Photo by Marquise Kamanke on Unsplash
Step 1: Understand
We are living through a moment of significant change and unprecedented global disruption. Naturally, this evokes feelings of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. This is a perfectly normal and healthy reaction. When faced with new and potentially dangerous situations, your brain is wired to alert you. It does this by releasing chemicals, which you experience as a sensation in your body identified as fear, stress, or anxiety. Your brain is just trying to protect you. You’re working as designed. Nothing has gone wrong.
Step 2: Allow
We have a tendency to resist these negative emotions, but this just amplifies them further and causes us to suffer. We’re anxious about our anxiety. We’re afraid of being afraid. These unnecessary layers cause us to feel overwhelmed. Our resistance to them only tightens their grip on us.
The only solution is to allow the fear, allow the anxiety, allow the worry. Emotions don’t always feel good, but they always serve a purpose. Fear and anxiety are trying to focus your attention to a perceived danger in your environment so you can take appropriate action.
Step 3: Step into the gap
Viktor Frankl’s quote is one my personal mantras. The point being that the gap between stimulus and response is where we have the power to make a choice. We tend get swept up from stimulus to automatic response, forgetting that we even have a choice.
Hit the pause button.
Understand that how you choose to think about the situation at hand will determine how you feel about it. This does not mean ignoring the facts or resisting any negative emotions. It means honouring where you are and then taking the next best logical step:
Step 4: Gratitude
Gratitude is the easiest and fasted antidote to anxiety. When you’re anxious, your mind is in a future that exists only in your head. Finding things to be grateful for in the present moment brings you back to reality. It’s a simple tool that refocuses your mind’s attention back to a more grounded place. And where attention goes, energy flows.
Anxiety and gratitude can’t live in the same head
Can’t find a reason to be grateful? Try these:
Your home
Look around your home, look at all your stuff. If you’re reading this, you have access to technology and the internet- information at your fingertips in the comfort of your own home. There is a roof over your head and you’re safe. You probably have a comfortable bed, clean water, and electricity. Not everyone has these things. Take a moment to be grateful for that.
Your body
Look at your body. You’re probably healthy. Think of all the systems and cells in your body that function perfectly and synergistically without any effort on your part. Be thankful for your ability to see, to listen to your favourite songs, and taste your favourite foods. There’s thousands of things to be thankful for in your body alone- most of which you are blissfully unaware of. Relish in that for just a few seconds.
Loved ones
Look at your family and friends. Most of them are probably healthy. Are there people in your life that care about your well being and whose well being you care about? Not everyone has that. If you have a pet, be grateful that it isn’t suffering. If you’re worried about your loved ones it means you’re capable of loving, caring, and compassion- and that is a beautiful gift.
Community
Look at all of the people out there working to protect your health while you are safe at home reading this post. There are incredibly smart and talented scientists, doctors, nurses, front-line workers, government officials and staff focused on keeping you safe. All they’re asking you to do is stay home. That’s something to be grateful for.
Nature
Look outside. Be thankful for the fact that it’s the dawn of spring. The trees and flowers are about to bloom and they don’t care about any virus. The natural world isn’t panicked. Let the changing of the seasons remind you that life will go on, the world will keep turning, and that nothing is permanent, not even this.
The science of gratitude
There have been many studies done on how cultivating an attitude of gratitude impacts your mental health. At a neurobiological level, gratitude regulates the sympathetic nervous system that activates our anxiety responses, and at the psychological level, it conditions the brain to filter the negative and focus on the positive.
It’s free, it’s easy, and you can do do it anywhere.
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
