Stress & Anxiety
<p><b>Anxious all the time? Try these practices</b></p>
<p><b>Anxiety is normal and there’s help</b></p>
<p>As we wake up to a new reality each day living through a pandemic, it’s normal to feel worried, panicky and anxious. Anxiety disorders plague millions of people in the world on a normal day-to-day basis.</p>
<p>Throw in the current landscape of chaos, confusion and dealing with COVID-19, and it’s perfectly okay to feel more panicked than usual.</p>
<p>Here are a few tips to dealing with your stress and anxiety.</p>
<p>Acknowledge your anxiety. Don’t try to run from it, force yourself to “feel better” or think positive. Remind yourself that we all experience stress – more so now than ever before. Remind yourself that anxiety and stress are normal, common feelings.</p>
<p>Can’t control your feelings of panic? Force yourself to sit down somewhere and deliberately slow down your rate of breathing. Count backward from 100 and with each number, let your body relax further.</p>
<p>Feeling overwhelmed? Browse online to a picturesque scene and imagine yourself in that place or moment. Distraction is the key here, so you can calm down and think rationally. Try to engage all your senses in that scene; it could be the beach or in a beautiful garden or an exotic new place.</p>
<p>Anxiety can push us to self-destructive thoughts and behaviour. If you start feeling negative toward yourself, imagine you’re sitting in a room talking to your best friend. Now, imagine your best friend saying negative things about themselves. How would you react? You’d jump to their defense. Do the same for yourself. Counter your negative thoughts with something true and positive.</p>
<p>Ground yourself. One of the difficult things about anxiety is that one anxious thought can lead to another and another and pretty soon, you can’t breathe, and you’re panicked beyond reason. If you feel these thoughts coming on, immediately look for something around you. It could be an object or an item like a bookshelf or the magnets on the fridge. Describe the object, its colour, its shape, its purpose – focus on the smallest and biggest details to give the anxious feelings time to pass.</p>
