At times we may feel like we are losing control of areas of our lives. When driving the car, get an overwhelming feeling of panic, out of nowhere. What if during that meeting with my manager tomorrow, I start to get anxious, I can’t just get up and leave, she will notice my anxiety.
Standing in a queue in Tesco, waiting to pay for shopping and suddenly overcome with fear that my credit card may not work, that will hold people up behind me, feeling like there is no escape, hands and face start to sweat, “please don’t let anybody see me sweating”, now so caught up in this vicious cycle of not wanting people to see me sweating, I start to sweat more, feeling more trapped, more anxious.
No longer engaging
Now we stop doing things in our daily lives that we could do before, can’t go into shop queues anymore, I can’t get on that bus as there are too many people, every class in school is a constant stress about anxiety, will school be ok today or how many times will I have an anxiety attack? Constantly worrying when and where the next anxiety attack will happen.
All this can leave us physically, mentally and emotionally drained.
When living with this constant worry/anxiety, we start to loose sleep, our body starts to get very tense and muscles ache, our thinking is becoming more and more negative, feeling like your getting more and more shy and talking less to people. Life is changing rapidly and we feel we have no control over it.
For me, many years of my life were spent like this. I left things go too far before I did something to help myself.
The bright side
Life does not have to be like this. Having the courage to take that 1st step, whether it is just opening up to a friend or a parent, someone to just unload on and not be judged. It took me nearly 7 years before I took that 1st step, having the courage to do something about it. That courage is in all of us, sometimes it could be when we hit rock bottom and life forces us to take that step.
We may have some set backs along the way, however that 1st step could be the biggest step we could take in our life, this is the day my life is going to change.
Here is a comment from a client when her anxiety started to lessen: “I started a conversation with a person in a shopping queue, it helped me to be more at ease. I don’t think I could have done that before.”
When the anxiety starts to lessen and we feel more confident, the next time we are at the top of the queue in Tesco’s and think our card may not work, that’s ok, it happens to other people also, I have some cash with me.
Some help
1 way to help when we feel the fear building and before getting caught up in the mind games that make it worse, ground yourself, find some object, sound or smell to focus on, then start to focus on breathing into the heart, slow deep breaths, think of something funny or your little daughter or son or partner, with each in-breath start to feel the love for that person grow. Within a few minutes you can find yourself being more calm and relaxed and your out the door with your shopping paid for. Now that was ok, I could handle that again.
We’re always happy to chat about how life can improve, so feel free to get in touch.
A healthy mind, A healthy body, A healthy Life!