My thoughts:
Types of thoughts that people have:
- 'All I can think
about is how I'm ever going to live life without being anxious 24/7'
- 'I fundamentally
do not understand anything going on in my life'
- 'I need to figure out what to do
with my life'
- 'I think about everything'
My experience:
I don't have
medically diagnosed anxiety, but pretty much everyone I am sure has had times
of anxiety when things get overwhelming, you question reality, the future and
your identity.
There was one point
at college where I was extremely stressed with the amount of work to do, and I
took a deep breath, and realised there literally was nothing I could do to fix
everything immediately and in one go... so I learned to stop caring, relax, and
then do everything in bite size chunks. I learned to just take every single
thing one at a time and deal with everything "as it comes", very much.
I do care very much about everything, and at college people often told me that
I over-analysed everything too much.
I worry about new
situations, not as much as people I've known with Asperger’s, but it becomes a physical
problem as well for me.
My analysis:
We humans put a lot
of responsibility on ourselves to resolve all of our issues by ourselves. It's
often the case that we try to 'hold everything together', I think of like
trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle and on a time limit to see what it says once
all the pieces are in place. There are some gaps, some pieces you don't
understand what to do with, and you don't know how to tackle it in the best
way. We become frantic over trying to get all of it done, that we end up
struggling, we put too much pressure on ourselves to sort our whole lives out
in one go.
Everyone goes
through self-tests of awareness, which can happen at any time during their
lives but often starts during teenage years.
How to reduce anxiety:
I don’t believe
there is a single method that works for everyone. Everyone needs to find their
own way that works for them. You
will find a way to deal with it in your own way, whatever you have to do. They can be categorised
thusly:
- Creative outlets
- Distractions, or “shifting anxiety” to something immediately achievable
- Tackling issues directly
It’s important to keep moving forward
with your life when you have anxiety or stress. Once you’ve hit rock bottom,
you can only go up, and you might just need to face the issues head-on – just admit
the thoughts sitting in the shadows, at the back of your mind, and tackle them.
Think about what your concern is really about – only once you do that, can you
get a grip on it and get control of your life back.
Creative outlets
- Art – drawing, painting, whatever comes natural to you – and you don’t need to be good to make art. A lot of art is just a raw expression of emotion.
- Sport – exercise, boxing, ju-jitsu, swimming, and anything else you might like, can help you process things, get back to reality, and move on.
Distractions
The problem with distractions is that
they can be obsessive, so they should not be the only answer you take.
- The internet, especially YouTube For example, this lonelyisland video.
- Going for a walk
- Talking with friends
- Listening to music, watching movies
- Eating and drinking
Tackling issues directly
The first step is to always take a deep breath. If you are in a critical situation, counting to 10 and closing your eyes helps, and you can push it down and away to deal with it later - the main reminder for me of this is when Jack on Lost was operating on a patient and heard about his dad passing away - he needed to save the person's life so he just counted to 10 and then dealt with his thoughts after the operation.
Planning
Coming up with a
plan has helped me in many situations before. Sometimes I get very nervous
before big meetings, and it doesn’t settle well with me. So all I do now is
just make sure I spend more time preparing and thinking something through, and
give myself time to relax. Take everything in bite size chunks. Brainstorm your
thoughts. Work through them one by one.
It can go a bit
overboard however with the planning – you might feel like you have to get
everything sorted right now. If you knew everything going on for the rest of
your life however, it'd be boring! If you had every moment of your life planned
out, you’d lose the excitement and surprise that you normally get out of life –
you would be compelled to rebel and be different. So in other words, live in
the moment, take every day as it comes, and do things that make you happy.
Overwhelming
There is no pressure
to fix everything at once. Think of it like a car, there might be several
problems with the car, like failed engine or low battery, but you would only
ever fix each part one at a time. There's no need to get everything working in
perfect unison, you just have to deal with things as they happen. That is the best that anyone can do. Relying on
others is more than acceptable.
Another way of looking at it is that
each problem is like an obstacle course. You have to jump over hurdles, crawl
under nets, swing over monkey bars, etc. Every problem needs a different way to
tackle it – there isn’t a single answer for each of them, but the only thing
that is in common is your approach to the problem.
Life will throw a lot of problems in
your way, and you have to figure out how to get around them. For a lot of the
things thrown at you, you may have absolutely no idea how you’re going to get over
them. You just need to figure it out. Another way of thinking of it is like a
doctor – a doctor or nurse has to know an array of different tactics to solve
medical issues. It’s an adaptable applied set of knowledge. As life goes on,
your knowledge base – your tactic base – will become stronger. It’s not
something you can force on, it will happen on its own, and you can always
expect life to throw things at you.
Compartmentalisation
It's always better
if you try to work on isolated things instead of trying to fix everything at
once, you need to learn to compartmentalise. Take each thing in bite size
chunks, have a plan, and deal with everything piece by piece. Don't worry about
all the stuff going on - often there are things we worry about that we can't do
anything about, so there is no point in worrying - you just have to let things
play out.
It's important to not worry about things you can't control. If you missed the bus only by a few seconds, don’t put the pressure on yourself – it happens to everyone. Just think of an alternative – can you wait? Could you walk, get a taxi, another form of transport, etc. Can you get a coffee in the meantime?
Writing things down helps me process them
and forget about them – I don’t have to remember what the idea was, I only have
to remember where it was “saved”.
Often these things
have a habit of taking care of themselves too, and it can be more fun seeing
everything come together. Focus on what you need to do a day at a time, don't
try to be a perfectionist, and don't ever feel like it's your job to do it
entirely on your own - people are more than happy to do favours and take the
load off to help you, it comes with the nature of being a friend. You may not
feel like you want the help, or you don't want to burden anyone, but sometimes it's exactly what you need.
Remember, life is a
rollercoaster. You can't stop the cart so there's no use trying to do so, it
has ups and downs and bends and twists and double backs, it will bring you
anticipation, fear, joy, and a thrill, but most importantly, you should just
let yourself enjoy it.
Other places for advice
Realistically, no single person can
manage all their problems on their own. So don't ever feel like you need to fix everything on your own.
- Talk to a friend, a colleague, a teacher or a professional
- Talking to a therapist – some work places also provide them
- Defence mechanisms explain our behaviour and the varying levels of maturing when it comes to responses
- Dan Howell has done some really good videos:
Update: More advice
Another example of something I've been asked to help with:
"Feeling up and down, just want to get my life on track"
My response to this is:
That's the thing though, life is what you make it, man. Life doesn't always have to be a big house with a white picket fence and 2.3 children. Life doesn't have a straightforward recipe. It's kind of like learning how to cook for the first time without any help. It's scary, and confusing, and tiring, and you don't always get what you want, but that's exactly what the point is!
Life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey.
It's not about planning everything out, and having to have everything in order, you just have to deal with everything as it comes, one at a time, it's about living in the moment. If you spend all your time worrying about what to do with your life, it gets in the way if you actually enjoying life as it is! You just have to accept life isn't something you can control, you can't predict every eventuality, you gotta just deal with what is thrown at you and go with what is right. Bad things happen, but there's nothing you can do to stop them, you just gotta accept them and move on. You gotta adapt, be a survivor, and most importantly, learn to just live.
Another example of something I've been asked to help with:
"Feeling up and down, just want to get my life on track"
My response to this is:
That's the thing though, life is what you make it, man. Life doesn't always have to be a big house with a white picket fence and 2.3 children. Life doesn't have a straightforward recipe. It's kind of like learning how to cook for the first time without any help. It's scary, and confusing, and tiring, and you don't always get what you want, but that's exactly what the point is!
Life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey.
It's not about planning everything out, and having to have everything in order, you just have to deal with everything as it comes, one at a time, it's about living in the moment. If you spend all your time worrying about what to do with your life, it gets in the way if you actually enjoying life as it is! You just have to accept life isn't something you can control, you can't predict every eventuality, you gotta just deal with what is thrown at you and go with what is right. Bad things happen, but there's nothing you can do to stop them, you just gotta accept them and move on. You gotta adapt, be a survivor, and most importantly, learn to just live.
