After being diagnosed with anxiety disorder in 2020, I had to quickly learn coping mechanisms to keep my anxiety at bay. I used strategies I learned from experts. It has been extremely helpful in keeping my anxiety levels low. However, recent trips to doctors and some new medications with unnecessary side effects have left me full of anxiety. My mind was racing and my fights and flight responses were lost to flame-proof all day. I was overwhelmed. Suddenly my old coping mechanism stopped working, so I was worried that this would become my new normal. I had to find other ways to avoid causing my anxiety.
Walking and walking helps me in the short term, but the constant anxiety I have woken up has forced me to find other ways to achieve peace. This meant a major change in my lifestyle. I was unable to continue to approach a new situation with fear, and I was unable to accumulate many unwanted, unrealistic expectations of myself. I had to determine how much I could handle with regard to restrictions every day. However, I have discovered that taking steps to change my worldview and my lifestyle will reduce my anxiety.
Here are the ways I learned to control anxiety and restore peace:
Don’t get mad at a predictable situation
One of my main triggers of anxiety is getting mad at people who do the same predictable things. I know it’s coming, so it’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I predict that the action will happen, and when it does, I don’t stop it, so I’m mad. But I had to learn to stop being angry at people’s actions. If people are willing to change and I know they are there, they may repeat negative patterns of behavior. Therefore, the extra stress and energy I was using to control the situation didn’t help me at all. It was adding to my stress and damaging my physical, emotional and mental well-being.
I had to learn to stop getting mad at predictable behavior. In the past, I would like to modify that behavior to prevent it from having a negative impact on me. However, you can do that by placing boundaries. Recognizing the steps I can take to stop someone else’s negative behavior from affecting me has helped me achieve more peace. It’s easier than I say, but I’m an ongoing job, but I’ve learned to set good boundaries and stick to them.
Deep breathing
If that was affecting my daily life, I had to learn deep breathing techniques to help to contain my anxiety. I take the cold laundry and place it on my eyes. I enter a dark room and hear the sound of breathing for 60 minutes. When focusing on breathing, allowing my lungs to be fully filled and fully exhale, it helps to take my heart out of my troubles. This helps to naturally lower my cortisol levels, even if they are temporary. Once I’m done, I feel peaceful and don’t strain my gut.
This cannot be done immediately, especially in public or work situations, but you can use this technique in the morning, evening, or holidays. Take 60 minutes and let yourself be in the darkest room possible. Close the colour. Turn off your phone. Unplug the plug from the screen. You get used to hearing silence. Many of us experience a noisy world every day, so we don’t think about how much pollution we will consume. Our bodies need time to rest from incorporating and processing audio stimuli. Sitting in silence and closing your eyes allows your body to reduce irritation.
Please exchange my will for God
Succession is a concept that I work continuously. I had to learn to stop trying to control every situation in my life. Control is my default response when things aren’t going my way. When I face a problem that is difficult to control, I ask myself, “How much of a situation do I actually control?” I deceive myself when I think I control many situations in my life, because the reality is that people do what they are trying to do. With this truth in mind, it is best to allow God’s will to control my life.
By trading God’s will at my will, I must allow the situation to unfold according to his purpose. People have their own will, so God allows them to make their own choices. Even if someone chooses to not make for them, I have to allow them to fail and make mistakes.
Furthermore, I must learn to entrust my will to God. I have learned to express my concerns to him and allow God to do whatever His will allows. When things didn’t go down my path, I stopped getting mad and I tried to learn that the way things were happening was my biggest concern. It’s not easy to control my life, especially after going through many challenges. But if I truly follow the Lord, I will follow him both at the highest and lowest of my life.
Relocate my schedule
To reduce stress levels, we had to reposition our schedules. Part of my stress comes from working long hours. I had to learn to be more organized, get to work and make sure things were ready before the deadline. That way you will have plenty of time for other projects. This requires creativity and organization, but since I did this, I realized that I have more time throughout the week to relax and enjoy.
Some seasons in my life allowed me to take vacations, while the other seasons were not, but I had to learn to take vacations and rest, whether I had time to go to a special place to recharge. I am called to rest and I must obey that calling. But it can be more complicated than we understand. Constant deterioration in my phone, responding to emails, or working late at night can be extra stress my body doesn’t need.
I’m good at organizations, so I usually don’t wait until the end of a project. However, since some projects take longer than others and some have more immediate deadlines, others don’t, I had to learn to rearrange things and pace myself. When I’m exposed to many deadlines and I work a lot, I get overwhelmed. That’s part of what causes my anxiety. That means I have to learn to take breaks, take leave when necessary, and consistently pace my work days.
Life is stressful. I always face the challenge of reducing anxiety. But I can learn to reorganize my schedule, take plenty of breaks, take deep breaths, give up my will, and not get mad at predictable situations, so I can learn to have more peace in my life and reduce the amount of anxiety that will hurt my mind and body.
Photo credit: ©Juan Pablo Serrano Arenas/Pexels
Michel S. Lazrek is the wife and mother of an award-winning author, speaker, pastor. She is a literary agent for Wordwise Media Services and host of the Spritual Reset Podcast. Her new children’s book Hall of Fame encourages children to understand that God can trust. When not working, she enjoys sipping Starbucks lattes, gathering memorabilia from the 80s, and spending time with her family and crazy dogs. For more information, please visit her website www.michellelazurek.com.
