Decreasing Anxiety in 7 Steps: Step 3

In parts one and two of this blog series, we explored some of the ins and outs of anxiety including what it is, what it is not, and how it tends to effect people and show up in their lives. Now that I’ve given you several lists of ways that anxiety may affect you, it’s time to take this information to the next phase.

A Metaphor: if Steps One and Two of this blog series were looking up a Recipe in an old Family Cookbook and then checking your cupboards to see if you had the ingredients, then Step Three is where we buy the missing ingredients, pull them out of the cabinets and fridge, and lay it all out on the counter for ourselves to see while we double check the recipe. Did we really catch everything on the list the first time? Was there an ingredient listed that we don’t have exactly, but we have something similar that substitutes? This is “last looks” before we start cooking.

Step Three: Reflection

You’ve taken some time to read through and learn a lot of information about anxiety. After reviewing all of that information, you may be asking yourself: what next? What do I do with all of this information? My suggestion is to take some time to reflect on these lists further, and really explore what your personal, unique experience with anxiety is like. Before you can decide what you want to do about your anxiety, you have to know where the problems lie and what bothers you most. I recommend that my clients engage in reflection activities in whatever way makes the most sense to them, as different people work more effectively with some strategies than with others. Below I’ll share the most commonly used strategies I ask of my clients.

Tried and true strategies of reflection:

Talking: Ask someone you trust if they would take some time to talk to you in person or via email or text about what your experience of anxiety is like.

1. Schedule a time when you’re both free to do so if one or both of you is not able to have this conversation when you ask.

2. Share with them about some of the symptoms you saw on the lists that you struggle with, in the past or the present.

3. Share you fears, hopes, and needs around anxiety.

4. Ask for feedback: do they notice times that they think you may be anxious? What do they see?

Writing: In addition to wanting to talk to someone about their anxiety, many of my clients are natural writers and really benefit from writing about it as well. Writers have many different styles and this can be done in many ways. Here are the main ways I assign writing as reflection as homework for my clients.

1. Review the lists provided on the last blog and circle, highlight, or jot down any of the words that stand out to you for whatever reason.

· Next, use these as prompts to explore how you feel them in your body, when it tends to happen during the day or month, and what types of things may trigger the symptom.

2. Journal about when your anxiety started and why.

· If you don’t exactly know, make some guesses.

3. Examine how your anxiety has grown and shifted over time:

· how has it progressed?

· Were there times that it was different than it is now?

· Stronger?

· Weaker?

· Less bothersome?

· What made it easier to manage in the past?

· What makes it easier to manage now?

4. Ask yourself: why bother?

· Why bother working to change your anxiety?

· Why bother putting in hard work and expending perfectly good energy to try to change the way you feel?

· Is anxiety bothersome enough?

· If not, at what point would it be?

· If so, at what point did it become enough of a problem?

· How much energy is worth putting out there to decrease anxiety somewhat? To decrease it entirely?

5. Free Write: with anxiety in the forefront of your mind, and perhaps these last three blogs as well, put pen to paper or fingers to keys and just starting letting yourself go, writing down what comes to mind.

Dream Analysis: I have found dream analysis to be especially helpful for folks who have a hard time identifying or expressing their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, needs, or desires. Even amongst those who are able to do so, many of my clients have found that looking at their dreams has been useful and instructive in ways that are very different from other methods of reflection. To engage in dream analysis, one must first start by simply paying attention to one’s dreams and, ideally, by recording them. Keeping a “dream journal” can be as simple as having a scratch pad and pen next to your bed, a “Notes” app on your phone, or maintaining a truly dedicated journal for you to write about your dreams in; it’s really about whatever works best for you.

In a true “dream journal,” a person would write down as much as they can remember about their dream(s) upon waking, each and every time they dream. However, I’ve found that this level of dedication can be a barrier for success for lots of my clients, so I maintain that the frequency of tracking your dreams is up to you; some people are able to commit to writing down at least a few notes after every dream, and others choose to do so more intermittently. If you choose to do so more intermittently, or you dream so often it does not seem reasonable to track each and every dream, you might try prioritizing your writing by choosing to write about dreams that are the most:

· Confusing

· Colorful or vivid

· Meaningful

· Upsetting

· Repetitive

For many, dream journaling ends there. However, since our aim is really to do reflection and exploration, I encourage my clients to also write, chat, or do some artwork around a dream or two and see what comes up. Bonus points if you do more than one of these to explore your dreams such as writing about it and sharing it on an online forum, in a text or email, and/or creating or including a graphic that represents something that you dreamt about.

Artistic Creations: There are many, many ways that people can use creative expression for reflection. Here is a list of the most popular methods that my clients use and bring to session:

· Crayon and paper

· Colored pencils and paper

· Collages of pictures, words, and letters

· Pen and paper

· Dry or Oil pastel and paper or canvas

· Fast sketches using pen, pencil, or charcoal

· Paintings on paper, canvas, or other mediums

· Photoshop or other electronic programs

· Mixed Media; incorporating two or more of these methods of creation together

· Woodworking or woodburning

· Throwing clay

· Painting pottery, boxes, or other objects

For those of you currently in counseling with myself or another therapist:

After this internal or external processing, ask your therapist if you can bring it to session to discuss further or share what you learned. If you think you might forget to bring it up to your therapist, you may ask them if you can send them short emails to remind you to bring up this topic next session. For those projects that feel too precious or large to bring to sessions, I ask that clients keep pictures of projects that they’d like to share and bring them to session so we can discuss them further.

Reflection is really as simple and difficult as that. Making and taking some dedicated time to tease apart your thoughts, feelings, and struggles with anxiety. Whether you spend five minutes or five hours in reflection, I recommend doing at least one thing each week, if not more often. For those of you who struggle with anxiety on a daily or several times per week basis, as well as for those of you who do not speak to others about your experience with anxiety, I would normally recommend that you do something reflective about anxiety every day depending on your recovery goals.

Ready for the next steps?

This week, keep up the good work of tracking your anxiety symptoms, but add in taking some time to marinate on all that you have learned about anxiety, yourself, and how you, personally, experience anxiety. If you’ve been working on completing these tasks step by step, blog by blog, you’ve already done a lot of work so far! Often, the amount of work that has been done to this point has taken weeks before we get to the next step, Step Four, depending on your amount of experience in therapy, understanding of anxiety and yourself, and the pace you set for yourself and your recovery. Next week or when you’re ready, you can proceed to the next step and where I introduce some tried and true strategies that work to help you manage and begin decreasing your level of anxiety on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.