How to feel less anxious, calmer and more grounded in uncertain times

As human beings, uncertainty isn’t something that we handle very well. Our brain is wired to scan our environment for potential threats continually and it likes to stay in the comfort of what it knows: our habitual ways of being, circumstances that it is familiar with, anything known and low risk.

When faced with a situation as unknown and unsettling as what we are facing now, our brain’s alert system gets triggered – all red lights starts flashing! This means that a lot of us are experiencing fear, anxiety and stress at this time of change. Whilst a lot of us tend to deal with uncertainty by compensating with controlling measures (fixing, tweaking, trying to adjust reality to appease our mind), it is clear that none of us can exert much control over the current situation. What usually alleviates our fear and anxiety being taken away from us, we are all facing uncomfortable emotions which we don’t always know how to handle.

So how can we tame our fear, appease feelings of anxiety and find more calm and grounding when it seems that uncertainty is all around us?

1.      Know your triggers

Get to know your triggers and where possible stay away from them.

By this point, simply hearing the words ‘COVID-19’ or ‘coronavirus’ is enough to trigger an emotional reaction within most of us and send us into a spiral of anxiety. One of the best ways to avoid this is to manage our exposure to these triggers in the first place.

If watching the news is one of your triggers, consider setting a news curfew so that you don’t get exposed to them right before going to bed. Remove the news alert on your phone. Set supportive boundaries: 15 minutes of news in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening for example. Choose your how to keep up with the news wisely.

2.      Become familiar with your early warning signals

What does fear or anxiety feel like to you?

Develop an awareness of what these emotions feel like to you. To me, it’s a sense of simmering in the lower chest which, if unattended, will reach boiling point and tip me into full-blown anxiety. What is it like for you?

We can only act on what we are aware of.

Catching the spiral

Once we are able to notice the early signals of fear, stress or anxiety, we are better able to catch these strong emotions before they become all encompassing. This opens the door to using coping strategies to soothe our nervous system down early on.

3.      Learn coping strategies to deal with anxiety ‘in the moment’

The skill of coping with difficult emotions

Our natural reaction to feeling fear or anxiety is to pull back, push these emotions away and attempt to ignore them. While it may seem helpful to start with, unprocessed emotions get stored in the body and turn us into a pressure cooker.

Over time, it might cause physical pain in addition to the mental suffering that we are already experiencing.

Skilfully coping with emotions involves allowing ourselves to feel them fully and becoming curious about our experience. Where can we feel the anxiety the most? What does it look like, does it have a shape or a colour? Using self-compassion to support ourselves through this can also be very helpful.

I talk more about coping with difficult emotions on episode 34 of The Mindful Path podast: https://www.lightupandthrive.com/episode34/.

Grounding

There are many strategies we can use to ground ourselves once we have allowed the emotion to run through our body. Try breathing in deeply to the count of 4, pausing for 2 at the top of your inhale, breathing out slowly to the count of 6 and pausing for 2 at the end of your exhale.

You might want to place one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen to notice the sensations of your breath in your body, and its wave-like movement underneath your hands.

Focusing on these sensations will help you get out of your busy mind and ground yourself into your body. This helps break the cycle of catastrophising as our body only ever lives in the present moment.

4.      Manage your mind to get out of fear-based thinking

What’s within and outside of your control

A lot of the suffering we cause ourselves is due to the desperate desire to control what is outside of our scope of influence. We so often exhaust ourselves trying to turn reality into a more favourable scenario, to no avail.

Loosening our grip on life and surrendering to what’s present doesn’t mean being passive. It simply means focusing our inner resources on what we can influence and impact.

None of us can wave a magic wand to erase all trace of the virus. However, we can plan how we might re-organise our life when all of our family is staying at home for example. That, we have some influence over.

What will our new routine look like? How can we make the most of our time together? What role will each of us play? What does each of us need to be at ease over coming weeks: their game console? A yoga mat? A quiet space to get away from it all? An undisturbed hot bath each night with a few scented candles? Quiet time in the morning to meditate? Time in the fresh air? Puzzles to do with the children? Books?

Your thoughts are always a choice.

“It’s not the problem that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the problem.”– Byron Katie.

Notice your thoughts. Are they pulling you into a vicious circle of catastrophizing or are they keeping you calm? Which thoughts would feel supportive and helpful at this time? Which would promote a feeling of calm?

5.      Tilt towards the positive – to avoid spiralling down into negativity

Expand your awareness beyond the virus

 When we are facing pain or suffering, whether mental or physical, we often laser focus our awareness on the pain, which makes it feel overwhelming and all-consuming.

Try expanding your awareness beyond the difficult circumstances – zoom out and notice what else is present around you beyond the virus and anxiety you may be experiencing.

Consider 3 things you can be grateful for, even in these circumstances.

What puts you in a positive state?

Try elevating your state where possible, by proactively seeking to experience love, gratitude, peace. Talking to a friend, doing a brief meditation, reading, practising yoga, doing art, etc.

What practices can help you nurture a more positive emotional state?

It is possible to nurture our emotional wellbeing through difficult times.  It takes choosing deliberately to manage our mind and emotions.

Doing so will help us to build long-lasting emotional resilience and self-trust … This in turn will help reduce our anxiety levels as we trust our inner resources and ability to cope.

If this article resonates with you and you would like free support to nurture your emotional wellbeing in these difficult times, come and join me and other like-minded women here.

Isabelle Griffith is an Emotional Wellbeing Coach. After 20 years in the corporate world, she now helps professional women to press pause, let go of the striving, and develop the emotional and mental resilience they need to live with more ease and joy.