Short article to relieve anxiety

The most practical way to relieve daily anxiety is never to force yourself to "think more", nor to spend hours doing mindfulness or writing emotional diaries. You only need to find your own "emotional minimum action anchor point", and you can bring your overly tense state back to a safe level in 3 minutes.

I was rushing to meet the cross deadlines of three projects a while ago, and my landlord suddenly notified me of a rent increase. That day, I was faced with a to-do list that filled the screen, and tears fell on the keyboard without warning - either I was so sad that I cried, or my nerves were stretched to the critical point, and my emotions overflowed directly. At that time, my mind was full of "I can't finish it all", and the method of "writing down irrational beliefs and refuting them one by one" of the cognitive behavioral school was completely useless. My mind was spinning faster than a fan, and I couldn't calm down to write. I flipped through the mindfulness guidance audio in my favorites, and after listening to it for 30 seconds, the more I counted, the more breathless I became, and I almost threw my phone away.

The last thing that saved me was having a cold Coke on hand all morning. I clutched the jar so hard that my fingertips were numb, and I simply stared at the water drops rolling down the jar. When the 12th drop of water dripped onto the table, I suddenly felt that the tightness in my chest had relaxed half a point. Later, I specifically asked a friend who is a clinical psychologist, and I realized that I had mistakenly stepped on the core logic of "grounding technology". However, it is different from the standardized actions of "counting breaths and touching the five senses" required in the textbook. Ordinary people can use their own convenient objects as anchors, and there is no need to rigidly follow the standard process.

A girl in my department carries a bodhi seed with a pattern in her pocket all the year round. Whenever she is asked by the leader in a meeting and cannot answer a question, she secretly folds it under the table three times, and when she touches the bumpy pattern with her fingertips, she calms down instantly. My friend who does psychological counseling said that she had a visitor from high school who was anxious. I would pick the rubber ring on the pen cap, and when the rubber ring became warm, I felt that I could continue writing the questions. There was also a friend who was a designer who was even more interesting. Every time I broke down while revising the manuscript, I would touch the metal handrail of the stairwell. The cold touch would stick to my palms, and my brain, which was numb from irritation, would wake up in an instant.

Some people say that this little trick is just scratching the surface and cannot solve the real problem. The things that should be anxious are still there. This is true. If you owe 100,000 yuan, you can still pay it back no matter how much iced Coke you hold. The project deadline will not be postponed just because you pondered for three minutes. But "treating the symptoms" is never a derogatory term. Just like when you have a fever of 39 degrees, you can't force yourself to check the cause of the fever first. You can take an antipyretic to lower the temperature first, so that you can have the strength to do a check-up to find the root cause of the disease. The same is true for emotional problems - you can't push yourself to collapse first, and then think about dealing with those bad things, right?

Last week I met a girl squatting on the ground crying at the corner of the subway station. She was holding a wrinkled blind box in her hand. She said that the interview was screwed up and she didn't dare to go back and tell her roommate. So she held the box for five minutes until her knuckles hurt. She suddenly thought, "It's not a big deal. We can meet again next week." She was about to stand up and eat a bowl of hot noodle soup with fried eggs. You see, there is no need for a perfect emotional management plan. You have an orange candy in your pocket, an ugly photo of your cat belly-turning on your phone, and remember the three-and-a-half can of ice soda from the convenience store downstairs. These little broken things that can’t be put on the countertop are more effective than any amount of chicken soup for the soul at critical times.

After all, what you want is never to "completely eliminate anxiety", but don't let anxiety drag you into an emotional mud pit from which you can't climb out, right?