Keep an “Anxiety Diary”
What’s up beautiful people? Welcome to my first official technique post. This will be the first of so many posts about what I’m doing on my Mental Well-being Journey.
So, what is an Anxiety Diary? Well it’s a log of all the moments when you feel anxious. Whether you have an anxiety disorder or not, this can be really useful to you. It will show you what situations make you feel ill at ease. When you know what triggers your discomfort, you’re halfway to beating it. Know your enemy, as it were!
How I decided to do mine is using a note app on my phone. Of course you can do yours however you wish. But all you have to do is stop for a second when you feel yourself getting anxious or feeling crap. Take out your diary and write the date and time, then list how you’re feeling and what the situation is.
You know what this tells us?
- What time of day you get anxious
- How frequently
- And what has to be going on to drive you there
These things are gold. Once your diary starts to fill, you’ll have a wealth of knowledge to analyse. Highlight common occurrences, and from there discover your anxiety pattern. Here, we can do several things.
- Anticipate our anxiety and be prepared
- Find ways of changing the situation — whether it’s our thoughts of it, or physically changing it
- Cut it out — I don’t mean avoidance, like if you get anxious at meals, like me, don’t stop going for meals; I mean if you get anxious at work due to a poor working environment, then seriously consider switching jobs or confronting your manager
- Practice relaxation techniques
- Knowing yourself is the key to ruling mental well-being
- Expose ourselves to these triggers more, in order to alleviate their power over us
See? Once you know your triggers, the ball is back in your court. You become in control and are able to figure out ways to reduce them. I realised my S.A.D. is flaring up because I get anxious for no reason in the evenings. Now I can find techniques to reduce the affects of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Let me know if you start your own Anxiety Diary. Comment on here about how well it goes and what you’ve figured out. Good luck!
Peace.
