5 Mental Habits That Make Your Anxiety Worse
September 19, 2020 by Suman @TheAwesomeSoul
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Unchecked anxiety can take its toll and suck the joy out of your life.
As you go about your day, many bad mental habits can unknowingly trigger anxiety and make you feel more anxious and stressed out. It’s important for you to learn what these bad mental habits are that have the potential to intensify your anxiety, so you can prepare yourself with better choices to live the life you want.
Procrastinating- people who procrastinate often end up worrying about the important task that they avoided.
Most of the time procrastination can leave you with self-frustration and considering how important a task you dodged, it might also make you vulnerable to sudden anxiety attacks.
Procrastination can happen for many different reasons, ranging from a fear of not doing well (perfectionism) to a lack of interest in the task at all. Whatever the reason may be, it’s important to stop giving in to this bad habit. Chronic procrastination can become debilitating to self-esteem and can lead to poor quality of life.
Tips:
Find out all works and responsibilities that you truly care about and are passionate enough to not fear putting in the required amount of effort.
Identify why you care about them. Know your WHY behind everything you do.
Break down large pieces of work into smaller chunks and identify how much time would you require to complete any work. Stick to your commitments and do not overburden yourself.
Negative Self-Talk
Self-talk is the act of narrating your conscious thoughts and unconscious beliefs about how you perceive every situation. Psychologists often refer to self-talk as our ‘inner voice’ and it guides us into taking action through the decisions we make in our everyday lives.
Research has suggested negative self-talk can damage confidence that can influence your decision making and behaviors, leaving with increased feelings of worry and anxiety.
Rewiring your brain to look at situations positively is the first step to conquering anxiety. Stop the habit of negative self-talk now and start seeing the world for what it really is.
Tips:
Take up treatment options like CBT which can provide an ideal foundation to break the habit of negative self-talk.
Focus on the reality and positive aspects of any situation.
Try to think less and act more.
Overthinking
Thinking through things is a good habit that provides you with constructive clarity on how to act. It becomes overthinking when you keep thinking about it for too long and just cannot get it out of your head. We all have experienced events at least once in our life that might have made us overthink.
However, the real problem with overthinking is the unhealthy destructive thought process that we engage in often leading to irrational worry and anxiety. Overthinking usually stems from focusing on the negative aspects of any important event, which if done consistently might lead to the development of a negative and self-critical mindset.
Tips:
Focus on the action part of any event more than the thinking part.
Question what makes you overthink about any event and evaluate if it is a rational fear or not.
Focus on looking at events and experiences from a positive lens.
Learn to live in the present moment by practicing mindfulness techniques.
Complaining
Complaining is simply an act of expressing dissatisfaction in regards to a negative situation.
Researchers believe the act of complaining chronically can rewire the brain to instill habits of rumination and focusing on the negative aspects which have shown to aggravate symptoms of anxiety.
Tips:
Focus on things which are in your circle of control
Learn to accept the cause of anything that is not within your control.
If the cause of your dissatisfaction is within your control, learn to act, and solve the issue.
Adopt a positive frame of mind towards the world and appreciate what’s around you.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a personality trait in many people which causes them to set high expectations for themselves and others, which are more often than not unrealistic in nature.
Positive or healthy perfectionism is considered a good habit as it spurs you to deliver your best at every work. Positive perfectionism includes focusing more on progress, setting realistic goals, and learning from your mistakes.
However, when you set up standards beyond your reach, you might act from a negative perfectionistic attitude which can lead to being overly self-critical, acknowledging mistakes as failures, seeking approval from others, and ultimately labeling yourself as unworthy for anything less than perfect. Acting in negative perfectionism leads to immense distress, disharmony, uncertainty, fear of making mistakes, and anxiety regarding judgment from others.
Tips:
Identify and set goals that are realistic in nature.
Focus on incremental progress over the outcome.
Set an achievable benchmark for progress and measure your effort against it.
Lastly, excellence is a process that can be achieved only with patience. So practice patience.