Anxiety and the role of avoidance

ANXIETY.

It's a word used so often in the English language that I think it begins to lose it's meaning.

With that said, many of us, including myself, have started to feeling anxiety about returning to the "normal" day-to-day of pre-pandemic times.

Here's a breakdown of anxiety and how we can overcome it:

1. ANXIETY (otherwise known as FEAR) is a normal emotional reaction to times of stress and actual perceived threats (think cavewomen and a sabretooth tiger or hearing a smoke alarm go off while you are in your home). With that said, there are times when it no longer is a normal reaction and starts to be an over-reaction to safe situations. (ie: going to the grocery store, meeting friends for dinner, going to school)

2. In a very brief nutshell, the way to overcome it is to DO THE THING and stay in it until the anxiety has decreased. This may mean staying in the grocery store until your anxiety has gone down, going to church and sitting through the entire service even when feeling anxious etc. A rule of thumb- rate your anxiety from 0-100 with 100 being the absolute highest it could be. When it gets below a 45 or so- it has decreased and you can leave the situation and likely your anxiety level the next time you do it will be much lower at the start.

3. AVOIDANCE of distressing events is what keeps anxiety alive.

The more we avoid, the more it rears it's ugly head (sorry anxiety). If we avoid going to school, engaging with friends, etc or we shorten those activities so we can "escape" when anxiety is it's highest- the anxiety continues and often, it gets bigger and bigger.

With all this said, it absolutely makes sense that 2.5 years of quarantine, social limits, less engagement with others has lead millions of us to be highly anxious doing these activities AND in order to decrease that anxiety, we have to engage in them.

Some additional tips for little ones- I often use terms like "anxiety monster" or we identify what kind of animal the anxiety is and they might name it. This helps to remove it a bit from us and not feel so overwhelming.

*As always, my blog posts are not replacements for professional advice that you could receive one-on-one in a therapy office. If the above speaks to you and you want to learn more, I suggest reaching out to a therapist in your area and asking if they specialize in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure Response Prevention (ERP). I also have openings for this in my practice as well.