Here are six easy ways to reduce anxiety when it gets too much, with counsellor Pompi Banerjee from Priorities of Humankind.
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00:00I am not good enough. I can't do this. What if I fail? What if this goes absolutely downhill?
00:09In a job situation, what if I get fired? What if other people start judging me?
00:16This is what we call a 4-2-6 method of breathing. So we breathe in through our nose for the count
00:35of 4 seconds, hold it for 2 seconds and then breathe out through the mouth for count of 6.
00:46Close your eyes, breathe in, hold, breathe out.
00:59And one can do this multiple times. And when breathing in, allow your stomach to expand
01:19as you keep breathing in. It's the most common technique applied for managing anxiety,
01:25widely researched and its effectiveness has been seen to be very very high.
01:37We do take three deep breaths and then keeping our eyes closed, we will focus on each muscle
01:45group. For example, we start with the leg. When we start with the leg, focus on the calf muscles,
01:53tense them first and then relax. Bring your attention upward, focus on your thigh muscles,
02:02tense them and relax. Focus on your abdomen, tense the abdomen muscles and relax. Focus
02:12on the muscles of your arms, tense them and a very easy way to tense your arm muscles is to just
02:22extend your arm out, make a fist, tighten the fist. As you tighten the fist, your entire arm
02:29will get tensed and then relax. Bring your attention upward, tense the muscles of your
02:38shoulders and neck and relax. You bring your attention upward, focus on your facial muscles,
02:48tense them, don't worry about how you are looking and relax. Your muscles will get
02:55tensed when you are anxious and stressed. So therefore, if we can relax our muscles,
03:04it can have a similar effect on our emotions.
03:09This you can use even when maybe anxiety is not very high and you are just feeling the flutter
03:16starting up in your body, in your mind. Just ground yourself in the present moment. Anxiety,
03:24worry, these are often about the future, either the immediate future or a little short-term or
03:30long-term future. The idea behind this technique is that you can use this technique to help you
03:38when you are breathing. You are breathing in the present moment.
03:42So if you can focus your attention on your breathing, it will help you to feel grounded
03:48in the present moment. Which parts of your nose the inflow of air is touching?
03:56What's the temperature when you breathe out?
04:00How does the sensation feel like when you are breathing in and out? Just notice.
04:07I am not good enough. I can't do this. What if I fail? What if this goes absolutely downhill?
04:19In a job situation, what if I get fired? What if other people start judging me?
04:26These are all automatic negative thoughts. More often than not, you will feel anxious
04:32when the situation presents with a demand where you feel inadequate,
04:38where you feel you don't know enough or you don't have enough skills to deal with the demands of
04:43that situation. The other kind of trigger can be a situation which is very, very uncertain
04:50and it threatens your well-being. It threatens your survival. There can be other possible
04:57triggers also which may be rooted in the kind of messages you have received as a child during
05:03your growing up years. If you have been told that you are not very good at something or that
05:09other people are better than you, that you will not succeed. Identify your triggers.
05:16Once you identify them, start noticing the automatic negative thoughts that start spiraling
05:23when the trigger comes up. When you are going through the period of anxiety, you may not be able
05:32to write them down then and there. But afterwards, when you're feeling a little settled,
05:38write them down. This is what we call thought journaling. The great thing about writing down
05:44these thoughts is that now they are in front of you on paper and they are no longer just spiraling
05:51in your mind. So if your automatic negative thought is, I am not good enough, challenge it.
06:03Remind yourself each day, every day, I am doing the best I can do at any given point of time.
06:10I am good enough. I am lovable. I am worthy. Remind these to yourself.
06:22How do you stop a thought? Good question. You have identified your triggers. You now know which are
06:28the automatic negative thoughts that come up for you. You have challenged them. Start now, every
06:35time those automatic negative thoughts come up, start stopping them. Some people find it
06:42useful in their mind as soon as they notice an automatic negative thought has come up.
06:49In their mind, they say stop or they figure out something to tell themselves and remind
06:59themselves that I am not going to engage with this thought right now. Some people say that,
07:05well, when I notice that thought come up, I schedule a time just for worrying about it.
07:15So people, some people use this technique which is called worry time scheduling and
07:22how it helps is then it gives your mind a space when mind gets the assurance that
07:29yes, there is a particular time period when just these things will be my focus.
07:35Our anxieties, especially anxieties, never occur in a vacuum. They always occur within a larger
07:45social reality, larger political reality. This situation, the lockdown brought us face-to-face
07:53with our mortality, with the fear of loss of our loved ones, fear of loss of livelihood.
07:59I mean, it changed our life plans. It's okay for us to feel certain distressful emotions.
08:06It's almost like when you have caught an infection, maybe a bacterial infection
08:13and you have a little bit of fever. That fever is your body's way of letting you know,
08:18hey, you need to pay attention here. You may have caught an infection.
08:23Similarly, emotions that are distressful for us, for example, anger, anxiousness, these are just
08:30our body and mind's internal ways of bringing our attention to something that is categorized as,
08:37okay, this needs immediate attention. At times, it works. It's functional. At times,
08:44it gets dysfunctional. People who live with anxiety, people who live with depression,
08:49they are some of the strongest people. If someone tries to shame you for seeking help
08:56in dealing with that, in Bengali, there is a saying,