{"id":3159,"date":"2020-04-23T12:14:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T00:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nziwr.co.nz\/?p=3159"},"modified":"2020-05-14T12:33:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T00:33:26","slug":"real-time-resilience-12-keeping-anxiety-at-bay-nziwr-team-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nziwr.co.nz\/real-time-resilience-12-keeping-anxiety-at-bay-nziwr-team-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-time Resilience #12: Keeping Anxiety At Bay – NZIWR Team Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared in Stuff April 06, 2020 Coronavirus: Six tips for keeping anxiety at bay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Queen\u2019s Birthday weekend of 2015, our 17 year old son got in his car and drove three hours north to a surf comp. They were the longest hours of my life. While it\u2019s not atypical for a parent of a young driver to feel anxious at their offspring flying solo on the open road, my situation is not typical. A year before, on Queen\u2019s Birthday of 2014, his 12 year old sister headed off in a car, and never came home. Our dear girl, Abi, her friend Ella, and Ella\u2019s mum, my friend Sally, were killed in a tragic road accident when a driver ploughed through a STOP sign and straight into them.<\/p>\n

This week, as I lay in bed, I felt the familiar weight of anxiety settling into my chest and my mind. News from Air New Zealand, the closure of Bauer Media, and the horrific plight of millions of Indians sent me spiraling. Catastrophising in a way I\u2019ve trained others to avoid, I thrashed through a sleepless night, jaw clenched, thoughts like a runaway train. Before daylight, we\u2019d failed to make mortgage payments and lost our home. All in my head.<\/p>\n

Things usually look better the next day. And they still do. But, as we prepare to enter what is likely to be the toughest few weeks of the COVID-19 crisis\u00a0 – with community cases spiking and the deathtoll rising – it\u2019s time to marshall my thoughts and get on top of that catastrophic thinking.<\/p>\n

So here, are my top tips for keeping anxiety at bay \u2013 informed by the best of science and clinical practice, but also born from past experience. These strategies got me through our teenage boys\u2019 road trips and helped me let them go in the years since the girls\u2019 deaths.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Tune into what\u2019s playing on your \u2018internal radio\u2019. Lying in bed that night, I may as well have had the shark attack music playing from the Jaws movie. What doomsday yarns are you spinning?<\/li>\n
  2. Separate facts from fiction. Karen Reivich, lead trainer for the US Army\u2019s Military Resilience Program, also my lead resilience instructor at University of Pennsylvania, always reminded us to \u201cstick to the facts\u201d when our thoughts are making us anxious. Just because you thought it, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s true.\n
      \n
    • Slow down and consider the evidence for your catastrophic thinking<\/li>\n
    • Ask yourself, is imagining the worst helping or harming you?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Make \u2018what if\u2019 thinking your friend. Very deliberately make yourself come up with some alternative scenarios. Reivich\u2019s team trained the US Army to use this three step process: picture the worst case scenario, next the best case scenario, realise reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Nobody \u2013 literally nobody in the world right now \u2013 can forecast how this will play out with 100% certainty, so don\u2019t get swept up in down-spiralling \u2018what if\u2019 thinking. I continually tell myself that while my brain is really good at imaginging all the pain and misery of living without Abi in the future, it\u2019s useless at conjuring up the good stuff. Great change and challenge also unearths unanticipated alliances, opportunities and kindnesses. Look what\u2019s happening to the environment for instance. Don\u2019t let gloom steal your hope.<\/li>\n
    • Keep yourself firmly anchored in the here and now. In our boys\u2019 earliest days of driving, or moving into student flats in Dunedin, I used to tell myself, \u2018until there is a policeman standing in front of you, you have to believe they are okay\u2019. Focus on the present, and what you can control in this very moment.<\/li>\n
    • Sometimes physically moving helps me climb back down the anxiety ladder. If you\u2019re lying in bed with the weight of the world pressing down on you, or feeling sick at images of India on breakfast television, move. Get up, go to a different room.<\/li>\n
    • Absorbing your thoughts elsewhere in really engaging activities also gives your mind a rest. Phone a friend, listen to your favourite podcast or make yourself read a book (even an old favourite). My brain welcomes the sense of mastery in creating order from chaos by completing a 240 piece jigsaw puzzle. Child\u2019s play, but effective.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      We cannot control our future, there are so many unknowns. Speculating over what might happen only makes us feel worse and doesn\u2019t alter the outcome. Resilience research suggests that adopting a survivors\u2019 mentality helps people cope with extreme adversity. Using the strategies above can help reduce anxiety, but you\u2019ve got to want to win this fight and exert as much as control over your thinking and acting as you can. It\u2019s not easy, but for most us, it\u2019s something we can do.<\/p>\n

      Dr Lucy Hone is co-director at the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience, Adj. Fellow, University of Canterbury, and author of Resilient Grieving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      This article first appeared in Stuff April 06, 2020 Coronavirus: Six tips for keeping anxiety at bay. On Queen\u2019s Birthday weekend of 2015, our 17 year old son got in his car and drove three hours north to a surf comp. They were the longest hours of my life. While it\u2019s not atypical for a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"template-covid-19-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[176,126,65,4,25,63,24],"tags":[134],"yoast_head":"\nReal-time Resilience #12: Keeping Anxiety At Bay - NZIWR Team Tips - NZIWR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nziwr.co.nz\/real-time-resilience-12-keeping-anxiety-at-bay-nziwr-team-tips\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Real-time Resilience #12: Keeping Anxiety At Bay - NZIWR Team Tips - NZIWR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article first appeared in Stuff April 06, 2020 Coronavirus: Six tips for keeping anxiety at bay. 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