Anxiety

材料由Cassie提供。致谢！

   Imagine that you’re getting ready to go to a party. You feel excited, but also nervous, and you’ve got this feeling in your stomach almost like another heartbeat. You start wondering,“Who should I talk to when I get there? What if no one wants to talk to me? What if they’ll think I’m weird?”When you arrive at the party, someone comes up to you and starts talking with you, and as this is happening, your mind starts racing, your heart begins pounding, you start sweating, and it feels almost like you’re dissociating from yourself, like it’s an out-of-body experience, and you’re just watching yourself talk. Or imagine every time you go out, and you’re in crowded places, you feel this panic starting to arise. When you’re surrounded by lots of people, like on a bus, you start to feel hot, nauseous, uneasy, and to prevent this from happening, you start avoiding a lot of places which makes you feel lonely and isolated. You or the person in both of these scenarios have anxiety disorders, and what I can tell you is that anxiety is very common, much more than people think.

   I will just mention that anxiety can lead to depression, school dropout, suicide. It makes it harder to focus, and to hold down a job, and it can lead to relationship breakdown. Studies showed that people who had faced extreme circumstances, who had faced adversity, been through wars and natural disasters, if they had coping resources, they remained healthy and free of mental disorders, while others, facing the same hardships but without coping skills went on a downward spiral and developed mental disorders. So what are some of these coping resources, and how can we use them to lower our anxiety? And before I dive into what they are, I’d like to point out–and I think this is so interesting–you can develop these coping resources or coping skills on your own through the things that you do; you can take charge of your anxiety and lower it, which I think is so empowering.

Today I’ll be talking about three coping resources, and the first one is feeling like you’re in control of your life. People who feel like they’re more in control of their life have better mental health. If you feel like you’re lacking in control in life, you should engage in experiences that give you greater control. I’ll show you what I mean: do you sometimes find that you put off starting something because you just don’t feel ready enough? Do you find it hard to make decisions like what to wear, what to eat who to date, which job to take up? A way to overcome indecision and this lack of control in life, is to do it badly. There’s a quote by writer and poet GK Chesterton that says,“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly the first time.”The reason why this works so well is that it speeds up your decision-making and catapults you straight into action. All too often, we aim for perfection, but never end up doing anything because the standards that we set for ourselves are too high, they’re intimidating, which stresses us out. So we delay starting something, or we might even abandon the whole thing altogether. Do it badly frees you up to take action. I mean you know how it is: so often, we want to do something perfectly we can’t start until it’s the perfect time, until we’ve got all the skills, but this can be daunting and stressful. So why not just jump into it, just do it however, without worrying if it’s good or bad? This will make it that much easier to start something and as you’re doing it badly to finish it, and when you look back, you’ll realize, more often than not, that actually it’s not that bad.

The second coping strategy is to forgive yourself, and this is very powerful if you use it. People with anxiety think a lot about what they’re doing wrong, their worries, and how bad they’re feeling. Imagine if you had a friend who constantly pointed out everything you’re doing wrong, and everything that was wrong with your life. You would probably want to get rid of this person right away, wouldn’t you? Well, people with anxiety do this to themselves all day long. They’re not kind to themselves. So maybe it’s time to start being kinder with ourselves, time to start supporting ourselves, and a way to do this is to forgive yourself for any mistakes you think you might have made just a few moments ago, to mistakes made in the past. If you had a panic attack and are embarrassed about it, forgive yourself; if you wanted to talk to someone, but couldn’t muster up the courage to do so, don’t worry about it, let it go; forgive yourself for anything and everything and this will give you greater compassion towards yourself. You can’t begin to heal until you do this.

And last but not least, having a purpose and meaning in life is a very important coping mechanism. Whatever we do in life, whatever work we produce, however much money we make, we cannot be fully happy until we know that someone else needs us. It’s not that we need other people’s good words to keep going in life, but if we don’t do something with someone else in mind, then we’re at much higher risk for poor mental health. Doing something with someone else in mind can carry you through the toughest times. You’ll know the why for your existence and will be able to bear almost any how; almost any how. So the question is do you do at least one thing with someone else in mind? This could be volunteering, or it could be sharing this knowledge that you gained today with other people. Give it to them, share with others, because it can really improve your mental health.

So I would like to conclude with this: another way you can do something with someone else in mind is finishing work that might benefit future generations. Even if these people will never realize what you’ve done for them, it doesn’t matter, because you will know, and this will make you realize the uniqueness and importance of your life.