The Survival Guide for Mums With Anxiety
Life can sometimes feel like a neverending tightrope walk across a pool filled with hungry crocodiles if you have anxiety. Your nerves signal at the least provocation as if one misstep will send you for a deadly plunge. You don’t want to impart your phobias to your children — which means you need to learn to manage your condition.
If you are a mom, you need all the help you can get. There’s no substitute for professional care if you have severe symptoms. However, the following survival guide for mums with anxiety can quell mild panic and make it less stressful to handle life’s ups and downs.
1. Recognize the Warning Signs
Human beings sometimes act without fully understanding what their provocation is. Has your child ever interrupted you when you were deep in thought, causing you to snap an angry “what,” only to apologize? Your irritability could signal anxiety. It’s one thing if you are on a tight deadline, but if it happens all the time, start mindfully paying heed.
One way to recognize the warning signs of anxiety is to tune into your physical body. Physiological symptoms of anxiety often include the following:
- Rapid heartbeat
- Chest pain
- Sweating
- Shortness of breath
- Dizziness
- Nausea and vomiting
Please be aware that many of these symptoms can signify other health conditions. If it’s the first time you have experienced chest discomfort or it gets worse with activity, you should seek emergency medical care. Other physiological signs of anxiety can include unexplained weight gain or loss, tooth grinding, frequent headaches and muscular aches related to tension.
2. Identify Your Triggers
Do you sometimes feel panicky without having any idea why? If so, it’s time for a bit of mindful introspection.
A trigger is anything from a memory to a set of circumstances that sparks a potent emotional reaction out of proportion with current events. Triggers are often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Your amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for fight or flight, responds to a current trigger by releasing the same electrical and chemical signals it did when a past event occurred.
You can learn to identify your triggers by first tuning into your physical reactions as described above, then reflecting on other times when you felt similarly. Did your micromanaging boss make you feel like a kid again, struggling to please a narcissistic parent?
Often, identifying the source of the problem helps to quell your panic. However, if that alone doesn’t work, your next line of defense is to tame the physiological tigers that can drive you to behaviors that make a stressful situation worse.
3. Control Your Physiological Reactions
Sometimes, you have to get your body under control before your mind pays attention. Start cultivating natural, healthy ways to diffuse your fight-or-flight reaction and restore yourself to homeostasis before reacting to stressful situations.
Many times, this process requires that you first diffuse your nervous energy. Go for a brisk walk, hit a punching bag or do some other form of physical exercise to prompt your body to release endorphins. These natural opioid-like chemicals increase feelings of calm.
Physical movement also lowers your adrenaline and cortisol levels, the stress hormones associated with fight or flight. For best results, keep your sessions to under an hour — otherwise, your body might think it’s under prolonged siege and ramp up cortisol production.
You can practice deep breathing anytime and anywhere that it isn’t convenient to go for a 100-yard dash. Learn the 2-to-1 method, which activates your parasympathetic nervous system, the part that tells your body to relax.
4. Write, Discuss, Process
When you have anxiety, you often react to minor aggravations as if they were far more traumatic events. Frequently, these responses have less to do with the situation and more with unprocessed pain from past experiences. How can you successfully process your emotions and move forward?
Human beings need one another for that, but you might prefer to do some work in private first. Traumatic events can leave you scattered, unable to express yourself clearly. Journaling can help you make sense of the myriad ideas racing through your brain.
It also helps to find a validating person who can help you work through conflicts in a way that doesn’t add to your stress. Cultivate a positive support network of family and friends with whom you feel safe sharing your experiences.
5. Embrace Radical Acceptance
Sometimes, there isn’t enough money to send your little one to summer camp with their best friend. On other occasions, financial hardships and illness — or, tragically, both at once — back you into a seemingly impossible corner.
It’s human nature to want to fix everything, but you can’t singlehandedly fight society’s woes. You aren’t Wonder Woman, and trying to make everything perfect will only leave you feeling inadequate and more anxious.
It may sound contradictory, but learning to accept what you cannot change is the first step toward a more positive future. Only by seeing situations as they are, unclouded by your emotional reactions to them, can you sometimes find a path forward. It might bring temporary relief to scream at the sky and rail against your fate, but self-pity never improved anyone’s circumstances.
Maybe you can’t change the fact that your child has a rare disease, and you don’t have adequate insurance coverage. You might not be able to bring about much-needed health care reform in the United States. However, you can investigate alternative income streams or even research what it takes to emigrate to a country with more egalitarian policies.
Mums, If You Have Anxiety, Please Use This Survival Guide
Having anxiety can feel like balancing on a strand of dental floss 1,000 feet above a pool of hungry sharks. While there’s no substitute for professional treatment, this survival guide can help you quell the panic and manage your condition.
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