Habits and Anxiety

Can the simple act of thinking about a new project coming up or preparing for a holiday dinner lead to shortness of breath, heart palpitations, or panic attacks? Habits, whether good or bad play a huge role in our mental and physical health, success, and quality of our relationships. Our habits affect every area of our lives. Acts of anxiety can be embedded in your habits. Avoiding or pretending that you aren’t having these experiences doesn’t help. In fact, it only makes things worse. Physical signs of anxiety in everyday life can look like you are sweating, shaking, experiencing nausea, having to use the restroom more frequently, exhaustion, muscle weakness, dizziness, or irregular body temperature. Is this you?

In our society, we have learned how to cope with adversity and uncertainty. We take on risks in an overly apprehensive manner instead of processing what is happening and dealing with the anxiety of what has come before us. After a while, these apprehensive feelings begin to feel natural and normal. Therefore, unhealthy coping mechanisms become a habit resulting in unconscious behaviors. These behaviors can be embedded in our personalities. These habits can look like nail-biting, skin picking, hair pulling, cleaning too much or too little, hand washing, or substance addiction. This shows insecurity within the anxiety you are experiencing. Is this you?

This can be overcome by learning to cope with risk, uncertainty, and adversity in healthy ways. Recovering involves identifying and exchanging coping behaviors with healthy coping behaviors. Anxiety exists inside your habits that make up your everyday life. Habits are sticky. They don’t just go away. Depression and anxiety can show in our habits within our interactions. Anxiety habits can be prevalent in smoking, eating disorders, financial mismanagement, and much more. Many find as they overcome these bad habits and replace them with good habits, their lives change. How can you make healthy changes?

Become Self Aware

Pay attention to how you are responding to different scenarios and recognize potential triggers. While also paying attention to different scenarios, also pay attention to how your body is responding to the situations where you are feeling anxiety. The following are some potential examples:

·         Perhaps you are unmotivated to do a task, you review your social media, you feel more anxious

·         Perhaps you have an upcoming assignment or deadline coming up at work, you grab a snack to eat to distract the anxiety you feel.

·         When you experience anxiety, you become more worried about it, then you feel more anxious

Proverbs 14:8 says, “The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving. Keeping an account of triggers helps to recognize potential triggers and will help to enable you to live a more peaceful life.

Plan

Learn about and create new coping mechanisms so that you have a catalog of additional coping behaviors to replace the unhealthy ones. Exercising mindfulness can be a healthy way to overcome the worry and anxiety you are feeling. Have patience with yourself and repeat the healthy behaviors until it becomes normal. Healthy habits can look like cooking, learning to cook healthy meals, spending time outside, reading, prayer, devotions, meditating, cleaning, and journaling. It may feel different but it will feel more normal over time.

Remove Negative Self-Talk

Proverbs 23:7 says, “So as a man thinketh, so is He.”  Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Therefore, while being organic about your situation, it is also important to speak life into what you desire to change. Affirmations are a powerful tool in assisting with changing the narrative.

Reward Milestones

Don’t look at the end goal but reward the milestones that you make along the way. Reward yourself as you become more self-aware

Counseling Support Can Help

If you or someone you know needs a safe place to develop healthy habits and form strategies to remove bad anxiety-filled habits in your life and live a healthier lifestyle, counseling support is available. Call 443-860-6870 to schedule an appointment or review the calendar to schedule an appointment today.