Disclaimer: The information provided should not be used for official diagnosis of any conditions. This article is solely to provide general advice on managing the emotion of anxiety and those seeking personal, psychiatric advice should consult with a licensed counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist.
Have you ever felt breathless, like a stone is sitting on your chest, or a continual sense of dread? Get stage fright when presenting in front of an audience? These can be signs that you are experiencing anxiety.
Anxiety is a dreadful emotion that we have all experienced, to varying degrees and frequency in our lives. It is an intuitive stress response that comes from our fight-or-flight response, and often accumulates, causing us to be stuck in negative feedback cycles of dread and insecurity.
What’s important is to find a way to flip the script that our minds have written out for us, by identifying what keeps us stuck in these cycles, and adopting different mindsets to deal with anxiety.
Identifying Negative Thought Patterns
According to research done by the Harvard Stress and Development Lab, there are some common negative thought patterns that we tend to fall into. Here are 3 of the more common examples:
All-Or-Nothing Thinking
The Perfectionist Mindset: Seeing situations as black-and-white, and if your performance falls short of your expectations, you view yourself as a failure.
Mental Filter/ Over-Generalisation
Honing in on a single perceived mistake and dwelling on it until it negatively warps your view on reality, and viewing it as an endless line of defeat.
Magnification (Catastrophising) or Minimisation
Also know as the "Binocular Trick"; over-exaggerating the effects of your mistakes or failures on the situation, or reducing your achievements until they are nothing.
Installing Positive Mindsets
Now that we have identified some of the common pitfalls in our thinking, we can start re-establishing positive thought frameworks that would serve us well when we are feeling down.
Positive Reframing
This involves thinking about a bad or difficult situation from a more positive perspective. You can reframe your thoughts by finding a benefit to the situation or thinking up lessons you’ve learnt from the challenges you faced.
For example:
Your professor announced a sudden pop quiz in class one day.
Usual thoughts: “Oh no, I’m going to fail this!”
Positive reframing: “This quiz will serve as a chance for me to find the gaps in my learning.”
Or even for class participation, when your module has 20% CP:
Usual thoughts: “I don't want to look dumb in front of the class if I answer wrongly.”
Positive reframing: “In the end, we're all here to learn --- maybe, my wrong answer might reveal more insights on achieving the right answer.”
Examining Your Experience
This technique is one of the key techniques used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It involves re-examining your thoughts with critical and rational thinking.
You can involve the PEEL structure in examining your thoughts – find evidence that supports and rebuts your negative thoughts and elaborate on how your assumptions may deviate from reality. If you can’t come up with any evidence that supports your point, then you can successfully debunk your anxiety.
Here’s an example:
Thought: I’m going to embarrass myself during the presentation, everyone will laugh at me.
Supporting Evidence: I’ve gone off-point, stuttered and froze up before.
Opposing Evidence: I’ve done multiple presentations before, and despite my mistakes, I objectively did alright based on the words of others around me. In the grand span of things, few people will remember or point out my mistakes.
Debunked: I will do my best in the presentation and succeed like I have done before.
Other methods involve identifying extreme language or absolute statements (e.g. I can never do this!) and viewing your situation from an outside perspective.
Implementing Change: Tips and Tricks
In addition to the mindset changes suggested above, here are some tips to help manage feelings of anxiety.
Energy Management
We all have our own limits, so it is important to prioritise where to invest our energy. Planning according to time is important, but planning according to your energy level is even more important in ensuring you can realistically achieve your goals.
As a tip, one key to setting yourself up for success is to do things bit by bit, wherever you can afford to. Been dreading writing that article due next week, so you let it drag on until it’s 1 hour before the deadline and you are freaking out?
Starting on a task can be especially daunting. However, if you can dedicate a small burst of energy to start, for example, using 10 minutes on the bus or train to throw out a mind map, you effectively cut the “energy curve” required to start an assignment, making progress easier.
Small Acts of Bravery
Many of us experience anxiety due to the fear of the unknown, or the fear of change. The ultimate way to deal with this is to push the boundaries little by little, day by day.
It’s the small steps we take to get out of our comfort zones that make all the difference. One way would be to set mini goals daily, like talking to a new person or completing a task you’ve delayed for too long.
Prepare Beforehand
Preparing ahead of time can help with anxiety by reducing the number of unknown variables you have to deal with. For example, reading the textbook before class ensures that you know what will be covered and be able to understand lesson content and even do CP.
Concluding Thoughts
In our everyday lives, we all experience anxiety, one way or the other. At times, it can even feel like the only thing we can do is give in.
It is important to understand that we have autonomy over ourselves, and we can make choices over how to view our lives - The script is within our hands.
Treat yourself with empathy, and take things one step at a time. With time, we can better manage anxiety together.
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