02|Introduction: Anxiety or Anxiety Disorder?
Ding! “Attention!”
You pick up your phone, system notification again. you turned off the notification sound. A few minutes later, you pick up your phone again with snooze, some subscription email jump to your screen. You begin to feel annoyed and anxious, you back to the messaging app, it shows “read”. you sigh. You feel like the whole waiting process makes you feel anxious.
Feel that’s super common? you are not alone. It happened to me several times. I’m super anxious while waiting for someone’s message, especially when the messaging app has a read receipt feature.
I am not talking about anxiety disorder. I am talking about having a sense of anxiety. Take a deep breath.
WELCOME TO THE MOMENT LAB
Before I dive into my topic, I want to explore some moments of anxiety we experience in our daily lives, such as:
WAITING FOR THE FLIGHT
Uncertainty of time, time pressure, fear of flight. when under time constraints
WAITING FOR THE MESSAGE
Response expectation/relationship and its effect on your relationship to the sender
HYPERSENSITIVE TO CRITICISM AND EVALUATION
Fearing shame
GOING TO A PARTY AND NOT KNOWING ANYONE
Social isolation in an unfamiliar space
BEING OVERLY CAUTIOUS
HAVING TOO MANY CHOICES
The abundance of choice, result being paralyzed
HANDLING TOO MANY TASKS
Time pressure, deadline driven
“Anxiety is much more than just feeling ‘worried,’ “It can involve feelings of uneasiness, worry, apprehension, and fear. It can create havoc in your home, destroy relationships, cause employees to miss work, and prevent people from living full, productive lives.”
We are all familiar with these moments and situations. If you tap your fingers, fidget, bounce your legs, or struggle for breath, you are not alone. I also have anxious moments. Sometimes, your friends and family members are with you in these moments, but sometimes you are alone. Maybe you know how to eliminate or cope with anxiety or maybe you remain anxious.
Anxiety can creep up on you at any time, meaning we need tactics to tackle anxiety right away. As such, the main focus of this project is exploring how to cope with anxiety in our daily lives.
DISQUIET, DISCOMFORT, DISCOMPOSURE, ANXIOUSNESS, DISCONCERTION, MISGIVING, INSECURITY, CONCERN, SINKING, DISQUIETUDE, QUEASY, TROUBLE, WORRY, ANGST, INQUIETUDE, UNEASINESS, JITTERINESS, JUMPINAESS, NERVOUSNESS, RESTIVENESS, EMBARRASSMENT, PANIC
Do any of these feel familiar?
We are not strangers to these emotions. We have them all the time. In Chinese, we call this “焦虑“. The left character represents nervousness, while the right character represents fear and worry. The left character is specific, which means you feel anxious for a specific reason or in certain situations. The left character is nonspecific, which means you feel annoyed and anxious but are unsure of the reason. You know you are anxious, you cannot focus, or maybe you have yet to realize that you are anxious.
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- My first impression about Shape, a new design tool from IDEO
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👋🏻 02 | At this PEACEFUL Moment. Thanks for stopping by, see you next week!
