ECR's Top 5: Things you tell yourself if you have anxiety
In honour of World Brain Day, here are some tips on how to handle your anxiety...
Today is World Brain Day. This day is celebrated across the world to raise awareness around a rising health issue.
"Brain health can refer to many prevention methods designed to help preserve both mental health and brain neurological health." (National Today)
This is why we wanted to shine the light on anxiety and take some tips put forth by a psychologist about what you can do about it when your anxiety causes your thoughts to run away from you...
These are just five phrases that people who are anxious say to themselves. (Dr. Julie Smith)
1. "I can't cope with this."
2. "No one likes me."
3. "People are talking about me."
4. "People are judging me."
5. "I'm no good at this."
Dr Smith explains anxiety perfectly when she says: "When your threat response is triggered, you are in survival mode. When your brain senses that you might not be safe, speed is more important than accuracy.
"So your brain does a great job of anticipating threats and jumping to conclusions in order to keep you safe. This means your brain is not taking the time to consider all potential perspectives. It skips all that and takes a short cut to the ideas that could help keep you safe (if that is needed)." (Instagram)
Read more: How to spot a pathological liar
Now she goes on to say that all this leads to biasness. As much as we cannot necessarily stop the bias, what we can do is remove the power from it and identifying the type of bias when it occurs.
We can associate this notion with the concept of consciousness. Being aware of the brain's way of protecting you and associating this with an alternative perspective.
One that could help us find a sense of calm.
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Here are those identifiers.
"Personalisation. Taking an ambiguous situation and assuming it is about us. E.g. my friend didn’t wave back. She must hate me.
"Catastrophising - when your brain offers up the worst case scenario that hasn’t happened yet and plays it out for you like a movie on repeat, triggering more anxiety."
"Spotlight effect - this when we overestimate how much other people are judging us negatively. Something we all do, but do more of when we are anxious." (Instagram)
If you resonate with any of the above then try being more aware the next time your brain wanders in some of the above scenarios. Perhaps being more aware can help with handling your anxiety.
Image Courtesy of Unsplash