Anxiety Really Sucks!

Some days, it seems like you can just never get a break. You know, those days when a passing car splashes muddy water into your face, you’re late for work, and you spill your coffee all over your boss? Or maybe the bus breaks down on your way to a final exam, you sprain your ankle running to get there in time, only to realize that you forgot your student ID card and can’t get into the building. Most of the time, you can look back on such days and find humor in them.

But sometimes you can’t. Like this one day, a few months ago, when I was just starting to get daily panic attacks for the first time, and I’d hit my breaking point. I remember that day vividly – I was walking around in circles, avoiding going back to my apartment. I made my way up to a park on a hill in the middle of the city, hidden behind an array of dense trees. And I contemplated my suicide.

What saved me was a quick call to my parents. They forced me to talk about what was really bothering me, to get to the root of the problem, and they encouraged me to use the coping techniques I’d learned in therapy. They also got me crying – which it turns out was all I really needed. I could have easily thrown away years of treatment and self-discovery all in a sudden moment of weakness, but it was my social support network that kept me grounded. It was the accountability that comes with having close friends and family that saved me.

I have a great social support network. I have two incredibly understanding parents who have seen me at my worst and have never judged me. I have amazing friends scattered across the country who treat me with more respect than I probably deserve. I even have outstanding authority figures in my life – bosses, supervisors, counselors, advisers. And it’s these people who have kept me on my path to recovery.

Social support is a crucial element of any journey to recovery. Our support network encourages us to stick to our treatment plan, lends a helping hand we need something we can’t do for ourselves, and provides us with one or many shoulders to cry on if need be. Going beyond the obvious benefits, social support also has a biological basis too. Socializing facilitates the release of a hormone called oxytocin that helps us stay calm and relaxed. Low levels of oxytocin may contribute to illnesses like depression and anxiety.

Social support acts as a sort of buffer against stress and illness. It has been linked to lower rates of heart disease, lower stress hormone release, and better immune function. Unequivocally speaking, science has shown that having a support network is crucial to any recovery program – whether it be from mental illness or physical illness.

So why don’t we all open up about our illnesses? Usually the answer surrounds stigma (I’ve written about what perpetuates stigma before). Our society stigmatizes mental illness, and thus we fear being judged if we open up. We fear losing friends, becoming estranged from family members, maybe even losing jobs. It’s a scary thing to open up and let very personal parts of yourself out. But hopefully we know and trust those people that we’ve invited into our lives enough to be able to share ourselves.

Here are a few tips that you might find useful in your quest to broaden your social support network.

• Start small. Opening up about your illness is never an all-or-nothing process. If you’re not comfortable with labels, then just talking about how you get anxious from time to time is a great start. Tell your mom that it makes you uncomfortable to meet new people. Open up to your best friend about your fear of public transportation. Just getting your emotions out on the table can be incredibly cathartic.
  
• Practice online. If you’re not ready to talk about your illness in person, then start by joining an internet forum to discuss your thoughts and feelings (you can try Anxiety Zone or just do a quick Google search).
• Role play with your therapist. If you happen to be receiving professional help, role playing can be a great way to work out fears you have. Your therapist will likely have a lot of insight into possible reactions you may get and how to deal with them.
• Send an email. If you happen to have social anxiety like me, then having a serious emotional conversation in person can be difficult even if you practice online first. An easier approach would be to send your thoughts by written word (email, Facebook, or even snail mail if you’d like). That way, you have more time to choose your wording and you’re giving the other person time to digest the information and decide on an appropriate response.

Having a social support network is incredibly important if you want to stick to your journey to recovery. If you’re not ready to open up to your own support network about your anxiety, then feel free to leave me a message through my contact page – I read and respond to all my messages!

I’m a huge procrastinator. Whether it’s studying for an exam or writing a new blog post, I have mastered the art of putting things off and feeling okay about it. But sometimes, on the rare occasion I can trick my brain into productivity mode, I can tackle my to-do list head on and win.

What makes me procrastinate? I’m a pretty impulsive person. I lack self-discipline (for the most part). I’m lazy, I have a short attention span, and I really like creeping Facebook. I also love sleeping in and I get easily addicted to TV shows. I want to cook new recipes, and there are a million video games I want to try (but not beat…that takes dedication). I want to learn kung fu, judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, and how to wield a katana. I want to lift weights more often, I want to run farther (and faster), I want to take up yoga and Tai Chi. I want to write a horror novel, or maybe just a few short stories, or wait, maybe I want to write a fantasy epic. I want to speak Russian, Japanese, Spanish, and Latin. I want to read more Dean Koontz novels, watch more comedies, obsess over Buffy the Vampire Slayer more often. …I think you get the picture.

What makes me NOT procrastinate? You can have the short answer or the long answer. The short answer is passion. When I feel passionate about something, even fleetingly, I can fend off procrastination for the time being. But of course, that isn’t real advice, is it?

The long answer is a different story. As much as passion is a huge motivator, it isn’t without flaws. Even the most passionate people working the most exciting jobs or studying the most fascinating topics procrastinate. So we’re back at square one…how do you stop procrastinating? Well, I want to share a few tips that I find helpful in the ongoing battle against procrastination.

• Disconnect yourself. I bet you could probably guess I’d start with a lecture on limiting your internet browsing. Well, yes, that is my first tip. I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, and you’ve tried it a hundred million times, but something keeps opening up a new Facebook tab or telling you “five more minutes on Reddit, and I swear I’ll get back to work!” Do yourself a favor and just disconnect from the internet. Turn off your cellphone. Get in the zone. You have a limited attentional load, meaning you can only attend to a couple things at a time. If you try to pay attention to too many things, you’ll never get anything done.
  
• Remove the allure of decisions. If you make studying or catching up on readings a decision, then chances are you will find something more immediately gratifying to do. Try to remove these choices from your day: set a certain time on a certain day where you will complete a certain task. Do your sociology readings every Tuesday morning with a warm mug of green tea. Prepare your meeting notes Sunday evenings as you sip on a chai latte. Write a blog post every Monday afternoon while you enjoy a new herbal tea. (Doing things while drinking tea always sounds more pleasant, don’t you think?)
• Give yourself time off. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, working for days on end without giving yourself a break is no good. I find that when I reach my maximum work capacity too early in the week, I spend the rest of the week putting things off. Instead, give yourself some time off every day where you can set aside your worries and just relax. That way, you’re less likely to run out of steam, and procrastination will be held further at bay.
• Dedicate a room to productivity. If you can find a particular spot where you do nothing but productive work (say, a particular seat at a library or a fun cafe down the street), your brain will eventually start to associate the environment with productivity. That way, you have one less thing (your environment) to distract you from doing your work.
  
• Give up perfectionism. For a lot people, the biggest obstacle preventing them from starting a task is the need for everything to be perfect. Dive into your work and just get it done. You’ll never reach perfection. (I will dedicate a post to perfectionism later, so I’ll have a lot more to say about that.)
• Balance your anxiety. Maybe you’ve heard of the Yerkes-Dodson law. Maybe you haven’t. If it’s the latter, then I will tell you there is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance that follows a bell curve. If you are not aroused at all (i.e. if you’re bored), you won’t perform well (you’ll probably procrastinate). If you’re too aroused (i.e. if you’re anxious about the task), you won’t perform well either (you’ll still procrastinate). In order to efficiently complete a task, you must be interested enough to start it (feel the pressure), but not too worried about the task to avoid it (oh-my-god-I-have-a-forty-page-paper-due-in-six-hours). Start your task early enough that you can complete it with a little time to spare, but not too early that you aren’t worrying about the due date.
• Work with little tasks, not big projects. Instead of saying “I HAVE to finish this paper today”, try “I want to get my research done today – tomorrow I will start writing.” Large tasks seem insurmountable, and will probably encourage you to procrastinate. Small tasks are much easier to deal with. You probably won’t have time to read 600 pages in one night, so don’t plan for it. If you’re a constant procrastinator like me, it takes baby steps to get out of this “student syndrome.” (The student syndrome refers to the phenomenon where students don’t bother applying themselves until the night before an official deadline. We all do it.) Try breaking down the 600 pages into smaller chunks with a little bit more time devotion. Why not 200 pages for three nights prior to the exam? That’s a step in the right direction…
• Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. If all else fails, try to restructure your internal dialogue. Instead of dreading the work set out in front of you, remember why you’ve chosen to do that work. Whether it’s the joy of getting a good grade, the excitement of working towards a degree you’ve always wanted, or the allure of a new internship, there’s a reason you’ve decided to put yourself to work. Keep that in mind when you try to convince yourself that you need to spend an hour on Stumbleupon.

You can read and read and read about procrastination and still fail to overcome it. We use our cognitive biases to justify it. With billions of potential distractions pleading us to put off our work, it’s a wonder anyone gets anything done. But I know you can battle your procrastination and win. I do it (sometimes). That means you can too.

How do you battle procrastination? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment :).

Relaxation: you’re doing it wrong.

For those of us out who score high on the perfectionism scale, the idea of productive “me” time is alien. As society pushes us farther and farther along the education bandwagon, we find ourselves with little time to relax and unwind.  Universities are the best institutions at breeding burn-outs. The sheer volume of material that a student is exposed to in a university classroom is terrifying. If you’re a science student, you could spend an infinite amount of time learning biochemical pathways, anatomical structures, and physical equations. If you’re a humanities student, you could spend an even more infinite amount of time researching arguments related to your topic and editing your papers. There simply isn’t enough time to get through all the material in a class, so how could you take time off? How could you spend more time doing the things you want to do when you can’t even finish the things you have to do?

If you’re putting in 12-hour days 7 days a week right now, fastforward a couple years. How do you think you’re feeling? Are you still excited to get through those 12-hour days? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Did all your hard work pay off – do you finally have time for yourself? That answer is probably no. As students typically fail to realize, life doesn’t magically get easier once you’ve graduated. If you have to put in 12-hour days to get a job, chances are that job will put you through 12-hour days as well. Is that really what you want?

Most high-achieving people will never take full days off. Whether it’s worrying about an upcoming exam, adding last-minute touches to an essay, or scrambling to get your notes together for an important meeting, there simply isn’t time for a day off, right? Wrong.

I want to share a few tips that I’ve used in the past to allow myself some time to unwind and recharge.

• Let go of unrealistic expectations. Stop telling yourself that you haven’t had a successful week if you haven’t put in 70 hours at the library. I know this is one of those hackneyed pieces of advice that you’ll hear from time to time, but honestly, it’s worth repeating. Until you accept that life goes on when you fail to reach all your pie-in-the-sky goals, you’ll never be able to relax.
  
• Leave your work at the door. Make sure that there are places you can go specifically to relax. Whether its your bedroom, a particular cafe, or even just your kitchen, leave yourself at least one room where you can go without ever thinking about work. The human brain learns to associate things very quickly, and if you bring your work with you everywhere you go, you’ll learn that there is nowhere you can go to escape the hectic day-to-day stuff.
• Be spontaneous. If your off-time is just as routine as your on-time, you will probably grow to see relaxation as just another part of your busy schedule. Every once in awhile, take a day off – get through the bare minimum (mandatory meetings, tutorials, and whatnot), and then go wild and do something you’ve been thinking about doing for awhile. Blow off your study group to go see a movie and get sushi. Take a day off working on your paper to go on a long walk around the city. Race out of work as soon as your meeting is over and drive an hour out of town to go camping with your best friends.
• …but don’t be too spontaneous. Don’t leave your downtime to complete chance – make sure you have at least one day off a week.
• Be aware of the effects of burnout. I won’t get too much into this (at least for now), but think of your motivation as a limited resource – once you’ve motivated yourself to do a certain amount of work, it runs out. The only way to replenish your motivation is to take some time off to relax. If you work endlessly with no time for relaxation, you may grow resentful towards your workload and begin to dread the pile of things you have to do. Growing resentful of your workload is a dangerous slippery slope – perhaps leading you to drop out or change programs at an inconvenient time.
  
• Take up a hobby. Having something concrete to do that isn’t related to your workload can be a great way to escape and unwind. A hobby can be anything – volunteer at a child’s camp, learn how to cook, write a novel. If you give yourself something that registers as productive, maybe you’ll be more likely to allow yourself that time off work. Make sure it’s something that you actually enjoy and allows you to relax. If your hobby stresses you out even more than your regular workload, then maybe you should find a new one.
• Try meditation. Meditation, or other forms of mindfulness, can be a great way to learn the art of simplicity. In a world filled with distractions, we rarely have times where we’re not attending to an electronic device or planning our days. Mindfulness is all about grounding yourself in the present and trying not to let your thoughts wander. It’s kind of like forcing your mind to get bored – which is a good thing, in moderation. Spending some time to just appreciate the present moment without worrying about anything is a great way to relax and unwind. It’s actually a lot tougher than it sounds – see if you can spend 10 minutes imagining yourself on a private cruise ship without letting your thoughts wander.

The greatest satisfaction in the world comes from a feeling of purpose. We all want a purpose, and that’s what drives most of us to our wits’ ends. Do yourself a favor and take more time to do things you enjoy. Enjoyment and relaxation are purposes themselves – as much as society would like you to believe otherwise. Give up the unrealistic expectations that you may have placed on yourself, and just take the time to enjoy life. 

How do you unwind? I would love to hear your techniques for letting go of your daily worries. Leave me a comment!