Hey you! Yes - you! Ready to take down worrying and learn how to stop it from controlling your life? You sure seem ready! Even if you don't feel too confident yet, let us lightly nudge you in an inspiring direction.
If you feel that worrying and anxiety are a significant part of your life, or the life of someone you love, you may have thought about ways to deal with this problem many times. However, it can often be overwhelming to understand and try handle worrying, so many people give up, before they have even really tried. If you have been struggling to understand worry for some time now, then you will be happy to learn that everything you have been looking for, you will likely find within this course.
We’ll start at the very beginning, by answering the increasingly sought-after question “What is worry?”. Once you have the definition of worrying down, you’d be able to take a more in-depth look into this tricky topic and figure out whether your worries are realistic, or if they are simply out of your control. Naturally, everybody worries sometimes, just like you do, but together we will try to find how much worrying is too much and if it is getting in the way of our happy lives. It’s not only that quantity that matters, but also the quality. Believe it or not, worrying can be both positive and negative, depending on whether it helps you reach you goals, or gets in their way. Of course it may also turn out, that there are some unrealistic goals that worry you in the first place. That is why it is important to recognize the sources of your stress.
Now that you have learned all the most important concepts, when it comes to the definition of worrying, you have a solid basis, on which to build further, even more helpful knowledge. That is why it is time to consider how you think about worrying and thus start getting a bit more personal with yourself. To start with, we should learn to recognize when we experience positive stress and when it is actually negative stress. Once you are able to distinguish between the two, it is time to locate where worry occurs and how mindfulness can help. Although mindfulness is one great tool you have, your mental resources count the most. Whatever they may be, know that you can improve upon them and build stronger ones.
As you now know so much about the topic, it may seem strange that worrying has its upside as well, especially when, in the past, our ancestors had to evade danger. Today, however, our worries seem vaguer, which could also mean that they are the results of an imbalance in our lives, bodies and minds.
Now that you understand these possible perspectives, go back, once again, and try to acknowledge what worrying means to your personally.
Wow, just look at how much you have learned already! Good job! Considering the solid basis you have built for your new life, which you don’t want controlled by anxiety, you can now complete a short quiz, for your own, private purposes, to help give you clearer direction for changing things around. You can do this with the help of Part 1 and Part 2 of our stress test. Then, what would be even more helpful from now on, is keeping a record of your progress, thoughts, and concerns. This is going to be a large part of your progress from now on.
An excellent game plan can be set into motion, by understanding and cultivating resilience. Once you are able to progressively include resilience in your way of life and mindset, it is time to create a personalized strategy, to help you handle your personal brand of worrying in a way that makes you happy and is effective for you. Although this would be different for everyone, we have a few suggestions that most people struggling with anxiety find incredibly helpful. Mindfulness and meditation have been used by millions of people, for centuries, and have proven benefits for your overall mental health. Another wonderful method that helps with anxiety is visualization – we have selection Technique 1 and Technique 2 as simple, yet effective approaches. Furthermore, one of the most popular types of psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is what has helped many who have struggled with anxiety. Although it is usually carried out with the help of a trained psychologist, we’d like to suggest an adaptation of CBD, which you can do on your own. With the next strategy, we will head on to ancient times and will apply the approach of the Stoics to our modern lives. The final strategy we’d like to suggest is one that you have probably heard your friends swear by – yoga. Although it is cannot be the singular solution to anxiety, yoga can certainly help.
You are now ready to return to your everyday life, but with a new approach and a new perspective in mind. If you are persistent in applying everything you have learnt and trained to do so far, then it is more than likely that you will feel the positive change sooner than you might have hoped. Still, there are some aspects of day-to-day life we have not yet touched upon, and so they have been collected in our list of practical everyday ideas.
Most people who struggle with anxiety would help the information provided here very useful and would be able to transform their lives through its use. However, you should also keep in mind that there are some instances when you just cannot be expected to do it all on your own. In those cases, especially when you have suffered trauma/PTSD or when you are struggling with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, OCD, and severe Phobias, it is always strongly recommended to see a professional. Remember, there is nothing wrong with that, it is just another way to help you get back to your happy and healthy self.
At the end of the course, we’d like to remind you that this is not the end of your journey. it is important to understand that it take time to turn around the way you deal with worry – be patient with yourself, but still push your limits!
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Liya Panayotova (Dec 8, 2015). How to Deal with Worries. Retrieved Dec 12, 2024 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/e/how-to-deal-with-worries
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