Six Quick and Easy Stressbusters

My 92 year old mom is getting increasingly forgetful. I can handle that. What saddens me is her loss of enthusiasm.

I call mom every night to check in, and when I ask how her day was, the response has recently become some version of “It was fine. It was something to do” whereas she historically gave me a lengthy, enthusiastic description of what she’d done and who she had done it with…and she did it all!

To hear that life is “fine” and filled with “things to do”  sounds like someone who is merely surviving until the day she isn’t anymore. Has she lost her joy in a world where she thinks she doesn’t have something to look forward to? Morning is the same as night and one day blends into the next.

While I am focusing on the example of my mother, most frightening to me is that people of all ages are also living lives that are “fine” and filled with “something to do.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                

I have neighbors who fill their time playing golf and mahjong because it’s something to do. I ask them what else they do besides golf and mahjong and they’re at a loss for an answer.  And then there are the assorted young kids who I tutor who only want to stay u plate playing video games and “doom scrolling” on their phones, and then are too tired to be engaged the next day because they were up so late the night before.  

 We are creating a society of unambitious humanoids…they look and walk and talk like humans, but they are losing the uniquely human characteristics of ambition, enthusiasm and deep emotional connection.

We’ve all seen the news reports about the emotional and mental illness caused by both the technology and the content of smart phones on all of our brains, especially children. A brand new study by Sapien Labs found that smart phones aren’t merely causing depression and anxiety, they are increasing hallucinations, aggressive behavior, and detachment from reality. The immersion in alternate realities is causing incredible distortion of people’s view of reality with regard to what real life is like and their desire to participate in it.

Here's an example. Did you know that men younger than 35 represent  over 30% of those with erectile dysfunction? And for male health expert, Dr. Geo Espinosa, it’s nearly 50% of his patients. Why? In an interview with Dr. Geo, he explained to me that the high rate of erectile dysfunction in young men is due to their use of porn!  Watching “professionals”on display has given these young men performance anxiety believing that their natural endowment is inadequate vs. the “pros” (which are enhanced by camera angles, camera lenses etc) – they don’t look like that nor do they think they can perform like that.

But what about those who don’t want to perform at all.. those who have become so comfortable not making the effort that they are angry when asked to raise their level of engagement and work in the office rather than remotely? When remote work during COVID first started I predicted that business leaders would announce the harm to business caused by remote work… less productivity, less employee engagement, inability to train new employees, inability to connect employees to the corporate culture or mission.  My predictions came true as we see workers complaining about being called back into the office. They don’t see how much they have lost in terms of their training, their professional development and their connection with co-workers. Being around people and ideas and experience is good for both business and individuals yet it seems that the lack of human connection created by remote work has diminished both the ability and desire of people to connect with others.

I fear we are creating a society of humans who on the one hand are uninspired to make the effort and on the other disillusioned by the reality of life.  We are in a world where artificial intelligence is threatening to replace the need for human effort and intelligence, and unless we appreciate the beauty of everyday life, we are at risk of  falling into a life on the sofa full of “Fine… it filled the time.”

How do you feel each day? Are your days good or fine?  When you put your head on your pillow at night do you feel enriched? Satisfied?  Fulfilled? Or are you bored?  Counting the minutes until you can drift off into a fantasy land of sleep so you can escape your daily monotony.

Here’s the truth… life is what you create it to be.  That doesn’t mean that every day is a whirlwind of excitement.  Most days aren’t.But that doesn’t make them mere time fillers.

I had conversations with my daughters when they got out of college about “adulting.” They thought that on the other side of school was the glamorous world of being an adult, free to make your own decisions and live life as you pleased. Then they realized that adulting was full of responsibilities and obligatory tasks. Dinner didn’t magically appear on the table, and those cable and credit card bills had to be paid every month.  As my Aunt Estelle used to say “BORING.”  Or was it?

No, not every day is the best day ever, and there really is much monotony in life. But we have the choice to make each day what we choose it to be, and to see the moments of magic in each day.   You can see your day as boring or it can be drama-free. You can view tasks as burdens or accomplishments. You can be satisfied with the status quo, or you can push beyond your comfort zone to learn new skills and try new things.

It's easy to flip the script from “fine” to “fun”:

·     Even the routine tasks completed are an accomplishment that creates order in your life. Shoveling the snow. Doing laundry. Paying bills (you had the money to pay them!)  Walking the dog. Trying a new recipe. Actually cooking dinner! Well done!

·     Who are the people you interacted with today? Can you get a stranger to smile? Meet someone new?  Learn something new about someone you see every day? Be a safe space where someone can unburden themselves? (I do this one a lot.)

·     Take a moment of gratitude for the simple things in your life – your home, your friends, your family, your dog, your heat. It sounds simple and boring, but think of those in North Carolina who ares till suffering without the most basic of housing or infrastructure in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene nearly six months ago.

Where can you step up your level of engagement in the world around you?

 ·      Ask your boss if there is a special project you can work on.

·      Challenge yourself to learn something new every day, be it anew word, some factoid, or a new skill. My husband used to learn about different kinds of knots that he could use for different situations.  It was the perfect collection.. didn’t cost anything and it didn’t require shelving to display his collection.

·      Donate your time and skills to those in need.  Teach English as a second language. Coach a children’s sports team. My brother followed his deepest dreams and became a musician and music teacher after retiring from business. Check him out. And, I get amazing delight from helping remedial readers, many of whom are new to this country.  

Yes every day can be the same - it is for me too. Sometimes I have to consciously count which day it is based on what I did the day before. But, every day I find something or someone that has brought a unique experience or perspective to my day… a moment, a conversation, an interaction.   Everyday does not have to be a homerun…remember you can win a lot of games hitting singles and doubles.

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Sometimes you don’t want to look too closely.  

I can’t even believe that I just wrote that, since usually I’m all about looking closely at the details, planning carefully, asking questions and understanding every situation fully, especially when it comes to your health and money.

But, last week, when I visited an art museum, I was reminded that sometimes life is more beautiful when you step back a little and don’t hyper focus.  

It’s really remarkable to stand and enjoy an impressionistic painting with its soft-focus images and the mood created by that softness. Most people are familiar with the cool haze of Monet’s Water Lilies or the psychotic discomfort of Van Gogh’s Bedroom.  At the time of my aha moment, I was looking at a Dutch impressionist painting of a woman sitting at a weaving loom. The lace curtains behind her looked so real – like the artist had carefully drawn the intricate lace pattern with the light streaming through. But, no, when I looked closely, it was simply a combination of dappling and tender brush strokes. The illusion was so striking that I kept going back and forth between close and far away to fully appreciate what I was seeing.  I did it again when we went upstairs where there was an enormous sculpture that looked like some “ginormous” fuzzy underwater sea urchin, when in fact it was thousands of narrow acrylic strips of different lengths that were glued together.

In both of these cases relaxing and enjoying the sights from afar felt lovely and simply enjoyable versus when looking closely at the details.

The question is when to dig in deeply and when to just enjoy the view.

As I said above, when it comes to health and money details matter… BUT… never say never and never say always.  Hyper focusing on every ache, pain and bump can leave you unduly stressed and bathing yourself in inflammatory cortisol which can create illness. Sometimes a sneeze is just a sneeze and an ache is just an ache.  And being so budget focused that you buy items based solely on price means you may be sacrificing quality and longevity for short term savings.

There are a number of place in particular that I watch people fall into the trap of worrying about silly details that in the long run simply don’t matter. In particular…

1.       Silly Bickering: Stop the silly bickers with your partner or family.  According to the CambridgeDictionary, bickering by definition is “to argue about things that are not important” – in other words we waste an enormous amount of energy and damage our relationships by getting upset by things like a perceived tone of voice, a word choice that isn’t what you would have chosen, or some small action that didn’t match up to your expectation of preference.  How often do you get in an argument and then later on don’t even remember what it was about?

Watch in particular when you’re hungry or tired for tempers to flare over nothing.  At a wedding we attended a while back, the best man commented in his speech how most arguments between the bride and groom were inevitably solved once they both had a snack. Rather than get yourself knotted up over something small, take a pause and ask yourself if this is the hill you want to die on. In the big scheme of things, the answer is probably not.

2.       Children’s Ambitions: This isn’t the first generation of young people who are labeled lazy or non-ambitious by the senior generation(s). But, it is disconcerting to see children fraught with apathy thanks at least in part to excessive screen time and social media “poison.”There’s definitely a reason for concern. Meanwhile, there is also the continued epidemic of overachieving parents who over-schedule and place undo pressure on children to fill their schedules and to perform at the top of their class or team in the hopes that their child will be a superstar.  Odds are your kid will be wonderful but not a superstar – whatever that is. There are very few who become professional athletes or musicians and there’s only one class valedictorian.

Love them for who they are. Inspire them to be actively engaged and always try their best. Support them in their genuine interests, but watch out for hyper focus on your need to have them be “the best”or to live out your dreams of having your children be/achieve all that you did not. Every time your child gets less than an A or doesn’t score the winning goal it does not mean that you’re a failure or their future is lost. It simply means that they didn’t score the winning goal that day or have some more studying to do on a topic.  Overall, do they have a good moral core… do they have friends and family with whom they connect… do they have interests that they enjoy pursuing… do you think they’re a good person? That’s the real success.

With a solid foundation of values, social support and a curious mind they will do just fine. Don’t ruin your relationship with hyper focus on unreasonable pressures on them or on you.  

3.       What the Jones’ Have: Whether it’s the accolades for the gal in the next office or the new clothes, car or fishing boat purchased by “them,” self-deprecating comparisons and jealousy are harmful.  Far too many people spend their time worrying about who has more and who got more.  Stop the comparisons and the counting. Everyone makes their own choices of where they want to spend their money and how they want to live their lives.  You can only make your choices and control your decisions.  

There were people with more money and people with less money in the town where we raised our daughters.  Some people lived in really big showy houses while others lived and drove more humbly. Focus on your accomplishments and your choices –those people living in the big fancy houses are not necessarily happy and far too often, their finances are not what they appear. Constant comparisons create self-destructive chatter.   Do you have “enough”?  Would a fancier car or larger home really change your life significantly?  Focus on the big stuff and don’t worry about the latest iPhone or pair of Nikes. 

There are many times when attending to the small details is vital.  Sometimes, you just need to maintain the birds’ eye view and see the beauty of all that is there.

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“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.”

That is a quote I heard today during the Senate confirmation hearings for Robert Kennedy Jr. to become the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, although he was referencing a quote from Confucius. No matter who said it, I loved it!

Healthy people have all the choices and options in the world for what they want to do and who they want to be, but a sick person has only a singular focus – getting well.

Living the life you want is all about options and creating an environment that gives you the most options. That’s what I used to tell my kids when they were young and would make some adolescent statement like “school is boring and dumb.” In school it was about doing well so that they had the most options of what to do after high school. Get good grades … go to a good college or pursue your dream career path …receive assorted job offers…earn good money… live in a lovely home, travel on vacation…basically have a greater chance to do whatever you would like to do for career and personal enjoyment.

When it comes to health, making the right lifestyle choices that help create good health gives you the freedom to live your dreams.  

The sad fact is that, like him or not, RFK Jr. is onto something with his message to Make America Healthy Again. We are neither physically nor mentally healthy, not because of the pharmaceutical industry, but because of the choices that we make, that in turn send people looking for healthcare support.   We spend more than any other country in the world on healthcare $4.5Trillion in 2022 and yet the US ranks 48^thin the world on life expectancy, behind countries like Albania, Panama and Qatar.  Of the $4.5Trillion, approximately75% are for chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and diseases linked to obesity. Something is very wrong. 

Convenience foods and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry have made people feel like modern science was helping them.  In the mid 20^th century, foods that had once rotted on the shelves could now last months or years thanks to preservatives.  What a money saver. Add to that the vitamin fortification of the growing list of convenience foods for busy people on the go and cereals like Frosted Flakes or Sugar Pops were suddenly health food.   The list of packaged foods has only grown longer, but the additives and preservatives are far from healthy.

At the same time, we have been trained by medical professionals and pervasive pharmaceutical advertising that any ache or pain can be solved with a pill or some other chemical intervention.  The growing list of medications could ease our pain, quell our indigestion and calm our emotional discomfort. The disease-ification of life meant that rather than look to the impact of our diet, our stress and other lifestyle choices, we could blame our bodies for breaking down and science would fix it for us.  It’s not our fault.  

Fast forward to today, and how many options have been removed from the lives of those with smoking, alcohol or drug addiction problems?  Even reformed smokers and drinkers are plagued with the breakdown of vital organs that limit their activities.  It saddens me to see and hear from people who complain of their inability to participate in activities and yet they continue to smoke, eat excessively, have a diet filled with processed foods and spend excessive amounts of time in front of one screen or another.  They have been both physically and emotionally crippled, as their will to even engage in certain activities has been dulled. 

As a society we can’t continue to let ourselves degrade.  RFK Jr. is very controversial in some of his views, but his concern for our nation’s health can’t be argued.  There simply is nothing healthy about smoking, excessive drinking or other forms of self-medication with things like Marijuana and mushrooms. Nor can we argue about the dangers of obesity or the chemical additives and pesticides in our food supply.  

Whether he gets confirmed or not, hopefully RFK’s message for improving our health will wake up legislators and individuals alike.

What can you do to help yourself?  I’m almost embarrassed to write the list, because being free to be one of the healthy who wants 1000 things is so incredibly easy…and yet, based on our nations lifestyle habits, we simply are not doing it.

So here are a few of the most basic of basics…

1. Don’t smoke. Clear and simple.

2. Limit alcohol consumption.

3. Eat a plant-rich diet that includes lean proteins and whole grains and avoid inflammatory seed oils which are highly processed and chemically altered.

a. While more expensive, buy organic produce when possible.

b. In particular, beware of the “Dirty Dozen” dozen items that are most filled with pesticides (all had more than 13, and some as much as 50!)

          i. Strawberries

          ii. Spinach

          iii. Kale, collard, and mustard greens

          iv. Grapes

          v. Peaches

          vi. Pears

          vii. Nectarines

          viii. Apples

          ix. Bell & Hot Peppers

          x. Cherries

          xi. Blueberries

          xii. Green Beans

c. And the “Clean15” which don’t require organic purchases, mostly because they have an outer peal that is removed before eating:

          i. Avocados

          ii. Sweet corn

          iii. Pineapple

          iv. Onions

          v. Papaya

          vi. Sweet peas (frozen)

          vii. Asparagus

          viii. Honeydew melon

          ix. Kiwi

          x. Cabbage

          xi. Watermelon

          xii. Mushrooms

          xiii. Mangoes

          xiv. Sweet potatoes

          xv. Carrots

d. Seed Oils to Avoid:

          i. Soybean Oil,

          ii. Corn Oil,

          iii. Cottonseed Oil,

          iv. Sunflower Oil,

          v. Safflower Oil,

          vi. Canola Oil (Rapeseed),

          vii. Peanut Oil,

          viii. Palm Kernel Oil.

4. Get out in the sunshine every  - Vitamin D is one the most vital nutrients to our health and wellness.  

5. Move – you don’t have to train for a marathon, you just need to move every day. Walk. Dance. Play pickleball. Vacuum. Pilates.

6. Limit your consumption of sugar, especially soda.

7.  Get 6-8 hours of sleep each night.

8. Manage your stress

Every day is a series of choices all connected to our dreams.  What are your dreams? Do you want 1000 or do you want that one and only dream to simply be well?  Don’t squander your chance.

I watched a miracle last year when a ten year old boy who I was tutoring went from being totally apathetic and disinterested in learning to being fully engaged and acing his homework. I wish I could take credit for being the most inspirational and effective tutor ever, but nooooo.  He did it himself when he started hanging around with “the smart kids”… kids who helped him feel good about himself and kids that he wanted to emulate.

The company you keep really matters.  I am not just talking about achievements at school or in life. I am talking about deep emotional confidence and happiness as well. The emotional and intellectual environment that we exist in will either fuel us or strangle us.

My tutee is far from the only child that I have seen influenced by the company he kept.  I’m sure each of you reading this are saying “duh Sarah, we all know kids who got in with the wrong crowd and crashed as a result.”  True that. But how is your environment?  We focus on helping guide our children’s choices but then forget to hold ourselves to the same standards. Are you being fueled by your social network or are you being strangled?  Are there issues you’re pretending don’t exist in your marriage? Do you have friends who you continue to get together with simply because you’ve always hung out together even though you spend the time together counting the minutes until you can get home?

As adults we are sometimes locked into negative relationships because of habit or inertia… or guilt.  But, is that helping you emotionally and physically to be your best? Just as we want our kids to hang out with the right crowd, we should hold ourselves to the same standard. No, I said that wrong.  It’s not holding ourselves to the sames tandard. It’s giving ourselves permission to make different choices in our lives, some of which may be painful.

It’s not easy seeing the pain you’re in when it simply becomes normal, nor is it easy to walk away from people that have been an important part of your life yet you have grown in different ways.

 I just had a very long conversation with a young friend about how she has walked a different path than several amazing young women with whom she went to sleepaway camp.  These girls were sisters for many years, as they climbed mountains, faced weather challenges, and spent many hours of quiet time sharing their deepest secrets and dreams. They are forever bonded by those years together, but then… when they got together recently (nearly fifteen years since they all “graduated” from camp) my friend realized the different paths that they had taken and the choices being made by her “sisters”were at odds with her own value system.  She feels bad distancing herself from people who were such an important part of her life, but she also realizes that the self-destructive paths her friends have taken are neither a path that she supports nor are the decisions and mind sets behind those paths ones that would help my friend on her own pathway to happiness and success.

I similarly separated from high school and college friends who walked self destructive pathways, and separated  about ten years ago from someone with whom I raised my kids, spending summers and many family vacations together.  We created many amazing memories, but as I got older and wiser, I realized that the shallowness and negativity of this person was pulling me down rather than pushing me up.  I didn’t have a major confrontation with her – I merely added space between us.  Similarly, my young friend is not divorcing her friends, but she will be adding space between them as sh etries to figure out what role – if any – they should play in her life going forward.

We need people in our lives who fuel us not deplete us.   And, it takes a great deal of courage to acknowledge that someone who has been important to you may not really be all that you thought they were.  

 I had a mentor for many years. She truly transformed me and my life, helping me to find my voice in a more powerful way and to see what I wanted and what I didn’t want in my life.  Sadly, she taught me so well that I came to realize that she, herself, was more like the swindler behind the curtain, rather than the great and powerful Oz.  For all of her wisdom, she also was destructive to herself and to those around her – and when I asserted a different point of view than hers, the relationship ended.  While you would think that it would have been a sad moment for me, it was actually very freeing because I finally released myself from the oppression that I had allowed for many years.

 When we accept negative relationships in our lives we deny the impact of them on our emotional and physical health.  But when you decide to sever the tie – or at least to minimize it – there is a lightness and freedom to it. Sure, there is a sadness to the loss and the void, but the lightness is more powerful.  My little tutee was a lighter, more enthusiastic and confident person when he shifted from spending time with kids with whom he wallowed in apathy to spending time with kids who were proud and accomplished and excited to do more.

I’m not suggesting that you throw the baby out with the bathwater.  I realized soon after graduating college that I had different friends for different pieces of my life.  There were friends that I went to the movies with, friends that I went to the gym with, friends who I partied with and others with whom I dreamed of new ideas.  Today I still have those deep friendships with people in whom I confide and with whom I dream, andI also have the pickle ball and golf friends (I don’t go out and party anymore).  Within all of those individuals are also quirks or shortcomings. No one is perfect (including ourselves) but just because they have weird eating habits, or different political views, I don’t throw them out – the places where we fit are worth the quirks.  

What I’m talking about with regard to releasing someone from your world are the people who truly suck your energy or push you down with their negativity or jealous quips.  Those who leave you feeling sad or vulnerable either because they were negative toward you or because their outlook for themselves and the world is so oppressive.

 You don't want that in your life.

I challenge you to review your relationships. Look to see who helps you grow and who has you shrinking – then allow yourself to focus on the ones who make you feel good and shed (or minimize) those who don’t.  

It’s ok to shed relationships. You don’t have to be mean.You don’t have to have a major confrontation.  You can simply choose to spend your time in other ways.

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Has your car ever gotten stuck in the snow or mud and you weren’t sure that you could get out?  You spin your wheels. You rock the car forward and backward. Your mind races and then, as fear rises, you review all of the worst case scenarios, trying desperately to avoid full-on panic.

I’ve gotten stuck in the snow multiple times.  The world stops as I try - and fail - to break free.  When I calm down, set my fear aside and simply focus on the task at hand I’ve always been able to free myself. Like with quick-sand, the more you flail the more you fail… but calm focus and simple actions = success.

Right now we seem to have a lot of people flailing and failing.

It’s not that they’re drowning. They simply feel stuck, knowing that their lives aren’t where they want them to be. They’re frustrated.. they’re sad… they’re angry … they’re resentful and they don’t know what to do.

So, let’s fix that. Here’s how to get unstuck in three steps:
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 1. Let go of Victim Mentality –  The biggest hurdle to getting unstuck is to realize that you really do have the power and ability to make a change. Your stuckness is not “their” fault.

I can’t tell you how many people I have coached through the years who earnestly say that they want to change their life and then have a laundry list of the reasons why they can’t make a change:

• The timing is wrong
• It will be inconvenient
• It’s not really SO bad that I need to make a change
• They have other obligations so can’t prioritize focusing on themselves
• They don’t really think they are capable of achieving their dream
• They don’t have the money right now

The list of excuses is endless, but underneath the excuses is a combination of fear and victimhood. Increasingly we are in a world where people assume others are both the cause of their problems and the gateway to the solution.  They blame everyone/everything else for their stuck-ness – their spouse, their kids, their boss, the weather, the news, the home owners association… finding it easier to complain than to make a change.  The truth is, choosing to change is entirely up to you.

And, yes, there are some people in very dire circumstances which require some extreme action or decisions. But for the other 99% of us, the first step to getting un-stuck and onto a new pathway is simple acknowledgment that your life is up to you.
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2. Where/how do you feel stuck? Given the chance, do you know what it is that you want to change? You can’t change things if you don’t know what needs to change, and generically saying that “everything is miserable” does not help. Make a specific list of where you feel stuck and why you feel that way. For example…

• You can’t change jobs because you have golden handcuffs and a new job will require a pay cut.
• You can’t change jobs because your current job’s hybrid work environment fits with your lifestyle and you wouldn’t want to have to go to the office every day.
• Your marriage is “fine” – it doesn’t make you happy but you’re not miserable enough to leave.
• You would like to lose weight but you can’t imagine life without desert.
• You know your house/basement/garage is a mess and should be cleaned up and organized, but every time you start you just get overwhelmed.

What does your list look like?
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3. Overcome your excuses. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

You now know what’s bugging you and you know that you have the power to change things. Now you need to take that first step.  If you think you can’t overcome your excuses, ask yourself what you would tell your best friend if they came to you with the same list of problems and excuses?  Looking at your list as an outsider can clear the way to taking that first step.

Choose where you want to start.  Of all of the items on your list, which do you want to tackle first?  

Once you’ve decided which area of your life to address first, you’ll need a plan to reach your goal. It doesn’t have to be fully extensive in order to get started. You just need enough of an outline to know where to start and the general direction you want to head in.  For example you might start with…

a. Research a new job.

b. Find a place to go on a romantic getaway with your spouse.

c. Choose to eat one more vegetable a day.

d. Choose not to have a drink with dinner tonight.

e. Put a monthly reminder into your calendar so you can pay your bills on time.

f.  Check home prices in the town you want to live in  
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After you take that first step, action and results will help fuel you to take the next and the next and the next. With each step you will enjoy the good feelings of action and your outline will guide along the path adding more detail as appropriate.  As an added bonus, you will be fueling your Dopamine factory. With each goal set and accomplished, your body will produce this feel good hormone which will help keep you going.

As with the car in the snow, getting unstuck is a fine balance of commitment to change, acting with conviction and maintaining composure. Trust yourself.

You’ve got this.

There’s worry. There’s anxiety. And there’s anticipatory anxiety, where worry meets anxiety and can become a roadblock to your fully enjoying life.

The concept of anticipatory anxiety came up in a phone call with a friend last week, who is dealing with unpleasant effects of Parkinson’s Disease.  She is having a hard time getting a good night’s sleep due to the constant agitation of her body, in particular its manifestation as Restless Leg Syndrome in the middle of the night. Where does the anticipatory anxiety come in?  At the surface, she anticipates – or worries - every night that she won’t get a good night’s sleep due to the agitation.  But then there is another level of angst that she is dealing with – she is supposed to go on a trip with some friends, and is worried that her disrupted sleep will inhibit her ability to enjoy and participate fully in the trip. She’s tempted to cancel the trip, but that would lead to another level of stress and anxiety as she loses connection with friends and becomes increasingly socially isolated for fear of having a problem.

Anticipatory anxiety is not a Parkinson’s issue. It can be purely mental/emotionally based or can be motivated by all sorts of physical ailments like irritable bowel syndrome (I don’t want to participate in case I have a need for a bathroom), migraines,  assorted pain-related conditions or basic panic disorder (what if I have a panic attack?). I actually dealt with it many years ago when I was having panic attacks and worried every evening before my drive home from work that I might have another attack like the first one that started my panic cycle.

What is Anticipatory Anxiety? It’s when you worry that something may happen.. and then you get anxious about it happening… and then you actually are experiencing an anxiety attack or even a full blown panic attack with your heart pounding and your head spinning all because you feared something might happen. The vital thing to understand, however, is that Anticipatory Anxiety is not a physical ailment, it is your busy, worrying brain overtaking your calm rational one.  You made it up.

Anticipatory anxiety creates its own problem with its made up what if’s… and then makes it worse by preventing you from participating in life’s activities for fear of your having a problem. Lack of participation creates sadness and potentially depression as well as social isolation if you stop engaging with your friends and family as you were in the past. It’s a downhill battle.

HOW TO SHUT IT DOWN            

In addition to general self-soothing techniques, there are several  specific strategies that you can use to talk yourself out of your anticipation…

1.  What’s the worst thing that can happen?  When worrying we tend to catastrophize… taking a relative small worry and turning it into a grand danger or failure. What if I can’t sleep at all on the trip? What if I have to go to the bathroom and we are stuck in a traffic jam? What if I get sick while away? What if I have a panic attack while driving?

Rather than getting caught up in the irrational emotionality of these what-if scenarios, look at the worst case scenarios rationally. If that happened, could you make it through? Have you overcome similar challenges before? Think about (or write about) these worst case scenarios and how you would overcome them. How often does the worst case really happen? This process will help you release the angst and realize you have made it through in the past and can do it again. Remember, you have more control over the situation than you realize.

 With my friend who is thinking of cancelling her trip for fear of not sleeping, we talked about what if her fears came true and she didn’t sleep for two nights.  Could she push through a couple of days with limited sleep and would that be worth the trade-off of not being with friends? She realized that she could indeed survive a couple of days with limited sleep.

Face the biggest fear. Understand what it is. Know that you can survive it, and you can go through it.

2. Have you succeeded in the past?  Just because something happened before doesn’t mean it will happen every time.  Think about past similar experiences and whether you have fallen victim to your fears or if, in fact, you have succeeded.  

When I was working through my fear of having a panic attack while driving home, I would constantly remind myself that I had made it home successfully before and that it was just one time that had started it all.   As additional support, I would bring a cup of soothing warm tea with me in the car, listen to my favorite music, or talk to friends on the phone (hands-free of course).

 Know that you can do this – not because you’re psyching yourself up for it, but because you have done it before.

3. Avoid the law of attraction.  The law of attraction says that what we focus on and think about tends to be what comes true. This is true in all areas of life.  Where you put your focus is what gets accomplished. But also, when you focus on fears and negative outcomes – even if subconsciously -  those also tend to come true, especially when we are talking about your body’s anxious reactions. Rather than focus on the disaster scenario, think about a success scenario or perhaps something entirely different. Imagine yourself having successfully accomplished what ever it was you were avoiding, experiencing the relief that your fears didn’t come true and the increased sense of confidence as a result. 

4.  Self Soothe with the Havening touch technique – Havening is a gentle and easy self-care practice that combines gentle touch with pleasant thoughts. It helps rewire the brain allowing you to change thoughts and moods that might otherwise interfere with your day.  I wrote about Havening in detail in a prior blog. You can also get a taste of Havening from my friend Hillary Russo at her monthly Havening Happy Hour.