Overcoming Fear and Anxiety
Do you suffer from fear or anxiety?
Do you find yourself avoiding activities you previously enjoyed as you feel they would be stressful?
Do you feel very worried about society and how things are going?
Fear and anxiety are commonplace. COVID did a lot of damage with some people still nervous about interacting with others. One of the key reasons for fear and anxiety is that the environment is made to appear much more dangerous than it actually is.
Newspaper articles, 24-hour news channels and social media feeds tend to focus on the negative. It has long been said that bad news sells. Bad news sells papers, gains followers and grows audiences.
All this bad news gives people the impression that things are much worse than they are and this causes fear and anxiety.
It is amazing how much easier it is to relax when one discovers that things are not as bad as one thinks they are.
Here are three things you can do to help yourself or another to reduce their fear and anxiety.
1. Don’t follow the news for two weeks
You can stop reading newspapers, watching the news, or following social media accounts which share news or gossip for two weeks. See how you feel after two weeks.
Then start following the news, social media etc for a week and see if you start feeling worse. Then make up your mind whether or not you ought to pay attention to these.
2. Find Something That Isn’t Being a Threat
When a person is too anxious or confused, you can have him look around his environment and find something that isn’t being a threat to him. Carry on doing this until the person is very happy or relieved and has had a realisation about himself, the environment or life in general.
You can also use this technique directly on yourself. For example, you find yourself worried at work with emails coming in, the phone ringing and colleagues complaining. You can look over your computer, phone and your team members when they are working and find something about them that is not a threat. You should keep doing this until you feel happy.
3. Take a Walk
Another way of having a person look at the environment and discover that it isn’t so threatening is a technique called “Take a Walk.” If a person feels bad, have him take a walk and look at things as he walks. You can do this on yourself as well. All you need to do i walk around the block a few times and spot things around you (e.g. buildings, people, objects, traffic etc.) until you feel better.
The effort here is just to get the individual to inspect the environment and find out that there is some slightly greater security in it. One just wants the person to look and find out if the environment is as threatening as it appears to be.
“Take a walk and look at things” is great advice and is almost certain to produce a result if the person will do it.
There are numerous other techniques you can use to reduce fear and anxiety. These are covered in the booklet Solutions for a Dangerous Environment. Get your copy in the Bookstore today here!