of problem-solving. While you think this helps you plan for the future, what it primarily does is help you to focus on all the potential disasters you can imagine. Making truly beneficial and efficient decisions requires us to find the balance between imaging the worst and expecting the best (something our anxiety refuses to do).
The best techniques for coping with your crippling anxiety.
While most forms of anxiety require the help and treatment of a licensed medical professional, there are also concrete steps we can take to help cope with our anxiety and overcome the way it impacts our life. When we accept our emotions for what they are, and commit to being more honest, open and aligned across our planes of wellbeing — we can find transformative new strengths within ourselves.
1. Get professional help
There is no denying the power of professional help when it comes to coping with a crippling anxiety that’s clouding our judgement. Mental health professionals can give a clear diagnosis, which then provides a clearer path forward to healing. They can also provide therapies like cognitive-behavioral therapy (or CBT) and even medications which can help us manage the neuro-chemical side of our issues. Getting professional help requires us to commit to getting better, however, and opening up to a new way of seeing things.
Prioritize your mental and emotional wellbeing in the same way that you prioritize your physical wellbeing. If you would see a doctor for a bad cough or a high fever, then you need to give the same considerations to the crippling anxiety that is preventing you from living in a happy and peaceful state of being.
There’s no shame in finding someone that can help you sort through your anxiety issues. There’s nothing taboo about taking the medication that can help bring your brain back to equilibrium. When it comes to anxiety, there can be a lot of factors at play, and most of them are beyond our control. Pinpoint those factors so you can get a clear plan of moving forward. Find a mental health professional or licensed therapist that can help you work through your hangups and empower yourself to attach tomorrow with confidence.
2. Find creative outlets
Let’s face it — not everyone has the financial resources or access to treatment that anxiety often requires. What do you do when therapy or expensive professionals aren’t in play? There are ways to create your own therapeutic practices that can help you cope with anxieties, or the fears and worries you hold frozen when it comes to your future (and life). It just requires us to look at our fears creatively, while finding the things that empower us to face up to our uncomfortable emotions.
Aromatherapy, journalling, and meditation are just some small examples of ways you can bring a few minutes of quiet to an anxious mind. There’s no right or wrong way to engage in these practices, and they’re flexible for just about any lifestyle or personal requirement.
Carve out time into your day — every day — and spend it just being with yourself, away from the external sources that cause you stress. Engage in something that takes over your mind for a while, or at least helps you to clear it temporarily. Write down how you’re feeling, or paint it into a picture. Be present in your body and learn how to sit still and just work through the sifting emotions that are pushing you against the wall.
3. Know your triggers
For many, our anxiety has identifiable triggers that sets us off or otherwise makes it hard for us to operate. This is especially true when it comes to making big decisions, or otherwise calling the shots on some experience that holds weight or value in our lives. By knowing your triggers, and learning how to spot them before they have a chance to upset your life, you can gain a powerful new means of control and peace in your day-to-day living.
Take some time to figure out what it is that’s sending you into an anxious spiral. Spot the obvious contributors, like poor sleep and too much caffeine — but look for more subtle causes too, like your relationships at work or the conflicts you’re avoiding with your partner.
Once you know what your triggers are, you can get better at building up the coping mechanisms that help you to navigate the overwhelming emotion they present you with. You can limit your exposure to these elements, or you can just get more precise at dealing with them once you’ve identified them in your space. Look for little solutions that allow you to adjust with the least amount of interrupting, and look for systems that allow you to relax into your need to call the shots.
4. Lean into routines
Routines can be a great comfort when we’re feeling stressed or when we’re dealing with a lot of heavy and complicated emotions. If you’re stuck at home and it’s taking a big toll on your mental and emotional wellbeing, then it’s worth trying out a routine to bring yourself some stability. When we lean into a routine, we take a lot of the pressure off of ourselves and give our brains the ability to focus on something more productive.
Work out a routine that works for you and do your best to follow through on it every day. Start in the morning, with a routine that allows you to set your tone, and focus a lot on your emotions and things that equal feeling better — not worse.
As soon as you wake up, drink a large glass of water. If you’re looking for an energy spike to help you conquer goals around the house, kick things off with a short, brisk run or a medium-intensity yoga routine. This will get your heart rate up, and help to get your adrenaline into gear too. Follow throughout the day with prioritized tasks, and limit yourself to low-intensity, low-priority tasks in the afternoon (when your energy starts to wane).
5. Align your wellbeing
Often the anxiety we feel is a result of a misalignment of wellbeing. When your mental and emotional health doesn’t match your physical health, it can lead to a major disruption and a feeling of unease that’s hard to pinpoint. It’s important that we align our physical health with our mental health, so that we can thrive as the fully rounded human beings that we are; capable of all the brilliant and complex things that we’ve always dreamed of.
Don’t just focus on your fears and the insecurities invoked by your anxiety. Get focused on creating opportunities that empower and align your physical and mental health by boosting the overall shape of your body and your mind. Whip your body back into shape and allow your mind to become a part of that process for a holistic approach to tackling your fears.
You can try adding dietary supplements, you can change the way you eat, and the level of exercise you maintain. Keep your body and mind healthy in tandem and then use that newly found strength to cope with the anxiety that’s making it hard to make up your mind. The better you feel on the inside and the outside, the better equipped you will be to deal with the hardship and obstacles that life throws our way.
6. Start a pattern of questioning
Perhaps the biggest reason our anxiety gets in the way of our judgements and decision making, is its ability to shut out our rational mind. When our fears and our insecurities loom large, it can cause us to close up and react — rather than stand back and take a removed assessment of what’s going on. We have to create a pattern of questioning if we want to cope with and overcome our anxiety; we have to question everything — especially our thoughts — and ensure we’re thinking through all the possibilities before we react and escalate the situation.
Whenever you feel those scary and negative emotions and thoughts getting in the way, you have to consciously remove yourself and start questioning those feelings in a brutally honest way. Question everything. Question every thought you have and every fear that manifests. Question your motives, and question the real reasons behind your reactions. Don’t shy away from the truth.
The more you question how you’re reacting, and why you react that way, the more you will come to realize the reality behind your emotions. Our feelings are meant to protect us, and they’re meant to shield us from the things that offer potential change or harm. When we give them too much power, however, (like we do when we allow our anxiety to paralyze our decisions) we can find ourselves missing out on important moments in life, and important opportunities to thrive and grow. Question who you are, what you want and why you feel the way you do every time the doubt and anxiety set in.
7. Foster acceptance
Acceptance is a transformative gift that we give to ourselves, and one which can only come from within. When we accept who we are and what we want, we enable ourselves to take charge of our destinies and move toward the things we need with greater confidence and less anxiety. If you want to cope with your anxiety, learn how to live with it and master it by fostering acceptance at every level of self.
Look your fears bravely in the eye and accept them for what they are. If you have nightmares over failing that big exam or missing out on that promotion, embrace them — and then imagine the full scope of what the fallout could be, both negative and positive.
Accept your shortcomings and your failures in equal measure with your strengths, your victories and your successes. Stop turning away from the uncomfortable emotions, and embrace them as a core part of who you are. The more acceptance we cultivate in our lives, the greater peace we will find in the journey. Life is not some sum of what we get right or what we get wrong. It’s a culmination of experiences that inform our authentic core self. Embrace journey for what it is.
Putting it all together…
We are living in anxious times, and it can often feel impossible to navigate the tough decisions that are still required from so many of us. Our anxiety can seriously hamper the way we think, and the way we judge our circumstances, but we can overcome this tendency by getting real about our anxiety and how it impacts our day-to-day wellbeing.
If you’re privileged enough to have access to professional help, utilize that help and allow it to unlock the initial realizations that can help you resolve and cope with your various anxieties and fears. Don’t shy away from the way you feel. Find creative outlets that allow you to work through the way you’re feeling, and look for the triggers that lead to inevitable spirals or time-freezing feelings of personal defeat. Lean into routines and find comfort in the things you can control, even while you learn to live with the things you cannot control. Anxiety is a paralyzing thing to live with, but we can overcome it when we align our wellbeing and learn how to institute a pattern of questioning in our lives. Stop letting your fear hold you back from the things that you rightfully deserve. Foster acceptance in your life and use it to begin the journey of moving past your anxiety. It can be done, but you have to commit today.
