Unsteady: Utilizing Anxiety During Uncertain Times
He sat in the car, on the phone. I could tell from looking out our front window and into the car that this was not good news. When he came in, I asked, “Everything okay?” His face and demeanor told me a disappointed no. A few words of explanation, and my heart started pounding. My lungs couldn’t open all the way.
I made him a small lunch before he headed out again and I began to furiously clean. “At least I can make our home peaceful.”
The thought flew through my head: “Control what you can control.”
But my body was out of control! The anxiety of the past few months has been like nothing I’ve had in the past years. I’ve never been a consistently anxious person, but every now and then, a big circumstance will throw me off, and my nervous system feels like it’s going haywire.
There was that time years ago when my husband’s job was in jeopardy and my daughters were 2 and 1 years old. But even then, my body didn’t pound, and my brain didn’t spin this way.
The last real time of anxiety was when water was pouring into our house every time it rained – a bad leak just kept getting worse, the slate roofer we used wasn’t returning my calls after telling me that he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I woke up during one thunderstorm and stepped into a big puddle next to my bed. From then on, I couldn’t sleep whenever it rained.
So what to do?
Well, anxiety actually has a purpose: It starts our fight-or-flight system. As Northwestern Medicine explains:
Fear is experienced in your mind, but it triggers a strong physical reaction in your body. As soon as you recognize fear, your amygdala (a small organ in the middle of your brain) goes to work. It alerts your nervous system, which sets your body’s fear response into motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. Your blood pressure and heart rate increase. You start breathing faster. Even your blood flow changes — blood actually flows away from your heart and into your limbs, making it easier for you to start throwing punches, or run for your life. Your body is preparing for fight-or-flight.
The future feels so unsteady and unknown. And I suspected there was something lurking ahead. It feels – to my brain – like a lion, crouching ahead, and my body is responding like I’m going to have to fight.
So what should I do with all this anxiety, especially when the unknown is just that: unknown and perhaps not even going to happen?
Prepare (The Anti-Flight)
There are some negative things in life that we just know are going to happen. The brakes might seize in the car, the dog will get sick and/or even need surgery. The water heater will go out, or the roof will need to be replaced.
So the answer to all of these things is to reduce the fight/flee response by preparing. I always say that “Embracing reality is the definition of good mental health.” Embracing the reality of the expenses and negative events that come in everyone’s life is the best way to stabilize yourself.
A quick example is: When COVID shut everything down, one day I saw water spilling down our kitchen wall from the bathroom – clearly the shower pipe was leaking – and bad! That same day, the electricity wouldn’t work for our 2nd floor. WHAT? At one point the following day we had 3 plumbers and 2 electricians working in our house – all while wearing masks and under the emergency laws during lockdown.
My husband questioned me afterward, “I don’t understand why you’ll fight with me over a $50 charge at a store, but we just dropped over $700 in the last couple of days, and you’re completely calm.” I told him that – while we didn’t have the $50 in the budget to spend for a “target run” – I did have more than enough in the house maintenance fund to easily deal with the problem.
This is why having a budget and sticking with it – planning for literal and figurative storm days – reduces your anxiety and your physical fight-or-flight response.
Act (Fight)
There are a couple of ways to fight, especially when it isn’t an actual lion ahead.
First, don’t delay.
Remember the example at the beginning? My first response was to go make myself some food. While I needed to eat lunch, I realized – if I was honest – that I was just trying to settle my nerves with food. It was as if I was saying, “Please, Dopamine! Help me feel better with food! Counteract the adrenaline!”
Then the thought came back, “Control what you can control.” Well, I knew what I could control. But it would require me to not do what I wanted to do (read “Building a Non-Anxious Life” by Dr. John Delony or scroll Instagram to numb the fear) but rather act: Work. Collect all the tasks that I needed to do, assess them from easiest to hardest (Plan), and then execute the plan. Review and set out the times I was going to do the tasks. (See This Post for More Details)
Now, I’ve done this process enough that I knew what I needed to do immediately. I needed to progress. I needed to work on the things that were waiting/hovering over me.
Side note: Some might ask, “But couldn’t you have read the book on anxiety, and maybe he would have said something that would have made you feel better?” Perhaps. But I know enough to know that for me and for many others, reading can be avoiding and delaying, instead of attacking the task. I knew what I needed to do.
Let’s be honest: everyone has an idea about why their anxiety is different. And perhaps the circumstances, your biology, and/or your psychology make your anxiety harder to dislodge than a two-step plan. Fair enough. But I’ll wager that doing these two things – done consistently and with effort – will reduce the anxiety you feel. And reducing anxiety is better than just trying to endure it.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know! I’d love to have a conversation with you about what does work for you!
