Anxiety to the point of suffocation? 3 tips to drive away the pain

"The report is due next week!" Do you jump up and make plans for writing the report? No, no, no, anxiety probably comes first.

Thinking about this task that had to be completed and the look on my boss' face when he saw the report, before I even started writing, the uneasy, uncertain, and uncontrollable feelings came flooding back, and I even began to feel anxious and sweaty.

Anxiety is often uncomfortable, but it is also a source of motivation. You can use the following techniques to dispel pain and retain motivation.

Escape, there is no escape

Let’s first look at the most painful report writing demonstration: I started to feel anxious when I learned that I had to submit a report, but I couldn’t put pen to paper. I avoided it by eating, sleeping, playing games or watching TV series. As the deadline approached, my anxiety snowballed, and I ended up staying up all night to finish the report and submit it in a hurry. When I saw the boss’s expression when he read the report, I knew I was wrong, but I would still dare to do it next time.

When anxiety strikes, it is normal to want to avoid it. Behind this is our inner insecure beliefs and fear of the outside world.

But if we allow ourselves to avoid pressure, not only will we fail to write a good report every time, we will also miss opportunities for self-growth and personality development, and this avoidant way of dealing with problems will easily become fixed.

The first step - experience and acceptance, anxiety is not wrong

Instead of forcibly avoiding it, we can treat anxiety with a more gentle attitude. After receiving the notification to submit the report, first carefully feel your experience in the present moment. You may find that, "Well, I am very uneasy and a little scared now, which makes me uncomfortable, but I can still work normally." It is important that any emotion is acceptable at this time. There is no need to feel ashamed or blame yourself for the anxiety, and the experience itself is neither right nor wrong.

After being aware of your emotions, a certain degree of acceptance is a more compassionate and caring attitude. First, accept your anxiety, because this emotion also has benefits. It can mobilize various body functions to integrate resources and complete reports, and completing tasks will also bring a sense of accomplishment.

Sometimes it is difficult to finish a report perfectly, and when we see that the boss is about to dislike it, we start to blame ourselves. Then we also need to accept the gap between ideal and reality. We should work harder and pursue perfection, but the basis of hard work is to affirm that we have tried our best, rather than blindly blaming ourselves for not being good enough.

When you first start trying to be aware and accepting, it may feel difficult. Meditation practice is a very effective method at this time. You can use meditation to improve attention or open monitoring meditation.

The first type of meditation is to direct and maintain your attention on a certain object, such as your breathing, and then observe whether your mind wanders or is distracted by the outside world (such as the thought of not writing a good report again). It is normal to be distracted, just shift your attention back to your breathing and don't be upset about it. Open monitoring meditation does not require you to focus on anything specifically, just feel your current thoughts, emotions, and interpretations.

Step 2 - Believe that you can do it

When facing doubts about "can I write well", being more confident can make people feel much more comfortable. Confidence here refers to the degree of confidence that a person can use his skills to complete a certain task, that is, "self-efficacy".

If you are anxious because you doubt that you can write a good report, improving your self-efficacy can help you find solutions and strengthen your desire and anticipation to write a good report.

If you want to be more confident, think more about the satisfactory reports you have completed, ask for advice from people who write well, tell yourself that it is a normal reaction to feel a little uneasy and panicky, and ask people around you for their opinions (of course, it is best to get an answer that you are sure you can write well, otherwise you will become more anxious).

However, the higher the self-efficacy, the better, because the accompanying complacency will reduce the quality of the report. Moreover, if you set too high a goal for yourself, such as a three-fold salary increase through this report, then no matter how confident you are, it will be difficult to complete the task.

Step 3 - Don’t avoid it, face it little by little

Finally, we need to break the avoidance and actually start to complete the report. When we are very anxious, it is not realistic to force ourselves to sit down and immediately start writing the report. Facing the pressure when we are not prepared will easily lead to collapse. We can slowly and tentatively face the anxiety and start to act.

Facing anxiety does not necessarily start with actual contact with the report. You can first imagine yourself sitting in front of the computer writing a report, conceiving the writing framework and slowly filling in the content. Then start with real exposure by reading the report and collecting report materials, and control the anxiety in the process little by little. As the degree of exposure increases step by step, anxiety can gradually decrease.

Next, the key to starting action is to break down the big goal into small goals. For example, break down "completing the report" into 6 days to achieve a small goal. On the first day, you only need to read 5 excellent reports and summarize them. This sounds less stressful.

When writing a report, you can also give yourself a small reward when each small goal is completed, and from time to time imagine the relaxed mood after completing the report to make the whole process of completing the task more enjoyable.

Anxiety can also be a driving force

In addition to "submitting reports", many similar situations in daily life can be solved through these psychological skills. For example, when we are worried because our weight is beyond the healthy range, we can also start by experiencing our own emotions, accepting anxiety and current weight, recalling the experience of successfully completing other tasks, and asking professionals for advice. We can start by drinking less milk tea and exercising more once a week, slowly forming habits, and escaping the vicious cycle of using food to relieve anxiety.

There are many things or situations that bring anxiety, and the experience may be unbearable, but this basic emotion is of great significance to humans. For example, the avoidance of anxiety reactions sometimes allows us to avoid danger, and the anxiety of facing tasks also helps mobilize various body functions to integrate resources and complete tasks.

Moreover, anxiety often arises because expectations are difficult to meet. Just like before writing a report, we hope that the final version we submit will be perfect and receive good reviews, but in reality, the personal ability, time and materials available to complete the report are limited, so anxiety arises. However, it is precisely because we realize that there is a gap between expectations and reality that we will work towards our expectations. The gap is the driving force for converting expectations into reality, and it also symbolizes creativity.

If we set the goal of having no anxiety at all, the price is to give up autonomy and make no progress. A conscious life is bound to be anxious. What we need to do is not to eliminate anxiety, but how to deal with anxiety constructively.

Of course, if anxiety has seriously affected daily life and caused long-term pain, it is pathological anxiety. Pathological anxiety includes generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder or panic attack, phobia (agoraphobia, social phobia), etc. In this case, you need the help of professionals and receive systematic psychological treatment (such as cognitive behavioral therapy or psychodynamic therapy).

Anxiety is inevitable, but controllable. Every time we successfully deal with anxiety, we can gain experience, expand the boundaries of life, increase our passion for life, and take responsibility for our own lives. Making good use of these psychological skills can help you turn anxiety into motivation more easily.

References

[1] Rollo May: The Meaning of Anxiety; 2016.

[2] Dahl CJ, Lutz A, Davidson RJ: Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice. TRENDS COGN SCI 2015, 19(9):515-523.

[3] Schönfeld P, Preusser F, Margraf J: Costs and benefits of self-efficacy: Differences of the stress response and clinical implications. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2017, 75:40-52.

[4] Santiago J, Akeman E, Kirlic N, Clausen AN, Cosgrove KT, McDermott TJ, Mathis B, Paulus M, Craske MG, Abelson J et al: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial examining multilevel prediction of response to behavioral activation and exposure-based therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. TRIALS 2020, 21(1):17.

Author: Jing Mengjun

Editor: Dai Tianyi