What does wedding planning look like when you have anxiety? Well, it actually looks pretty much the same. Only, you overthink everything and it feels …
How Working Retail Helped Me Overcome My Anxiety
Working in retail helped me overcome my anxiety by pushing me out of my comfort zone, allowed me to grow my confidence, helped me develop …
My Post Interview Anxiety & How I Handled It
The hard part is over. I made it through the first interview I’ve had in six years. Yay me! The initial adrenaline rush is gone, …
My First Interview in SIX years!
Woah! It’s been six long years since I’ve had to interview for a job! All I can say is, “wow!” and that my anxiety was …
How To Conquer Interviews When You Have Anxiety
Sitting down for interviews, which can already be an intimidating thing, can feel even more intimidating when you couple that with an anxiety disorder.
Self-Limiting Beliefs and How to Overcome Them
Self-limiting beliefs are the negative self-perceptions are that rooted in our conscious and subconscious and keep us from achieving success.
Overcoming Eye Contact Anxiety
For people who have an anxiety disorder, making eye contact is often uncomfortable and any amount prolonged eye contact can arouse feelings of vulnerability and judgement, and can be perceived as threatening.
Therapy for Anxiety
One of the most highly used, and preferred, methods for treating people with anxiety is a form of talk therapy, also known as CBT- cognitive behavioral therapy.
Anxiety and Memory Loss
People with high anxiety often experience short-term memory loss because of the excessive elevation in cortisol levels.
Five Things To Stop Doing If You Have Anxiety
Trying to successfully manage your anxiety every day is no small feat. It takes a lot of energy day in and day out, and after a while it can begin to take a toll on you mentally and physically. To help you better manage your anxiety there are a few things that you should stop doing.
Easing Back To School Anxiety
With the start of the new school year fast approaching, that means the back to school anxiety is fast approaching as well.
Identify Your Triggers
Each person with anxiety has one or more triggers that sets their anxiety alarm off. The triggers can vary from person to person and can vary depending on what type of anxiety they are dealing with. It’s important to be able to recognize those triggers so that individuals can best decide what course of action they should take to bring about relief.
Leave Your Comfort Zone
Inside our comfort zone is safety and security. It’s calm, quiet, and where we are in control. Although we enjoy staying inside our comfort zone because we are free from disappointments, failures, and mistakes, those things are only a fraction of what we will encounter.
Put In The Work
We cannot sit idly by hoping our anxiety will spontaneously vanish and that our lives will be changed. We must be willing to put in the work to bring the life we desire to fruition.
Failure isn’t Fatal
Failure isn’t fatal. It shouldn’t be seen as the end-all be-all. Failure is just another step on the road to success. Some of our greatest lessons are learned through failure, and it aids in our growth and development.
Overcoming Setbacks
Setbacks don’t mean it’s the end for us, and they don’t negate the progress we’ve made- they are simply a minor delay in progress, a hurdle we must overcome to move us towards our next accomplishment.
Bad Days
At one point or another, we’ve all experienced a bad day. Often, what occurs is an isolated incident that we give too much power to by dwelling on it which then taints the rest of our day.
Action!
We believe that we lack the power to change our circumstances, and instead of actively working towards making the necessary changes or taking the steps to change our situation, we complain about where we are in our lives.
Opportunities
In life, we will be offered many opportunities for many different things, big and small. There may be job opportunities, academic opportunities, travel opportunities, and more. These opportunities allow us to learn, develop, grow, and experience new and different things.
Forgiving Yourself
Making mistakes is a part of life; it’s what makes us human. The best part of being human, though, is that we can be forgiven. Not just by others, but by ourselves, perhaps the most important type of forgiveness.
Rational Questions
The mind is a shifty trickster. When we are in an anxious state, it bombards us with a barrage of irrational thoughts in an attempt to con us into believing a situation is so horrible that it must be avoided at all costs.
Flip the Script
We can be our own worst critic. When we don’t handle a situation the way we wanted to, or we don’t accomplish what we wanted to, we scold ourselves. We say self-deprecating things that slowly chip away our confidence and limit our ability to make progress.
Establish A Support System
When we feel we are too weak to handle our anxiety and cannot trust our own thoughts, turning to those we trust can mean the difference between falling into the pit of despair or rising above it. Having a healthy support system is a vital component of successfully managing our anxiety.
Distancing From Negativity
To continue making headway in managing our anxiety, it is imperative that we remove the negative people from our lives. Since we can easily be influenced by the people we associate with, it would only do more harm to our mental health and well-being to continue to involving ourselves with negative people.
Criticism
Hearing that we’re not performing to standards, or that we’re lacking in some way, is never something we want to hear, especially for a person with anxiety. Since being judged is something that we are fearful of, being criticized feels like the ultimate form of judgement.
Mental Health Days
Taking mental health days are an important part of the process of managing your anxiety. Without taking the time to rest and recuperate, you run the risk of becoming mentally overwhelmed, and more likely to hit a breaking point.
Write It Out
One characteristic of anxiety that is difficult for us to manage is our thought process. Our anxiety hinders our capability to think rationally, causes us to think of the worst case scenarios, and causes us to dwell on a negative situation or incident.
Our Own Paths
We cannot allow ourselves to get swallowed up by feelings of inadequacy or failure. It’s important to remember that we all move at a different pace, accomplishing tasks at a different rate than others.
Celebrating 26 Years
Today I’m celebrating my 26th birthday! As I sipped my coffee on this rainy Wednesday morning, I couldn’t help but think back on my journey. The past …
The Backpack of Horrors
While The Backpack of Horrors may sound like the title of some low-budget, poorly filmed horror movie, I can assure you It’s not. The Backpack of Horrors is where I stored all of my negative experiences.
Fear
Fear is natural emotion that helps us recognize a dangerous situation, physical or psychological. It can occur in response to something that is happening in the present moment or in anticipation of a future event.
Creative Outlets
Having creative outlets are critical for restoring the balance in your life. They help you to relieve stress and anxiety, boost your mood and self-esteem, and help you to achieve breakthroughs.
Acceptance
Having anxiety, whether it’s something that came around later in your in life or something that you’ve had for ever, is nothing to be ashamed of. Your anxiety is a part of you and probably always will be. Accept it.
Find Your Path
For anxiety, there is no cure. Don’t lose hope just yet! While there may be no cure, there are treatments available such as psychotherapy, commonly known as “talk-therapy,” medication, and support groups.
Mental Mistakes
Mental mistakes are the negative things you tell yourself about an uncomfortable situation that hinders you from moving past the issue. They are also commonly known referred to as the Automatic Thoughts.
Did You Know?
Over 40 million people in the United States suffer from anxiety. Anxiety disorders are one the leading mental illnesses in the US, but only about …
In The Beginning
As a young girl, I had no idea what anxiety was. I actually didn’t know that I had it until later on in my sophomore year of high school when I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.