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Untangling anxiety
While the festive season is a joyous occasion for many, for some it leaves a feeling of intense anxiety.
David Westgate
This is not a suggested cure for anxiety disorder. That said, it may help in dealing with lesser bouts of anxiety, writes David Westgate.
Fair enough, you say. Everyone worries about public speaking. But this was different. I was more anxious than before any previous talk and it was worsening by the minute.
But as I looked worriedly out the window, I realised I could let my anxiety escalate or a I could try roping it in. So I started trying to unravel my catastrophic thoughts.
Quite quickly, I realised it wasn’t just my talk I was anxious about. There was a host of minor worries that I’d allowed to gate-crash my thinking. They were now intertwining and snowballing uncontrollably. Thoughts about finances, family, deadlines and so on.
As I unraveled and examined them individually, I realised that each of them could be thought about at some other time, not now. So I opened the box in my brain labelled “To Be Worried About Some Other Time”, then went back to fretting about my upcoming speech.
And you know what? I felt better. Not fist-pumping, deliriously better, but certainly a lot better than I’d felt 15 minutes before.
David Westgate is a mental health trainer, writer and speaker for the Black Dog Institute.
