Watch Your Anxiety!

Don’t suppress it but manage it.

I have tested rock bottom so often in the last decade that I have lost context. A legal battle and an abusive relationship have left me in tatters. Anxiety has been commonplace; hence, I am writing this article to design a motivating process.

More than anyone else, this article should serve as a reminder to me on days when my anxiety overcomes rationality.

The past few days have been challenging, and writing has always helped me maintain my sanity.

In this article, I would like to remind myself of what worked while dealing with the uncertainties of the Indian judicial system. Write and bookmark the link for future reference when my brain takes me on a different tangent.

Uncertainty and Expectations

What are the sources of anxiety? Fear & uncertainty that something harmful is about to happen in the future.

Reasons behind anxiety could be due to hormonal imbalance or tragic life moments. For me, it was due to my experience with the Indian judiciary.

It’s impossible to suppress anxiety, but you can learn to handle it with love and care so that it does not disturb your peace. Staying positive could be an effective strategy, but you are dealing with a stubborn animal here. It hits back when it’s least expected.

Mindfulness is a better strategy; I will explain the reasons in the next section.

Mindfulness

As mentioned earlier, it’s impossible to suppress anxiety, but mindfulness helps to manage emotions. There are two stages of mindfulness.

Feel your actions!

To be mindful means feeling all your actions and emotions. For example, I tend to hold dishes very tightly while cleaning them. It indicates that nothing will be enough, and I need to finish the task as quickly as possible. This behavior causes fatigue. It’s impossible to suppress these emotions but relatively easier to feel them. Feeling them requires slowing the process, which happens when I feel the water and dishes in my hand.

Another instance of anxiety is when I am leaving my house. Almost every day, I will come back minutes after leaving the house to check if I have locked the house. It’s because I am always anxious about what lies ahead for the day. By being mindful, I know how the door touched my hand when I left the house. It lets me register simple events like closing the door.

I try to feel every touch, sound, and taste. It slows down the brain factory, which produces anxiety. By doing this, I am not suppressing anxiety but instead slowing down my thoughts to manage it.

Faith

It’s normal to be upset when you run late to a life-altering job interview but get stuck in traffic. You have been jobless for months and have high hopes for this interview. The negative thoughts could be debilitating. Can you suppress these thoughts? No, it’s a reality that a steady and stable income is necessary for the family’s welfare.

Is it possible that you can feel the tension in your hands? Feel the steering wheel and the stress in your lower back. If you can, it will slow down the process, and you can reinforce some positivity. You had a happy childhood, and even though you have seen multiple hiccups in your professional life, another job opportunity might be waiting for you.

Can you control a tragic life event? No, but we all know that change is inevitable. If life is not going your way, there are no guarantees that it will stay the same. Good or bad times are not here to last forever. Life will go up and down, and you cannot control it. The only thing in your control is how you feel about it.

Conclusions

At the start of this article, I said that the purpose of this article is to remind myself. I am not a saint, and my current life situation means I get an anxiety attack now and then.

It’s impossible to suppress them, but I can slow down the process with faith that things will improve. The only thing in my hand is to keep working on myself.

The outcome is out of my control, and I will not let my current life situation distract me from my path.

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