Skills to Calm Your Anxious Thoughts
Waves and Anxiety
If you hang around me for long you’ll realize I love metaphors. I think they just help explain so much in life. Maybe it’s because I’m a visual learner and they help me wrap my mind better around concept.
Waves. There’s nothing more calming to me than to sit on the beach and to just watch and listen to the waves. On the other hand there’s also nothing quite so scary as playing in the waves and having them crash on top of you and you go head over heals somersaulting while the waves pound you into the sand. Then they leave you in the sand… coughing and spewing while you try to gather together your self-respect and make sure your swimsuit is still on. Phew… so much for trying to learn how to surf!
Isn’t that how anxiety leaves you feeling? Anxious thoughts come at you one after another, pounding and pushing you down, eroding the sand under your feet. All while you try to hold your balance and keep your cool. Your body is having all these strange reactions… your chest feels tight, your heart feels like it’s about to jump out of your body, and your brain just won’t shut off. Forget concentrating on anything or trying to fall asleep. Try as you might it’s just so hard to calm those anxious thoughts!
Here I’m going to teach some practical skills for managing calming those anxious thoughts. In another post I’ll share some skills for managing the body reactions that accompany anxiety.
Identify your irrational anxious thought and self-explore to see if you can figure out it’s source. If you can’t that is fine too. But sometimes it helps to be able to identify where this fear comes from. Perhaps a past experience, something we saw someone else go through, a disaster on the news. Knowing the source of the anxious thought can help you challenge it.
Anxiety leads us to overestimate how likely something will go wrong. Take a step back and examine your anxious thought… how likely is it really that it would occur? Finding reliable statistics may help you take an objective look at your fear.
Anxiety often leads us into catastrophic thinking… assuming the worst possible scenario will occur. Again, take a step back and think through… What would be the worst scenario?
What would be the best scenario?
What would be the most likely scenario?
Anxious thoughts can be difficult to manage and sometimes it seems like our brain will just not listen to any logic. We may KNOW something is logically true, but it just doesn’t FEEL that way.
If you find yourself having difficulty managing anxious thoughts, I want you to know a few things… first, you are not alone! Anxious thoughts are so common. And second, you don’t have to fight these waves alone. Seek out the support of family, friends, or a professional. Mental health counseling can help you not only learn to implement these and other anxiety management skills so that you are able to “ride” the waves instead of be pushed down and tumbled by anxiety.
To set up a time to discuss how therapy could help you manage anxiety, click the Schedule button below or send me an email through the Contact page.
*Disclaimer… I am not a surfer and you should not ask for advice for riding actual waves from me… Unless you like the taste of saltwater and sand.
By Amy Neal MA, LCMHC