Anxiety, Part 6: Solutions to Triggers

Good Morning!

We now come to everyone’s favorite part, the fixing!
As we work through some potential solutions to managing your anxiety, be sure to manage your own expectations.

If you have been struggling with anxiety for years, please do not expect overnight change, that would be unrealistic. What you can expect is some realistic change. If you remember from my previous posts, I am an advocate for slow, sustainable, change. As you read this post, it might be a good idea to take on one solution at a time.

With realistic expectations in mind, let’s move to potential solutions for triggers.

If you remember, triggers are places, people and conditions that are fertile ground for you to experience a lot of anxiety.

Today, I am going to take an example and give possible solutions from each trigger category (places, people, conditions).

Let’s start with a condition or a state. I will begin with a personal example.

Today, the condition of my home is:

• Bad allergies/colds
• Late work schedules
• Attending a dinner party

The condition primed for anxiety is:

• Busy/tight schedule
• Low energy/being sick
• The pressure of expectations I have on myself and how I want life to go

To me, this condition is ripe for anxiety, perhaps you can relate?

Over a few years of developing awareness, this condition is fairly easy for me to now identify.

It was not at first.

The simple answer: reduce expectations and cut down my day to only the necessary things.
However, I am also fighting my knee-jerk reaction to “power through,” even if I am sick and weary. My desire to “power through” has been very helpful in a lot of areas, but not in my anxiety management.

So, there lies the two choices in my day:

Do I “power through,” not allowing my expectations of myself or others to be lowered for the day?

OR

Do I make some changes and lower expectations for the day?

The first option, the “power through” option, will immediately create sustained anxiety for the day, for me. I will be more irritable, stressed and essentially experience a lower quality of life because I will solely be responding all day to circumstances rather than being present with them.

The latter option is what I chose for today thankfully, I canceled a few plans and reduced my expectations for my kiddo and husband for the day. This immediately helped me relax and manage my anxiety for the day.

Principle: When you know what conditions create anxiety for you, it gives you power to do something about it.

Give yourself a minute to identify conditions that create anxiety for you, or maybe go back to the first post on triggers. I encourage you to allow yourself to reduce expectations for yourself and others when you are in these conditions. It may not always be realistic to cancel events in your life, however, sometimes you can and probably should.

Moving on to people!

Let’s be honest, people create a lot of anxiety

However, it still does not give you permission to blame your anxiety on other people.

These are some examples of people who may create anxiety for you:

• People who are quick to judge
• People who take advantage of you and your time
• People who are overly dependent on you

It is very important to know who these people are in your life. What I am not saying is, Oh, these people create anxiety in your life, just cut them out! What I am saying is, they need to be a part of your boundary plan.

So the next principle in managing your anxiety is: boundaries.

Boundaries: Are a mental, emotional or physical line you have drawn. After you have drawn that line, you then release the outcome and/or responsibility.

Example: You may be able to stay up late and be there for a friend every once in a while. However, you probably shouldn’t carry the weight of your friend’s problem every day. The boundary is created when you decide when and how much you can help a friend. When you decide when and how much you can help, you then make it your friend’s responsibility to search for more support if they need it. The boundary is created when you are honest with what you can and cannot do and you then release the responsibility of the outcome.

*If your friend is going through a divorce, death, major illness, etc., the rules might change. This example is focused on chronic abusers of your time and emotional space.

Also, you may have to educate other people on appropriate boundaries.

Your expectation should not be that others will automatically know and abide by healthy boundaries.

Thus, you may have to be proactive and perhaps confrontational in educating others what your boundaries are. Additionally, the word confrontational doesn’t mean you have to have an argument about healthy boundaries, you may just have to calmly yet firmly communicate your boundaries.

I will write a blog post on boundaries in the not too distant future. However, If I continue talking on boundaries, we may never finish the post for today. Boundaries are very important, if you would prefer to just connect with boundaries today, check out this book:

Boundaries, by: Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

Okay, for the last circumstance in triggers, let’s take a look at physical places.

Places that create anxiety for you may be:

• Crowded places
• Being on a bridge
• Being in open water
• Your in-laws home
• Your place of work
• Being on an elevator
• Being stuck in the middle of a row with few escape options

Some of these triggers can cross-over to the category of “people and anxiety.”
Your experiences in these places could have been negative which spills over into the thought process: I am anxious around that place, because I am anxious around the people in that place.

As a solution to these types of triggers, you need to create a plan. Avoidance of the above bullets is probably not the best way to go because it will probably just increase your anxiety as you attempt to avoid them. But, you can create a realistic plan.

Both of the above principles: lowering expectations and creating boundaries, applies to these physical places.

You will probably always have to go to work and every once in a while be in crowded places. But, you can set time limits to how long you are in a crowded place and you can create boundaries with coworkers who trigger you.

I am sure there are several unique situations every person can come up with that will sound something like…

Well what about this situation…

OR

I can’t quit my job…

OR

I have to be around my anxiety-producing boss…

If it was a quick solution, I would be out of a job and life would be without challenges that help us develop as people.

So if your situation is unique, think creatively.

As I mentioned in my first post, consider if this situation has been chronic or just circumstantial.
Chronic problems will probably take big changes that take time.

For example, if your boss/person in your life is anxiety-producing:

You may have to reduce your sensitivity to their words and behavior. Circling back to boundaries, they are all about deciding what you can and cannot do. And once you have established what you can and cannot do, you release the outcome and responsibility.
You may not (actually, you probably won’t) meet people’s expectations all the time. You may not meet your _______ expectations, but you can resolve that what you have done is realistic and within your ability to maintain healthy boundaries.

If your boundaries do not work after a while of working with them, you may want to change your surroundings, you may need to quit your job.

Disclaimer: I do not want to be responsible for you quitting your job, that’s your responsibility. I am simply asking you to consider what your quality of life is in your current situation. You need to decide what is possible and essentially what you want to live with. I would encourage you to take an honest look.

We have covered a lot today.

It might be a good idea to only take a bit of the information at a time.

Pick out the most important concept to you from today’s post. You can always come back to the post later if want to connect with another solution.

Next week we will work through some solutions to physical symptoms.