Anxiety

Anyone else feeling anxious lately?

Christmas season seems to do it to a lot of people! I am generally really good at keeping my anxiety in check, but I’m not immune to the pressure that comes this time of year. I am good with living a lean life and my income is steadily increasing. That said, I’ve had some huge expenses lately and my ex quit paying his child support last month. There are times when being a single mom just feels like too much. Our Christmas is going to be more lean that I had hoped and there’s a lot of emotions about it. I am generally really good at focusing on what’s going well with my finances. All our needs are looked after and we really are doing well. But this time of year, every day it feels like I’m bombarded with the message that I should be buying more and doing more. I’ve had to work hard to keep that anxiety in check.

Anxiety is something I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with. I have learned that there are three parts to addressing anxiety: Thoughts, feelings and actions. Work on either aspect naturally helps the others. I usually start with the feelings, as they’re the quickest and easiest thing to tackle to create some relief.

1. Feelings. This is the physical sensation of anxiety. For me, I feel anxiety in my chest first, but it’s also physical tension. If I get a good roll of anxiety going on, it can turn into headaches, and trouble sleeping. This physical manifestation of anxiety can be significantly helped with some simple tricks like:

• Deep breathing. Just stopping, taking a few focused breaths and purposely loosening tension in the jaw and shoulders, can work wonders on anxiety. As little as two minutes can have a positive impact.
• Turning on music to rock out to. I had a lot of anxiety going on this morning that started as soon as I woke up. Meatloaf came on in the car, so I cranked it up and belted it out. By the time the song was over, I felt infinitely better. Music is such an underrated tool for shifting emotions. Getting lost in a song quiets the mind which is a huge win when it comes to anxiety.
• Taking a walk
• Warm bath, warm cup of tea, or other physically soothing things.
• Writing or talking to a good friend. Just admitting what you are going through, what you are feeling and how heavy it is, can take away so much of the weight. Writing is my favorite tool to shift how I feel.

2. Thoughts. The thing about anxiety is that it builds. It is rarely just a single thought that creates the physical sensation of anxiety. It is thinking about something over and over that does it. What do your thoughts about the stressor sound like? Do they sound like: ‘This is hopeless.’ or ‘I can’t do this.’ Or do they sound like: ‘I am a smart person. I don’t know the solution yet, but I’ll figure it out.’ Finding better thoughts about a problem, changes our ability to solve the problem and it changes how we feel about the problem. Both those things are extremely important. Even a simple mantra like ‘I am ok.’ can help a lot. I like to take time to acknowledge the fact that I have a warm home and food in my fridge. No other financial issue is worthy of panic. It can all be dealt with. These kinds of thoughts settle my body down and help me find perspective.

3. Actions. Problems feel the absolute worst, when I am only thinking about them. Sometimes the most effective thing to do is to take some action to fix the problem that I’m anxious about. I don’t need to deal with everything at once, but getting started takes away so much of the mental noise and physically uncomfortable feelings. Some small things I like to do to help:

• Take ten minutes and dump out all that needs to be done onto paper. I do a regular Sunday night dump. I also do them any time I feel any overwhelm creeping in or when my to-do list seems to be on repeat in my brain.
• When I’m stressed about money, the most helpful thing is generally to look directly at the money. I open my accounts, pull out my spreadsheet and start crunching some numbers. The anxiety is worse for a minute, but by the time I’m done, I feel much more confident about my ability to make positive change. When I start with that, I usually see a clear next action step that I can take to create some improvement.
• Ask for help if you need it. Talk to someone you trust if you need it. Send that email. Make that call. It’ll only hurt for a minute.

We only feel anxious about things we feel we can’t handle. Taking time to make a plan or ask for help, can help you feel in control of the situation again.

There’s a time and place for plans and small wins. There’s also a time where the best thing to do is to suck it up and do the big scary thing. I made a call today that I have been putting off for months. I thought about how I needed to make this call at least a dozen times a day and I would feel crappy every time I thought of it. I could have saved myself so much stress by just picking up the phone and getting it over with. Having that done gave me so much relief and satisfaction. It is the inspiration for this post.

So this is your reminder that anxiety is just a feeling. Anxiety isn’t permanent. Every problem is solvable. You are capable of figuring it out. You are allowed to let yourself feel happy and content, no matter what’s in your bank account or what’s on your to-do list. You don’t need to keep up with the Joneses on social media. Lower the bar for what Christmas looks like. Take some pressure off. Go do something nice for yourself. You got this.

Dawn