Anxiety Relief Medicine

First do the little thing that scares you the most, cross off half of today's to-do list, and allow yourself to only achieve 60 points today.

Don’t rush to say that this is nutritious chicken soup. I have been working in psychological services for four years and have received nearly two hundred anxiety-related cases. The efficiency of the implementation of these three things is higher than the dozens of “Anxiety Regulation Guidelines” saved in your favorites combined. At three o'clock in the morning last week, I received news of a visit from an Internet operator. There were three to-do lists spread out on the computer, and Snooze was on the table and I was afraid to eat it for fear that I would sleep through the project review the next day. I didn't talk to her about the big idea of ​​"accepting emotions", so I asked her to make the cover page of the review PPT first, and just do this for 10 minutes. Five minutes after she finished, she replied to me: "Hey, the stone that was blocking my chest just now seems to have suddenly loosened a little? ”

If you have to look for a theoretical basis, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) has always said that the essence of anxiety is the fear of "losing control". You don't need to get everything done at once. As long as you regain a little bit of control, the anxiety level will drop a bit - just like if you have dozens of APPs open in the background of your mobile phone that are stuck, you don't need to close them all at once. Just close the one that takes up the most memory first, and it will become smoother immediately.

Oh, by the way, let’s make the boundaries clear first. I’m not saying that prescription anti-anxiety drugs are useless. The psychiatrist friend I contacted repeatedly emphasized to me: If your anxiety has lasted for more than two weeks, you can't eat or sleep well, you can't do anything you were interested in before, and you even have symptoms of hand shaking, palpitations, and body pain, and your self-assessed GAD-7 (Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screening Scale) score exceeds 10 points, don't do it hard, go to a regular mental health center to register as soon as possible, and follow the doctor's advice to take SSRI or other anti-anxiety drugs, just like taking antipyretics for a cold. There is no shame at all. This is the consensus of the medical school. Any statement advocating that "anxiety can be defeated by willpower" is irresponsible to patients with pathological anxiety.

There are also people who argue with me and say that I have tried it. I just lay down doing nothing for a day and still felt anxious. I used to have a freelance friend who was like this. For the first half of the month, he lay naked until 2pm every day, scrolling through his phone until he felt dizzy. When he got up, he still felt his chest was tight and he couldn't sit still. Later, he followed a friend who was doing psychoanalysis and tried a method. He procrastinated for 10 minutes every morning when he got up. He didn't have to think about anything else and just did this one thing. After persisting for a week, he told me that his anxiety score dropped from 8 out of 10 to 4. "At least I have accomplished one thing today, and the rest of the time will be earned." There is actually an explanation in self psychology. Many times you feel anxious while lying down. The essence is that you subconsciously know "you should do something, but you lie to yourself that you don't want to do it." This kind of internal energy consumption is much greater than actually doing things.

Speaking of interesting things, a visitor told me before that his exclusive way to relieve anxiety is to take a detour from get off work to feed the stray cats downstairs, and just feed him a piece of ham sausage. After feeding him, he felt much better when he returned home. Do you think this is consistent with any psychological theory? Actually not necessarily, but it will be useful. When I was working on my book manuscript, my heart rate was 120 when I woke up every day for the week before the deadline. There were 17 items on the to-do list. The more I looked at it, the more panicked I became. Then I picked up a pen and crossed out 14 items. I only wrote half a chapter that day. After writing the rest of the time, I went to drink a glass of iced Americano. In fact, I finished more work that day than before when I stayed up until three in the morning.

Seriously, don’t believe in “100 Ways to Relieve Anxiety”, you won’t read it even if you save it. The more you treat anxiety as a scourge and try to drive it away, the more it sticks to you and won't leave. You treat it like a neighbor who suddenly comes to visit you, handing you a cup of tea and leaving it there, doing whatever it is you are supposed to do. After a while, it feels bored and leaves on its own.

There is no magic medicine that will be good once you take it. Now you put down your phone and boil a kettle of water, or wash the dishes that have been piled up for two days, or write a title for that email that has been delayed for a week. These small things done in 5 minutes are the most appropriate medicine for the moment.