Stress & Anxiety Management Steps — Build Your Shield Against Stress
The Covid19 pandemic, the resulting economic slowdown, and changing social climate have brought mental health into focus.
Corporate organizations made all of their employees work from home. All of them felt the consequences when physical boundaries between work and home disappeared. People weren’t restricted to duties of just one role at home.
They had to be a responsible employee to the company, a watchful parent to their kids, a dutiful child to their parents all while managing the home chores — all from the same desk.
The result?
A word cloud of side effects of the pandemic
All of us experience most of these in various amounts. These negative emotions produce negative thoughts and put a lot of pressure and stress on the individuals. They can also strain marital or familial bonds when the negative emotions of partners collide.
Here’s a step-by-step approach to manage stress.
Step 1: Indulge your positive feelings
When people are struggling with mental health issues, they need nurturing with things they like. If someone likes flowers and you give them flowers, it sparks a tiny positive thought. Giving them flowers regularly can turn that short spark into a fire of positive thoughts and get them to a lucid state of mind.
Dr. Dale once helped one of his psychiatric ward patients this way. She woke up from her years-long bed-ridden state and asked to go outside to enjoy the day.
This is tough when you are stressed and your negative feelings have multiplied and taken over your mind.
So start by noticing things that make you happy.
Is social media really an addiction to you? The answer may vary across individuals. Some may find it a stress-relieving activity so they can continue using it for “snacking” during the day. For others, it may be an addiction that has caused deeper behavioral modification and they must take steps to quit social media immediately. The point is the answer to “what makes you happy” will vary and there’s no standard “right answer”.
However, looking inward and examining your own habits/thoughts may be much tougher than looking at inspiration from others.
At the core of this though, stigma plays a vital role. Asking for help is not easy and sharing struggles may feel like a social landmine.
Asking for help is a sign of strength and not a weakness. That’s where our society needs to progress a lot when it comes to our perception of mental health. Mental health awareness groups like HCI have made it easier to ask for help.
Here’s a practice sheet as shared by Dr. Dale Sebastian.
In case, you are looking for something more visual or if you need some help figuring out what you are feeling, check out this wheel of emotions:
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Step 2: Identify your negative emotions and situations
What situations or people or things are affecting you negatively? What negative emotion is it producing?
Answering this question will open the door to what affects you. The idea of answering this question is not to change what affects you but simply to be more aware.
Once we know the type of danger, we know what to do to arm ourselves against it and prevent/minimize those negative feelings.
If you are having trouble slowing down your thoughts, consider a simple daily routine that involves a 10-minute meditation practice followed by a 10-minute journaling ritual. The meditation will try to slow you down and the more you meditate the easier it becomes to slow your thoughts down. Journaling will give you a safe space to reflect your thoughts in a judgment-free zone.
Sharing our pain and stress with others can help us find the right kind of support so we can reassure and empower each other in times of difficulty. A non-judgmental forum like the HCI can be transformative in creating those safe spaces.
Step 3: Express Gratitude
When life is chaotic, it usually reflects in our emotions. When we lose control of our emotions, our negative feelings from difficult parts of our lives tend to carry over to other parts of life where things are more or less positive.
For example, under a micromanaging boss, it’s common for his reports to develop anxiety which, over time, turns to resentment. If we cannot regulate our mood at the end of the day and bring our work home, that resentment ends up affecting our relationship.
The purpose of gratitude is to slow down or this carry-over of negative emotions from dysfunctional parts of our lives to the parts that function well. Eventually, it helps you develop and maintain the “at least something is going well in my life” feeling.
Step 4: Remind yourself to reframe when negative thoughts arise
Doing things alone makes us feel responsible for everything. But looking at things from others’ perspectives helps us realize that we are not in control of certain things and that’s okay. We can be in touch with people who are actually in control of situations that make us stressed and use that communication as a link to make us feel more connected and therefore less stressed.
Reframing is about asserting control over the situation and not letting fear control your responses.
In the context of the pandemic, it’s important to realize that we may not be able to control the spread of the virus alone. But we can take steps to minimize our chances of getting it.
Here are some simple things that are in your control:
- Enforce social distancing around you.
- Create exact steps of safety to do when you go out and when you come back home.
- All of this will help make things easier for yourself.
- At the time of sleep, do things that put you in a restful and peaceful state, and don’t beat yourself up.
It’s also important to realize your contribution to the world so you can envision some semblance of control over your part of the world. It also helps find your strengths.
Step 5: Detoxify your environment
Identify toxicity so you can identify and label it and be aware when that type of external toxicity enters your mind.
Here’s what toxicity can look like:
These traits will arise in people around you including your loved ones. Identify them and take steps to protect yourself against them because you are attached to them and complete disconnection might not be an option. Identify them in yourself so you don’t contribute to the toxicity in your environment.
Also, find positive traits and positive people in your life who can be supportive to you.
Step 6: Build confidence
Give yourself a pep talk. It helps you push yourself and stay motivated.
If you have financial issues, go back to your CV and look at revising it. Ask for help. If you are jobless, understand that it may not be your fault and the pandemic and its effect on the economy that has passed on to you.
Start creating boundaries for yourself.
Start rebuilding your routines.
Some examples:
- Exercise
- Non-judgemental interaction
- Meditation
- Favorite hobby
Break it into smaller things and stop beating yourself down.
Step 7: Support others
Be an active listener. Be a support buddy. Ask what you can help them with. Support them with suggestions when you can’t directly help.
Get a support buddy for yourself.
A brief about what you just read
On the 2nd of May 2021, HCI (The Hugging Club of India) caught up with Dr. Dale Sebastian, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University. What you read were key takeaways from that first session with additional helpful material from my experience.
He is very passionate and dedicated to helping addicted individuals. He is brave about admitting his anxiety and his kindness has persisted despite the racist behavior of some of his patients. His focus has been to make people feel positive so they can think and use that to empower their treatment.
The HCI conducts FREE virtual sessions every Wednesday and Sunday at 8 pm IST where we pick the brains of qualified mental health professionals to ask for help and share without judgment. You don’t need to switch on your camera and you can join anonymously. You can also submit questions to our moderator and be assured of full privacy. Like HCI Facebook page to stay updated about these sessions.
