It’s important to affirm that we have all been living through an unprecedented period of fast changes impacting our health, freedoms, relationships, communities, financial wellbeing, and jobs. It’s bound to mean fluctuating levels of anxiety.

As a former HR Director and practicing psychotherapist, within my own personal and professional network I frequently hear from friends and family seeking HR advice primarily due to company decisions impacting their jobs and financial security. These conversations regularly lead to expressions of heightened anxiety, with many fears expressed, sometimes panic attacks, feelings of helplessness, anger, or shock. Sometimes severe anxiety physical symptoms are mentioned such as a tight chest, shallow breathing, sweaty palms, or feeling sick - known as some of the physiological symptoms of ‘fight’, ‘flight’ or ‘freeze’ responses.

Heightened anxiety can also influence our thoughts. We can become generally fearful and harvest catastrophic thinking patterns. Like a virus, fearful thoughts can infect our behaviours and we might start to withdraw and isolate ourselves or perhaps channel the fear into over compensatory behaviour such as working longer hours and finding it hard to switch off.

Learning how to identify and observe these responses to our environment enables us to take personal responsibility for them day-to-day.

Here are some top tips for managing heightened anxiety:

Breathe

• Breathing deeply into your diaphragm is a simple and easy way to send a signal to your body that there is no threat, and you have the situation under control.
• Try putting your hand on your stomach and feel the rise and fall with each deep breath in and out - slow, deep, and controlled, as if you are filling your stomach like a balloon.
• Do this 3 or 4 times and then take a sip of water.

Thoughts

• Catch thoughts in the moment, identify the story they are telling you about the other person and yourself i.e., an email from a colleague may be read as blaming you and you think it must be your fault. This can become something you then believe about yourself and fuel anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
• Next time, before accepting the thought as truth, question it, seek out evidence to discern if it’s a fact or a perception.
• If it’s your perception, then check it out before you allow contagion of fear-based thinking to set in motion. Try some deep breathing to help support shifting you out of your fear-based response center to the rational part of your brain.

Routine

• Create a daily routine for containment, especially if you’re working from home, to foster some boundaries for yourself, the family, and your work.
• It may involve negotiating shared responsibilities if you have parenting roles or shared space for work. Should you live alone it’s essential for cultivating variety in your day which has meaning and purpose.
• Allocating time for breaks, drinks, meals, and physical activity during the day is also an important affirmation of meeting your needs in a timely organised way. A routine helps to minimise fallow time for unhelpful behaviours and enables control and order to prioritise and fulfil tasks and support the productive use of time.

Connection

• Fostering self-awareness is an important first step in connecting with yourself. It can take the form of practicing presence or something more energetic and fun like dancing to or singing your favourite song, reading a chapter of a book, or calling a friend.
• Creative activities like painting or playing with children are valuable channels for bonding with loved ones and finding mental relief in emotional fulfilment.
• These are also times when we feel more alive with surges of oxytocin and are important substitute activities for going out socialising or playing a team sport.
• Learning to integrate these practices are important building blocks of self-awareness and self- regulation, as well as exercising some structure and control day in your life, where possible.

We have experienced living through a time of significant and unprecedented change and uncertainty about the future. In such times as these, we can learn how to become our own anchors of stability and appreciate the value of simple tools to manage heightened anxiety.