How Anxiety Can Show Up and How To Manage Symptoms

This concept is inspired by Alice Boyes’ book called ‘The Anxiety Toolkit: The Five Strategies for Fine Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points’ (she is a former clinical psychologist, turned writer)

Putting things in my anxiety toolkit helps me have resources to rely on when situations arise.

A short & incomplete list of ways anxiety might show up in your life:

• overthinking before taking action

• prone to making negative predictions 

• worry about the worst case scenario 

• taking negative / constructive feedback hard

• highly self-critical of words and actions 

• disappointed when things aren’t perfect 

The goal isn’t to reduce anxiety to 0 because a little can be okay / normal to keep you on task, improving, aware of your surroundings, realistic about outcomes etc. 

For me, it’s mostly about managing symptoms so I don’t…

• ruminate too long on decisions that I miss an opportunity or experience that I wanted to do

• future trip about problems that wouldn’t likely occur 

• have paralyzing perfection that hinders action

• hide my authentic self out of fear or criticism