Category: Other Emotions

FOUR anti-anxiety techniques for strategically using your anxiety. (V.E.M.A)

1.VALIDATE:  Validate (accept) your feeling.

“I am really anxious right now.”

The point here is that your anxiety is telling you that you are facing a big challenge and must prepare for it.  Accepting (validating) your feeling opens you up to the opportunity to examine your anxiety and benefit from its message.

2.EXAMINE:  Use your anxiety as a wake-up call to examine the “reality” of the threat.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the “threat” that I’m facing?

In the above example, the threat is the slow internet connection which was preventing my colleague from uploading his information. The threat was real. It was not catastrophic.

You may discover that there you have misunderstood or misperceived the situation and there is no threat.

• How important is for me to eliminate the threat and get the “job” done?

If the “job” is very important, then you will need to figure out a plan of action. If the “job” is not really that important, then choose to let the feeling go and move on.

• What do I need now in terms of skills and knowledge, what resources do I have that I can call upon to move forward, or what do I need to do to get the resources I need?

My colleague needed a network connection. With his focus on solutions, he realized that he could borrow a network at a friend’s house or Starbucks.

The point is that you have knowledge and resources upon which you can draw to help you move forward.

Your anxiety, if not used as a tool, can distract you from identifying these resources.

3. MOTIVATE

Use your anxiety as a motivator or energizer to charge up your creative juices and push you to making plans to use the resources you have or will develop.

“I can use all this nervous energy as motivation to get this “project” back on track.”

4. ACT

Take action, NOW.

Answer these four questions, determine where you need to change, get the information you need, and move forward in strategically applying your anxiety. 

1. I validate my feelings… Yes / No
2. I examine the “reality” of the threat that might exist.. Yes / No
3. I use my anxiety as a motivator.. Yes / No
4. I am taking action on what I have learned… Yes / No

I look forward to your comments.

Anxiety is a future based emotion. It is looking into the future with a sense of dread.

Examples of situations in which you might become anxious and catastrophise include:

• Asking for a raise at work.
• Needing to change jobs because of unacceptable circumstances at work.
• Needing to talk to your spouse about finances, unacceptable habits, or other topic.
• Needing to learn to give a speech in order to advance at work, hold a volunteer office, etc.
• Wanting to ask someone out on a date (perhaps, you are post-divorce and back in the “market”)

Using anxiety as a tool:  The key is to RESPOND (not to react) to your anxiety. This is the EUSTRESS side of anxiety.

1. View your anxiety as a messenger telling you that action may be needed.

2. Use your anxiety as a motivator to take action.

You use your anxiety as a tool when …

• That report is due at work, or at school, and you stay up all night to get it done.
• You are going on vacation in two days and you manage to clear your desk and make arrangements so you can leave without worrying about what happens while you are gone.
• You start a new business, buy a new car, or take out a loan on a house and you read all the documents a second time to make sure that “all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed”.

I welcome your comments on the above.

 

I noted in my last post that fear and anxiety were not the same emotion.

Too often, people confuse the two emotions.  An example is the saying, “I’m afraid I might not do well on the exam next week.” Now, I am not saying we need to change the way we talk.  I am saying that if you want to learn to master your emotions, you would benefit from knowing the actual feeling you are experiencing and even using the right word to discuss it. This is so you can choose the most adaptive response to the situation you are facing and to which your feeling is alerting you.

Fear is a present “here and now” feeling.  It is the hair on the back of the neck feeling of dread you might experience if you are facing a robber who is pointing a gun at you or if you are alone in an abandoned garage and you hear footsteps, or, and this one is important, you are looking at someone who is standing in an elevator appearing to be just fine but who just doesn’t feel “right” to you.

The best advice is to always listen to your fear.  This does not mean that the guy in the elevator is a danger to you. For people who have developed a prejudice toward others, fear may come up and be totally inappropriate. All I am saying is that if you feel fear, act on the side of caution and take the next elevator.  Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear is an excellent source for information on this emotion.

Anxiety is a future based emotion the message of which is that there MAY be a threat and it MIGHT “kill” me.  Anxiety is the “butterflies” in your stomach, the sweaty palms, the nervousness, or the uneasy sense of impending doom you might experience if you have an interview coming up for a new job, you get pulled over by a policeman, you want to meet a new someone, and so forth.

There are two types of anxiety.  Eustress is the enabling form of anxiety in which you use the nervous energy of your emotion as motivation to study for the exam, prepare for the interview etc.

Distress is the disabling form of anxiety which stops you in your tracks, prevents you from taking action on your own behalf, leads you to make an excuse why you shouldn’t approach your new someone and so forth.

Mastering your anxiety involves assessing the nature of the possible threat. What would happen if the threat actually took place? Could you survive it? If you could survive it, you can move to eustress.

Another “trick” for mastering anxiety is to turn it into anticipation (or enthusiasm).  Anticipation is the flip side of anxiety.  The energy of both emotions is the same.  The message of anticipation is that if I handle this situation, good things could possible take place that I might really like.

Think about how you approach your anxiety.

If you have questions or comments, please leave a comment.