Decreasing Anxiety in 7 Steps: Step 6

Aside from learning about new skills and being reminded of ones you may have used in the past, this weeks lesson is possibly the most important step of all. As they say, “practice makes perfect.” What good are the best coping strategies in the world if you only do them once? How effective can they be if you aren’t doing them often enough and developing your skills in doing the strategy?

Step Six: Reiteration

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition of healthy practices is truly so important to the success of your efforts, that it gets its own step here. If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Anxious thoughts and habits didn’t become problematic overnight; over the course of time, they grew and incorporated themselves into your daily life and practices to the point that you may have no idea how it got this bad or remember a time you didn’t struggle in this way. Anxiety that is clinically disruptive to your life didn’t suddenly appear, and so similarly, it’s not going to suddenly disappear. It’s going to take a lot of work to recognize the warning signs of anxiety, stop yourself from doing the thing you do in your tracks, and implement healthier coping strategies.

One way to think of it is that it’s similar to going fishing. It only takes a moment to flick your line out into the water sixty or seventy feet, but it takes you a lot longer to slowly reel the line back in. In one second, something could happen and you instantly entertain a catastrophizing thought, only to have to reel yourself back in. The reeling back in is where most people get tripped up, and the line gets caught in the weeds, if you will. I’ve met folks who have stayed awake for hours catastrophizing or worrying, throwing line after line into the water, making multiple attempts to stop, and sometimes even giving up sleep entirely they’ve become so entangled in their thoughts and fears. That’s why identification and reflection are so important: you have to learn what you’re doing so you can stop it.

You’re probably really good at being anxious; it might be almost a super power by now. To overcome anxiety, you’re going to have to get just as good at reeling the line back in and trying again, noticing each time the line somehow got back in the water, and consciously pulling it back out, gently without getting yourself into a deeper mess.

Out with the old, in with the new

You’ve been practicing doing the wrong things over and over again over a long period of time: it’s going to take even longer to put new habits into play. The brain literally builds neuropathways that it activates each time you’re engaging in anxious self talk or actions. In order for the brain to stop using those well developed pathways, you have to give it other possible routes to take . After a while, when the anxious pathways aren’t being used as regularly with your conscious effort, the pathways won’t be so quick to light up, and eventually, after a period of disuse, the brain will literally clear them out and they won’t exist. But in order for that to happen, you have to stop using them.

For a digital illustration on neuroplasticity, check out this two minute video: https://youtu.be/ELpfYCZa87g

Beyond practice makes perfect, practice makes permanent. Changing your thoughts and actions will change your brain and therefore change your relationship with anxiety. If you want to end the permanence of anxiety in your life, you have to replace it with something healthier. When you’re first starting my motto is the smaller, the better. It might be tempting to try an all or nothing method, but rather than try to overhaul your whole life and change every single bad behavior or thought, start with one small goal and work on it. Once you’ve got it or mostly got it, do a bit more. And more. And more. And more. Until suddenly, it’s mastered and you’re ready to take on something else entirely. It really is that easy, but it’s also really that time consuming. How much time a day do you spend worrying or being anxious? Plan to spend at least that much time consciously changing the anxious to the positive.

While you’re working on maintaining awareness, plugging in new coping skills and positive thoughts to replace negative ones, also keep that reflective eye out to keep up your investigation. When you started out on this journey, you may have had an idea of what was making you anxious. Now that you’re six weeks in to this journey, ask yourself a few follow up questions.

· Was that really what was making you anxious?

· How was it?

· How wasn’t it?

· Does it really need to be addressed or is there something else that was hidden beneath the surface?

· How has not been addressing it once it came into your awareness been effecting you?

· How has gearing up to and trying to address it effected you?

· What have you been putting off even though you now know you really need to do it?

· Why do you suppose you’ve been delaying it?

· What would help you get to an actionable step and avoid a longer delay?

· Who could help you with one or more of these steps?

Keep on truckin’

It may feel like your progress is going as slow as a herd of snails traveling through peanut butter, and sometimes, it might be. But that doesn’t mean it’s not progress. Unfortunately, most people’s mental health journeys for recovery are not linear, straight lines from point A to point B, but windy and curvy. Sometimes it even looks like they double back. Try to remember that backwards doesn’t mean backslide. Sometimes we have to circle back to something to really get it right; who knows why? Everyone’s journey is different and that includes their timeline. Let’s end with one of my favorite quotes, relevant to how unique each person and their experience is: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -Albert Einstein