Anxiety and Mental Health Tips for Those Who Have Tried Everything
It has been an anxious year and more. For many of us, the act of getting up and facing the day is a huge challenge. If worries are weighing you down, or if anxiety is eating you up, the tips below can help.
Focus on What You Already Control
When everything feels out of control, the ability to focus on what you already control can help. For example, experts recommend exercise as a way to reduce anxiety. If you are doing that and it is not helping, pair it with a control thought. Before you go to bed, set out your exercise clothes. You now control what you will wear tomorrow morning for your walk or your workout, and you made a conscious choice to control that and make exercise easier. Go you!
This focus on what you are already controlling can be great for your confidence. You may suffer from anxiety, but you know what you are going to eat today because you made a grocery list. You may struggle with digestive issues due to stress, but you know you will drink enough water because you have a filter pitcher and a water bottle. Your life does not have to be perfect for you to feel you have control over at least part of it, so put your focus on those things.
Celebrate Small Wins
If you have a particular time of day when the anxiety spidery feeling or a general despair hits you, set the timer on your phone and make arrangements to do something totally different in the thirty minutes leading up to that time.
Listen to some different music. If you never drink tea, fix a cup. Making a tiny change can actually be a huge deal if your brain and spirit take a nose dive during a specific time of day. When you make the change, celebrate it! It may delay the onset of scary anxious thoughts, it may wipe them out, or it may make no difference whatsoever. You, using your conscious brain, made a conscious choice to change the environment where the dark, nasty flower of anxiety blooms. Tomorrow, make another change and celebrate the action without fearing the outcome.
Try CBD to Stop the Spin
Many people use CBD before bed to shut down anxious thoughts and fall asleep. However, you can also use CBD in tiny doses during the day to calm that squeaky hamster wheel in your mind.
Microdosing with CBD can calm the waters without making you drowsy. For example, you can microdose by taking a 5 mg drop of sublingual oil before work. Doing this at repeated intervals throughout your day will not make you sleepy, but it can give you a break from anxious, useless thoughts that spin and never go anywhere.
Vaping pens are an ideal choice for those interested in microdosing. For example, many CBD pens take 25 puffs to make a full dose. Instead, use your vaping pen to enjoy one or two puffs in the morning to help you focus. Take two more in an hour to help you manage chronic pain, or if you notice a running script that is not helpful.
Consider Other Forms of Cannabis
CBD, or cannabidiol, is not the product in cannabis that gets you high. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the chemical that binds to your cannabis receptors and creates a sense of euphoric disconnection.
If you live in a state where THC use is legal, or if you have a prescription for the product, consider using a journal to track:
- when anxious thoughts hit you
- what dosage you take of CBD or THC
- how long it takes for the thoughts to shut down
- when the anxious thoughts come back
It is extremely important to note that those who use CBD for anxiety can also use it for focus. If your brain is a jangled mess in the morning, two puffs on a vape pen can be the ticket to calm and focus, and that may be enough to keep your anxiety challenge chained up and out of the way of your life.
However, if you struggle with anxiety that impacts your self esteem, makes you feel unworthy, or causes you to self isolate, then a course of THC products may help you to find both calm and elevation. Do be sure to follow all rules and restrictions with cannabis use, particularly if you are using anything with THC. Looking for big glass bongs online can help your consumption go a lot smoother. Legal troubles will not make your anxiety any better.
Understand that Perfection is the Enemy
In the Look at Me! culture of today, the ordinary things that you do each day may not appear to be worthy of any attention at all. Considering what some of the stars of this culture have done to get famous, being unnoticed may be a sign that you make good choices.
However, anxiety is a big fat liar. What you do each day is important, even if you do not post and share it everywhere. Having a part of your life that is a work in progress is actually one of the healthiest choices you can make. It is possible to share what you are enduring without engaging in self flagellation, or worse, feeling like an emotional flasher to the outside world.
If social media makes you feel unworthy, disconnected, overdressed, or unattractive, call a friend and make a pact. Each Sunday, you will
- allow the other person to access your social media accounts
- change your password
- not give you the password until Friday night
This will give you a Facebook free week to see what this exposure may be doing to your brain. You may be dismayed to find you are a little hooked. You may be thrilled to find that folks miss you and will check on you in other ways. You may just need the break!
