This post is all about living with anxiety disorder.
If no one has told you recently, you’re doing great work. You’re learning about yourself and your anxiety. Plus, you’re working on ways to manage your symptoms, so you can develop a better system of understanding yourself and how to live a more fulfilling life.
Above all else, you’re doing good work and you deserve to recognize yourself for that. That also means you need a few reminders about how to take care of yourself and treat yourself with kindness as you work through your anxiety.
Let’s check out some reminders to bookmark for future you, so you can live the best life with or without anxiety.
This post is all about living with anxiety disorder.
LIVING WITH ANXIETY DISORDER:
1. Progress Isn’t Linear
One day, you’ll be anxiety-free and completely capable of managing small amounts of anxiety when they pop up. Other days, you’ll be stressing out over the simplest and smallest triggers that will send you into a downward spiral.
Regardless of which kind of day you’re having, you’re working on yourself and improving day by day. One bad day or a string of them does not discount the amount of work you’ve put into living a healthier life. And remember that you define what a healthier life means to you.
You may want to hang out with your friends in spite of social anxiety, take your kids to Disneyland without constant stress of losing them, or feel safe in a healthy (read: non-abusive) relationship.
Your process of healing will have its ups and downs, and that’s completely normal. It’s part of the journey to improving your mental health and anxiety, so celebrate every step and remember to notice the good stuff alongside the bad stuff.
2. Patience is Key
It’s a process and it takes time. Along with understanding that progress isn’t linear comes the need for patience. To do yourself justice and really love yourself enough to heal, you need to be patient with yourself when you’re living with anxiety disorder.
If you’re educating yourself and learning the tools you need to get better, you already believe that getting better is worth the work.
So, make sure that you remember to give yourself grace, kindness, and time to improve. Avoid getting discouraged when you have a difficult day and respect that it’s part of the process.
3. Self-Care is Non-Negotiable
Take care of yourself. This means more than taking a bath or getting your nails done. While self care can mean that you’re treating yourself to a relaxing spa day or taking a break from the daily grind, it also means doing the hard work alongside healing.
You can find all resources online and practice the tools that will help relieve your anxiety, but, in the end, you also need to take ask yourself what underlying issues are contributing to your anxiety.
This might mean going to therapy, thinking back to your childhood, and asking yourself, “Where does my anxiety come from? What is the purpose of my anxiety?”
These questions can be a struggle, so work through them at a comfortable pace. But, be sure to do the uncomfortable work and figure out what’s causing your anxiety symptoms.
4. Vulnerability is Strength
Talk about your anxiety. Be honest about your struggles, your journey, and how you believe anxiety has affected you. It’s easy for people to get used to the anxious, mentally-ill version of you that they’ve always seen, and it might be hard for them to see that in themselves.
So, not only are you sharing your journey with people who both care and are affected by it, but you might also be helping them to see where anxiety and mental illness has affected them without them knowing.
5. You’re Not Alone
You have a community of people who want to help you. Even if they’re not well-versed in mental health resources, they still want you to feel like the best, happiest version of you. So, ask them for help when you need it when you’re living with anxiety disorder.
Talk to them about your struggles (this goes back to vulnerability too!) and get some of those thoughts out of your head and into the open. You want to avoid leaning on others in the place of therapist and other mental health professionals.
Be mindful of how often you lean on someone else for support and what kind of support you want from them. When all else fails, ask them if they’re comfortable with the way you’re learning on them and ask them about their mental health.
The first time you have this conversation, they might struggle to be open with you. But, the more you normalize this conversation, the more you will break down the stigma around it.
6. Mindfulness is Your Anchor
There’s no doubt that you either have learned or will learn a variety of overwhelming yet useful tools to manage your anxiety. Unfortunately, this also means there are a lot of tools at your disposal to practice and remember.
When all else fails and you can’t remember any of the tools you’ve been studying for months, turn to mindfulness. At its core, mindfulness just means that you are grounding yourself in the moment.
In the moments when your mind is cycling through a hundred thoughts a minute, take a moment to notice your surroundings.
Slow down, either through the box breathing technique or various sensory techniques (like noticing one thing from each of your five senses), and maintain that slowness for at least a minute.
7. Focus on What You Can Control
Think about what makes you feel anxious. Consider the issues that stress you out and make you worry. You can even think about the most recent triggers you’ve noticed in the past day. Now, ask yourself whether you can control those issues and triggers.
Most of the time, the answer is no. But, that doesn’t mean that you’re powerless against the stuff that gives you anxiety. Instead, you can relabel those issues as something within your control.
For instance, you’re anxious about a major presentation coming up at work or in your class. You can stress out about forgetting all of your notes, failing to answer a question from your boss or professor, or even sleeping through the presentation.
However, if you change your mindset to focusing on what you can control, you can practice multiple times, ask a friend or partner to quiz you on the subject, and set multiple alarms.
To be clear, none of these actions will “fix” your anxiety because, ultimately, you’re actually worried about what other people think of you in many of these scenarios. But, you can use concrete actions to change your perspective and lessen your anxiety.
8. Leave Perfectionism Behind
As goddess herself, Brene Brown wrote in The Art of Imperfection, you can’t control the ways that others see you. And, at its root, this is what perfectionism is all about.
You try and be the best most perfect version of you in everything that you do so that people will see you as nothing short of perfect and likable. Unfortunately, you can’t guarantee that will happen no matter how much time, stress, or energy you put into doing it.
So, you might as well live a happier, authentic life for your own sake and for the sake of living with anxiety disorder. You’re worthy as you are and no one can change that.
9. Emotions Are Valid
All of these reminders might leave you thinking that you need to intellectualize (or not really process your feelings) every emotion you have. This could never be more wrong. In fact, you need to feel every emotion because your emotions, while affected by your anxiety, are yours.
So, yes, you might get angry because you’re feeling anxious and someone took you over the edge, but that anger is still real. The only way to improve your mental health is to recognize that your emotions are valid with or without anxiety.
They don’t become less valid because they’re based on irrational fears. If anything, pushing those emotions down and ignoring them will give you even more anxiety.
10. Seek Support When Needed
Get support and get it from people who have some professional training. Whether you go to a support group or therapist, find someone who can help you in a professional capacity. You should definitely rely on friends and family.
But, you also have to rely on them knowing they can’t help you as much as a mental health professional can. Keep in mind that getting support is a sign of strength because you’re being vulnerable, honest about your struggle, and making the effort to change the way you feel.
It’s a hard step to take and there’s still a lot of stigma around mental health issues. But, in the end, you deserve to feel better, happier, and more fulfilled.
11. Comparison is the Thief of Joy
Everyone is on their own journey, and you don’t always get to see the negative parts of someone’s life. In the age of social media, people cherrypick what you get to see. As you’ve heard before, social media is one big highlight reel of someone’s life.
Even knowing that, it’s still a struggle to avoid comparing yourself when living with anxiety disorder. When your life doesn’t include as much travel, a partner, kids, a clean house, perfect grades, partying, or whatever it is you envy, it’s hard.
You think you don’t make enough money, work hard enough, have enough love surrounding you, or make enough friends. There’s no magic way to feel better about this or suddenly stop the mental comparison, but you can remember to focus on your growth and your wins.
You deserve to celebrate yourself and the wins you get along the way no matter where you are in relation to others.
12. Cultivate Gratitude
There will always be something to complain about just like there will always be something to be grateful for. The key is to find the positive when your mind automatically goes to the negative. The most important moments to do this are when you are angry, sad, or hurt.
But, it’s a good idea to do it anytime. Find reasons to be grateful everyday. At first, it’ll be difficult and uncomfortable. Sometimes, horrible things happen and you need to feel the pain that comes with them in order to move on and grow from them.
Still, you also need to refocus your energy on reasons to be grateful because that’s what’s going to make the difference in the end.
When you are truly, objectively going through a difficult period in your life that puts you through way more pain that you can handle, this is the most important moment for you to find reasons for gratitude because you don’t need anymore pain.
13. Redefine Success
We think of success in many different ways. There’s no denying that society has taught us to view success in a few specific ways and we feel like failures when we don’t achieve them.
This is why we need to redefine success for ourselves and ask ourselves what we actually want to achieve. It’s equally important to ask ourselves what we’ve learned and what we’ve gained from the journey.
Instead of only celebrating yourself when you graduate, celebrate when you get a great score a test or you have an unforgettable weekend with your closest friends. Instead of only celebrating yourself when you get your dream job, celebrate when you get a raise or when you spearhead a major project.
14. Boundaries Are Empowering
Boundaries have become a buzzword lately. You hear about them on social media from various influencers and mental health professionals or even Jonah Hill.
At their most basic, boundaries are ways of communicating how you will react to the people in your life to best protect yourself. There are lots of clinical definitions of boundaries that different therapists use, so you might hear variations of that when you attend therapy.
However, the idea is that you tell people how to better be in a relationship with you. That might mean you tell your brother you won’t engage with them when they bring up your sister anymore because you’re cut her out of her life.
Or you tell your dad that you won’t give him anymore advice about his relationship with your mother. You are telling someone how you’ll react when they bring up a trigger for you. So, tell them and start small.
Think of “no” as a boundary for now until you notice when something makes you feel uncomfortable or nervous. Prioritize yourself because you are worth it. Most people will understand or do it what it takes to learn.
If someone doesn’t, start drawing more boundaries around the time you spend with them and the information you share with them.
15. Mind Your Inner Dialogue
Take notice of how you talk to yourself. It’ll take practice to speak kindly about yourself, but it’s worth the effort and time it takes. Instead of telling yourself your emotions are silly or you’re an idiot, reframe that.
Remind yourself of all of the work you’re doing and how far you’ve come. Tell yourself that that stupid thing you did doesn’t make you an idiot. Challenge the negative thoughts that come up and replace them with positive affirmations.
16. Celebrate Your Resilience
You’ve come a long way no matter where you are in your journey. Whether you’re starting off and had to take that first step of looking for resources or you’re trudging along and getting stuck in the middle, you’re doing great.
You’ve dealt with a lot to be here and you deserve all of the celebrations and growth that comes your way. Resilience is one of the most important skills you can build for yourself, so take the time to recognize the resilience you’ve already developed without knowing it.