As was the case for many people, lockdowns took a huge toll on my mental health. Anxiety has been a part of my life. The more I learn about it, the more I see how it impacted me even as a child. I would worry about assignments, grades, books, and friends. Over the last ten years, I have learned to handle anxiety in healthier ways. When my anxiety starts to impact my daily life, there are three activities that I examine first.

Sleep

For me, consistent sleep is more important than longer sleep. I try to sleep from 10pm to 5am every day, even on the weekends. Waking up in the mornings gives me time to workout, write, and have a quiet time before my children wake up. Going to bed by 10pm helps me get enough sleep before my early wake up. Setting a bedtime and sticking to it are important boundaries to draw when you know that sleep impacts your mental health. There will be nights when you have to stay up past your bedtime, but those nights should be the exception. Your bedtime doesn’t need to be the same as mine but it needs to be a time that you can consistently meet, even if it means declining other opportunities.

If I recognize my anxiety begin to skyrocket, I consider how I have been sleeping. There are times where I have had to be out past 11pm several nights in one week. Other times, especially if the kids are sick or Fin has had to spend much time away from me, I am up multiple times through the night. When my father-in-law lived with us, Finiasi slept in our bed every night. If he is in our bed, he sleeps on my chest or wrapped around my arm like a baby monkey. It made my sleep inconsistent and challenging. Due to the many other circumstances in our lives, there were no other options, but it was necessary that I was aware how badly I was sleeping and how that would impact my anxiety levels.

Food

The next area I have to examine when my anxiety is out of control is my diet. Am I overeating regularly? For me, that means eating to the point that I feel better rather than eating so that my hunger is satiated. It often looks like finishing everything on the kids’ plates rather than putting it into the compost. One huge red flag for me is intentionally eating somewhere that people cannot see me and seeking out desserts in order to make myself feel full. When my anxiety gets particularly bad, I know that I need to focus on my eating patterns. Am I making righteous choices about food or using it so that I don’t have to deal with my emotions?

One of the biggest dietary changes that helped me with my anxiety was cutting out caffeine. I realized that caffeine was like pouring gasoline onto the embers of my anxiety. It transformed smouldering coals into raring flames. For example, our evening plans may get changed during the day, which impacts the plans for the kids and babysitting. If I am in a healthy place, I simply make some phone calls and adjust the plans. If I’m not doing well and have had caffeine that morning, the small change suddenly becomes life-altering. Even though in reality, it is not a big deal, my anxiety turns it into a mountain I have to trudge up. I feel like there is no way I can call someone and ask them to come over to watch the kids. I believe that no one is going to be available to help me, and my runaway thought train goes places like “I’m going to be stuck at home forever. Watching kids is all I’m ever going to do. There’s no one to help me do anything.” A very small inconvenience suddenly seems insurmountable.

Exercise

I run three to four times a week, but I do not run to lose weight. I run because regular aerobic exercise is an effective anti-anxiety treatment for me. I run even before I have my quiet times because it allows me to burn off all the anxious energy that often makes my quiet times ineffective. I run off all my racing thoughts so that I can focus while I pray. It set me up to have a better day with the kids. I sleep better when I’m working out regularly. I had my gallbladder removed and had to take weeks off from running. While it was necessary, I could feel the impact on my mental health. In the mornings, the kids would want to cuddle, and I hadn’t been able to run, so all this nervous energy would come out sounding like “Don’t touch me!”

Consistent exercise should be considered a treatment for anxiety, so if it helps your anxiety build it into your schedule as part of your treatment. Consistency is not perfection, so don’t quit because you miss one workout. But prioritize it so that it becomes one more part of your daily routine.

When Those Are Not Enough

Shopping in stores is a trigger for my anxiety. I struggle with how many people are in there, and the walls often feel like they are closing in on me. I also always feel like I am in a hurry, as though I’m being timed and have to get out as quickly as possible, even when there is no reason for me to be rushed. At one point, I couldn’t find an item on my list. I started to feel my heart race and my breathing get fast and shallow. Every muscle in my body tensed, and I abandoned my cart in the aisle of the store so that I could meltdown in my car instead of publicly. All because I could find a single item on my list.

Driving is my other main trigger. Around the same time that I deserted my full shopping cart, I was also having trouble driving. When I arrived somewhere, I would have to take a few minutes to calm down before I could walk into my destination. There were days when I had to take time and stop crying so that I could go inside somewhere. I would try to schedule our activities so that Afa could drop me off wherever I needed to be because driving was so overwhelming to me. 

When I put these symptoms together, I realized that even though I was sleeping regularly, exercising on schedule, and making healthy food choices, my anxiety was significantly impeding my daily life. Afa works full time outside our house. It wasn’t reasonable to expect him to do all the driving and all the shopping. It wasn’t healthy for me to stay at home out of fear. I employed all the methods that I knew in order to manage my anxiety, and at that moment it was not enough. I still couldn’t function. 

Upon that realization, I called my doctor and asked about anxiety medication. It felt almost too easy to get. Ten minutes on the phone, and I had a prescription in hand a few hours later. 

Doing the Work Afterwards

During the pandemic, it has been notoriously hard to get a therapist, and Kaiser told me that the waiting list was six months long but that I could speak to a counselor in about two weeks. It ended up to be a very helpful conversation. He recommended that I purchase and work through the Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. I scoffed at the idea at first because self help books always seemed pretentious to me. However, this book has been super helpful. It takes daily focus, but several of the exercises have helped me both in driving and shopping, as these are necessary tasks in life. Avoiding them forever is not even an option.

It’s also likely that at some point I will work with my doctor to stop taking the medication. The fact that I need it right now does not mean I will need it forever. It means that for this season all the other work I did, which was necessary, was insufficient. At some point it may become sufficient again. For now, I’m grateful to have the extra assistance.