Managing anxiety and continuing productivity

What is Anxiety?

Understanding what anxiety is the first step before delving deep into this topic. Anxiety is the fear of anticipated events. Note that! ‘Anticipated’ but not need not necessarily be real events. It is natural for a fish to feel the fear when it’s under shark attack. But, if the fish stops swimming altogether anticipating a shark attack, life goes to a halt. That’s exactly what anxiety does to individuals.

Avoidance of the anxiety-provoking events/situations is one of the most common ways in which people manage anxiety. However, unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that avoiding such situations eventually takes over the quality of your life and starts interfering with your productivity at work.

One can’t manage to face it and can’t afford to avoid it. Tricky situation! What does one do then? Read on to find out.

Accept it and Face it:

Accept that you are facing anxiety and let it come whenever it comes. Set some room aside in your workday to deal with it. Use your anxiety to learn the triggers it ticks off on. Make a note of them and be prepared for the next time before being in the same situation. For e.g. speaking on stage! Here’s the thing. You must face those situations in order to learn and grow. If it helps, make a list of all those anxiety provoking activities and rank them. Start with the lowest ranking item and work your way up the sheet to accomplish the final and hardest task.

What’s my level?

Caught yourself in anxiety? That’s great! You are becoming more aware of yourself. The immediate next smart thing to do is to become mindful and ask yourself, “On a scale of 1-10, what level of anxiety am I at?” See what you did there? Anxiety is an emotion. So the rational component of the brain is in passive mode while you’re anxious. By asking yourself such a question, you are activating the thinking part of the brain, thus off-setting emotion.

Care:

Care for yourself with proper nutrition, exercise, rest. We know that the standard list stops at that. So here’s more! Put quality information (books) into your head-space. Read and watch comedy. Maintain a healthy balance of emotions. Engage in activities that involve multiple senses.

Catastrophic and Over-generic:

Be wary of this nature of your mind and don’t take its suggestions always. It tends to communicate normal situations as catastrophic and generalizes one mishap onto every aspect of your life.

Connect:

Stay connected with the people around you. Use your friends, family and colleagues as a support system. But be careful about how much you want to reveal to your work-place colleagues especially. If you have bottled up feelings that you can’t seem to share with people who know you, it is advisable to visit a counsellor to let the emotions out.

Relax:

Breathing is an important thing to control during anxious phases. Deep breathing by inhaling to 6 counts and exhaling to 10 counts helps relieve anxiety. Counting numbers going from 1-10 and back from 10-1 is also a quick fix strategy you can implement. Make it a point to also engage in activities that are personally enjoyable and relaxing for you after or during work.

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