The Anxiety Slot

What you can do when you begin to feel restless or jittery.

Anxiety can be a sneaky hindrance in daily living. Many people carry on with their days with a nagging feeling in the background that something isn't right or complete or something bad might happen, or even more severe forms of this as in disorders such as specific phobias. It can be even more distressing to find out it doesn't stop easily after you realize it's happening. Anxiety usually operates in the future, i.e. it is usually related to fears of usually bad things that may happen. It is mostly anticipatory instead of actually rooted in the present. Here's one way to address this.

Try this exercise:

The next time you start feeling nervous, restless or anxious, stop doing what you are doing and take out exactly 10 minutes. Go to a quiet spot where you have privacy. Actually will yourself to feel the full extent of your anxiety. Intentionally think your anxious thoughts. Deliberately exaggerate your bodily movements in connection to your anxiety, whether it's putting your hands on your head or tapping your foot or whatever your body does when it feels restless. Do this repeatedly.

In short, consciously be anxious for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, stand up and stretch for 30 seconds and relax your body and muscles and give yourself a minute to breathe. After this, you can resume your regular activities.

This experiment is an adaptation of a Gestalt therapy technique which helps center in on the here-and-now, and address the anxiety or discomfort one feels by living it in the allotted space.

Tips: You may have a hard time thinking the anxious thoughts deliberately without putting a concrete form to it. Instead, you can write them out on a piece of paper (which you may dispose of after the exercise) or even say them out loud if you're in a place private enough and feel free enough to do so.

Do: keep track of the time. Set a timer, if need be. This is not meant to become a long-drawn out session of rumination, but rather a slot of conscious awareness.

Don't: stop yourself if you start feeling tearful or angry or frustrated in the course of this exercise. This is the intention of the exercise as it allows for processing of your anxiety by deliberately living it.

The key to overcoming anxiety is to face it in the present. If it is nagging for attention, give it the space to be heard.