How to eliminate anxiety problems and deal with uncertainty

We feel insecure, something normal because of everything that has been happening in our lives for a year. We have always been educated in routines, in planning and in organization, but many things are not going to be as we had planned them to be. Planning and structuring our day to day to move towards certain goals gave us security, and now we do not know that future.

Now you have to learn to live day by day, in the present. Therefore, it is time to do prevention in mental health, to learn to work in the here and now: Currently we have a lack of control over our plans and habits, and that generates insecurity and anxiety.

When there is some aspect of our lives in which we feel that we do not control almost anything that happens to us, we are presented with several options; we resign, fight or accept that we are not in control. You have to see uncertainty as something normal, not fight to face it. And is that a mismanagement of uncertainty leads to high levels of physiological activation.

• Related article: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics"

How to mitigate anxiety problems and adapt to uncertainty?

Great changes like the one we are experiencing in times of COVID-19 make us increase our tolerance for uncertainty. It is an apprenticeship and a training. We have cognitive biases, limiting beliefs, habits and mental patterns that make it difficult for us to cope with these changes, but we can learn to manage all of that.

1. Learn to identify thoughts that lead to nothing

Anticipating the future in the negative is unproductive, as it does not lead us to any concrete and consistently developed action; we block ourselves and waste energy. Therefore, train your mind every day to identify those catastrophic thoughts, and let them go, let them flow and do not influence you. Don't get "hooked" on that emotion of uncertainty and fear.

2. Get used to a certain level of uncertainty

When you feel irrational fear of future situations, you are irritable, you get angry, you feel nervous because you do not control the situation... we must accept that there are things that do not depend on us. In this sense, it is important to train your mind to be more flexible. Living in the "what if ???" It gets you nowhere, we can't guess the future, what will happen or not and less things that does not depend on us.

3. Contrast your pessimistic predictions with reality

When you write down what you think, your fears and worries, over time you will realize that they have not happened. Only a very small percentage will be real. 90% of the things that worry us never ever happen, but our mind and body experience them as real: "What if something happens to me? What if I fail? What if at work they tell me??? " You are continually generating a state of alert secreting cortisol (the stress hormone), and that constant state of threat wears you down psychologically.

Your body is activated, you are on continuous alert and your body is suffering. Thinking about a catastrophic future alters our inner state, and when we constantly think about situations that worry us, it has the same impact as if it really happened.

4. Don't get hung up on trying to block out negative thoughts about the future.

It is important to always understand that the appearance of your thoughts is not something that we can control. Negative thoughts are automatic, they come to us alone according to the situation that is happening to us. It is a way that our brain has to protect us against threats, a way of survival that comes from thousands of years ago.

That appearance of anxious thoughts you cannot control, but yes it depends on you how you interpret the situation and the thoughts that have been generated, that is, the importance you are giving it. If you start to analyze the situation, the thoughts start to skyrocket and you enter an internal self-dialogue from which it is very difficult to escape.

So when you have intrusive thoughts, don't obsess over them leaving, because that will make them take on more intensity. Avoid giving them more importance than they have, do not feed those thoughts more, do not pay the attention that you were used to giving them. Continue with the behavior you were doing, ignoring what is going through your mind, do something that has nothing to do with those thoughts. In these cases the behavior should direct your thoughts, and not the other way around.

Remember that they are only thoughts, they are only words, sounds in your mind, which do not necessarily have to do with reality... They are unpleasant, but not serious. Keep your mind clear and they alone will decrease in frequency and intensity.

summarizing

You have to learn to accept things as they come, not fight against them; That will help reduce your stress. Psychological flexibility is one of the best abilities and skills that we can develop. The key is to accept being with the experience that comes to us, not reject it, and distance yourself from the thoughts that are generated in that situation. The more mental rigidity we are, the more vulnerable we are to developing anxiety, the less resources we will have to face stressful situations. Going from thinking that life is a problem to be solved to thinking that life is a path to be lived is something that changes things a lot.