SAB CHANGA SI

By Divyansh Singh Rathore

July 8, 2020

I was asked to keep this blog PG-13 but what can I do, anxiety is a bitch.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling to say the least, when your resting heart rate matches the tempo of the music you listen to. Why couldn’t I just like something slow and mellow like Prateek Kuhad? I just had to listen to 2 hour playlists of 200 bpm Metal madness didn’t I.

Living with anxiety in the middle of a pandemic is like being on a horrible never ending rollercoaster ride, the dives are too deep and you’re always shaking. You never know what new problem life might throw at you, so the best you can do is help yourself reach a state of momentary calm before the next storm hits.

To help you manage your day to day general anxiety a bit better, here is a list of the Life hacks that help me get through my days.

1. Racing heart upon waking up – Morning anxiety

   What better way to start your day than regretting waking up am I right? All jokes aside, when having general anxiety, we have all been here one time or the other. I think it is accurate to say that regretting waking up at all is not one of the best ways to start our day. When dealing with this I usually sit up straight as soon as possible and try to take long deep breaths with my eyes closed. The next step is to talk to myself and try to recall and understand why is it that I feel this way. Did I have a bad dream? Was I under some kind of stress before I went to sleep? Is there something I have to do in my day today which I don’t look forward to? Understanding the roots for your distress are key when it comes to diffusing them and getting back in the driver’s seat for your life. I search through my mind, get out of my bed, take a walk, go sit with my parents, all whilst constantly reminding myself that I have just woken up and I have no reason yet to feel the way I am feeling. Reminding myself of these things while engaging my attention in other things almost always helps me deal with my morning anxiety.



2. Did I do something - Trigger based anxiety

   When dealing with general anxiety, I think I speak for most of us that there often comes this point in the day when we start having an episode seemingly out of thin air. At first we don’t even realize that we’re struggling to breathe comfortably and that there is a strong discomfort in our chests. Once we do realize we are struggling, it is difficult to understand where it started. When faced with this challenge, I like to engage in an activity I call find the trigger. See I have categorized my anxiousness into two broad categories, the reasonable kind with a real life consequence attached to it, and secondly the trigger based relatively less reasonable kind. Distinguishing between the two and realizing which one I am experiencing in the moment helps me a lot in dealing with it and diffusing it.

   The method is quite simple.

   
   

   First you have to realize that what you are experiencing is not normal and is an episode of your anxiety.

   
   

   Second, start looking back in time inside your head and make a mental list of everything you did small or big in the recent past that might have set your mind off.

   
   

   Third, in the list you just made start looking at all the items in an order and try to figure out for yourself if this is a real issue, is it something you need to get done, does this threaten you or impact your life in any major way?

   If the answer is yes and you have a real thing that you need to deal with, don’t procrastinate and get it done. The sooner you get your work done the quicker you feel better with an added sense of accomplishment I might say. That should solve your problems for the moment.

   If the answer is no and you go through your list without finding any reasonable cause to feel the way you do, then give it a little time and convince yourself that you are fine, you are not in any kind of danger, everything is under control and what you are feeling is not natural it will pass.

   These definitely work for me.

Those were the 2 major issues I face every day with managing my anxiety and how I deal with them daily.