3 Tips to Stay Present for Mental Health Warriors
Anxiety and panic can often feel debilitating for those of us who suffer from them. I’ve recently learned the importance of staying present in those moments. I’ve been told “Depression lives in the past and anxiety lives in the future, and calmness and peace of mind live in the present.” I call this ‘the mind stealing our lives’.
I do want to stop for a second before I get into how to do this in a way that helps. I want to stress that this isn’t going to always work. Sometimes we have to try different things to help break us out of that spiral. Sometimes we need support from others. I go to therapy and work with a myriad of other health care professionals to help heal my trauma and work on my anxiety. If you ever have any questions you can always email me and I’m happy to share what I do and what works for me. That doesn’t mean it’ll work for you, but it might!
The following tools are tools I practice to be able to cultivate habits that can help me when i’m in the midst of a panic or anxiety attack.
DROP INTO YOUR BODY
This is the single most important thing that I’ve found to help me in moments of panic. The human body is miraculous, and it sends and receives messages all day long, the problem is, sometimes, we’re not very good at listening. It’s wild because we listen to messages from influencers and news and emails all day, but we don’t listen that well to our own innate wisdom. Tune into your body’s messages. What does it need?
Does it need to move? Can you dance? Can you do yoga? Can you go for a run?
Does it need to be loved? Can you massage your hands? Can you hold yourself?
Does it need support? Can you ask for support from your loved ones?
Tune in and listen.
DITCH YOUR UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS
When you’re not in the midst of a panic attack take stock of your life. Do you have any left over coping mechanisms that helped you at some point in your life but are now crutches? Can you work on letting them go? Can you acknowledge the positive benefits it brought to your life while still realizing it’s not serving you now? What can you do about it?
Do you isolate yourself when what you actually need is connection? If this is the case, is there a world where you can create a small network of people who are in your support system. Tell them to call you out if they see it happening.
Do you engage in avoidance behaviors? Can you bring awareness to what they are so you can catch yourself doing it? Can you create a support system to call you out when they see you doing it?
Do you mindlessly scroll through your phone to distract yourself? Can you set a timer limit on apps? Can you tell your loved ones to call you to the carpet when they see it happening?
BUILDING A MEDITATION PRACTICE
Meditation is the practice of staying present. Building a meditation habit when you’re not in the throws of a panic or anxiety attack can help weaken the connection between bodily sensations and the fear center of the brain while strengthening the connection between the reasoning center of the brain, our bodily sensation and the fear centers.
As I said before, none of this is going to magically fix your anxiety or panic. It hasn’t prevented mine from acting up now and again, but it has helped me get a better handle on them. These practices have helped me develop useful tools to function better when feeling overwhelmed. My panic attacks have seemed less aggressive than before and my anxiety seems to come about less often and I feel like my ability to pull myself out of them has improved. I find that practicing these when I’m actively experiencing anxiety helps me be able to better call on those practices when I am.
Comment below if you have any tools that help you!