Anxiety Counseling Techniques for Managing Expectations During Coronavirus
Anxiety counseling techniques can be helpful if you are struggling with how to manage your stress during a difficult time. Even I, an expert anxiety counselor in Orlando, am feeling what my clients, my loved ones, and even you are probably going through during this time. Everyone is dealing with difficult feelings these days. Some of the shared feelings I have heard from clients seeing me for anxiety therapy consist of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. This feeling even seems to be shared on some level globally.
Causes of Anxiety During Pandemic
A heightened sense of anxious stress is likely coming up for you every day. That stress causing anxiety might stem from worrying about health issues (health anxiety) or a fear about getting sick, losing a loved one, not being able to go out, or being jobless. This pandemic fear has completely uprooted our lives, changing routines, relationships, and our sense of freedom.
It can be a struggle to simply get out of bed or to motivate yourself when there’s nowhere to go and oftentimes nothing you must get done each day. Feelings of guilt can creep in when we buy into the belief that it’s the time to be extraordinarily productive. After all, how often do we have no choice but to stay at home? “Make the most of it,” some are saying, but here’s the thing- you can’t make the most of a situation when you’re denying your reality. As an anxiety therapist, I teach my clients how to identify negative feelings that are creating anxiety. What they often uncover are expectations or perceptions of reality that they are filtering self-judgment from. This leads to anxiety, stress, frustrations, hopelessness, disappointment, and guilt.
Anxiety Counseling Tips To Manage Stress
In anxiety counseling Orlando, what I encourage clients to do, and what I use for my own self-care routine, is to keep yourself by adopting a gentler approach with yourself. Let go of any expectations you have of yourself to approach this crisis perfectly and drop into the truth of your own experience. Take good care of yourself and allow yourself forgiveness to be able to navigate this in whatever way works for you.
Taking care of you may mean journaling, allowing yourself to cry, taking a hot shower, getting outside, or cuddling your dog. Taking care of someone else, or perhaps of you on a different day, could mean accomplishing work tasks, learning new things, reading those books you’ve been slowly collecting on your desk, or engaging in an intense at-home exercise program.
Accepting Feelings
In short, there’s no way to just be positive in these times. This time in life, more than ever, requires that you slow down, tune into yourself, and ask, “What do I need today?” You must allow yourself to feel your feelings and take care accordingly. Sometimes you’ll feel sad, sometimes angry, sometimes anxious, and sometimes happy with everything in between. Lean into those feelings- really feeling them. Feelings are ever-changing, like the weather, and it’s unrealistic to expect yourself to conjure up the motivation to be optimally productive in a global pandemic. When you think that you’ve fallen short, take a deep breath, and just ask yourself gently, “what do I need today?”
If you feel like you are continuing to struggle with finding your footing and balance during this time, don’t let yourself fall into despair. There are anxiety counselors, like myself, that are waiting to help teach you the anxiety techniques that will help you overcome your anxiety. You can contact me directly through email or by calling the Orlando Thrive Therapy office at 407-592-8997.
