Issue link: https://www.ahpindiestylist.com/i/1250436
62 indie stylist Volume 1 Issue 1 Watching your anxiety rise and fall occupies your mind until eventually you note that the uncomfortable feeling has passed. For instance, if you feel anxious before a brief medical procedure such as having blood drawn, give yourself a mental challenge that will occupy your thoughts. Maria hated getting blood drawn. Her strategy: she would focus on her 15 grandchildren, giving herself the assignment of listing them in age order. Since the children were spread out over four families, lining them up by age posed a relatively challenging mental task. Well before she had reached the youngest child, the blood had been drawn. Serial Sevens, a challenging mental task that psychologists use to test concentration ability, can similarly serve to distract your thoughts away from an anxiety source. Start at 100 and keep subtracting seven from each total until you make it down to zero. Distraction by reading a magazine or checking your cell phone can accomplish a similar anxiety reduction. Tanner, who often traveled for business, loved his 26th- floor hotel room. It was spacious and sunny, overlooking New York City. At the same time, every long elevator ride triggered an anxiety rush. Tanner decided to take out his cell phone and send text messages as he rode up or down. As long as he could distract himself this way, elevator anxiety no longer overwhelmed him. Mindfulness Mindfulness techniques derived from Buddhist teachings ease anxiety and other negative emotions by focusing directly on the uncomfortable feeling. In a mindful state, there is no judging about what should or shouldn't be. There is only awareness and acceptance. Feelings flow—that is, they keep changing. Watching your anxiety rise and fall occupies your mind until eventually you note that the uncomfortable feeling has passed. HALT AGITATION OVER DECISIONS Do your attempts to make decisions ever get mired in mental wheel spinning? If your thinking stalls, spinning like wheels in a snowy rut, or if your thoughts agitate back and forth like windshield wipers, your thinking will create anxiety instead of solutions. Agitation can cause tension whether a decision is within your own thoughts or involves two or more people. In both cases, agitation blocks progress toward finding a solution. Constructive thinking, by contrast, gives you a feeling of forward movement. What accounts for stalls and agitation in decision-making? Often, it's a surprisingly powerful three-letter word. See if you can spot the problematic word in the following self-talk. "I'd like to go to the mountains this weekend. But there's no way I can do that with my house needing to get cleaned up . . . Maybe I can clean it up after work on Monday. But I know I'll be too tired to tackle it then . . . But it looks like such beautiful weather, and it's been so long since I've gone hiking." This article was excerpted from Prescriptions Without Pills: For Relief from Depression, Anger, Anxiety and More by Susan Heitler, PhD (Morgan James Publishing, 2016). Available at amazon.com and other online booksellers.