Blog

— Neeraj SK

---

During the one year of the ongoing CoVid-19 crisis, we have been reacquainted with anxiety like never before. While job market and personal issues have always been our trigger points, the pandemic made us realise that too much of something good like ‘Netflix and chill’ and ‘family time’ could also cause anxiety. But this turmoil has also given us an opportunity to understand ourselves better and learn new ways and methods to make our lives more fulfilling and satisfactory. So here are 10 ways for you to cope with anxiety and make life more joyous.

1. Respond don’t React

Our brains are wired through evolution to either ram headfirst into a problem or to scamper from it as quickly as we can. Although this approach helped our forest dwelling ancestors survive, this method only adds to our anxiety in the brick and mortar age.

One of the most important tips to overcome anxiety in the modern times is to learn to respond and not react to your problems. Simply put, we ought to analyse our problems from various perspectives and chart out an effective course of resolution, before we jump into action. Reaction will only further trigger our stress. While the ability to respond will help us better cope with our anxiety.

2. Chai Calms you Down

While the traditional ‘Chai’ contains caffeine which has a counterproductive effect stress, many herbal teas actually help you cope with anxiety. Herbal teas can not only help calm you down in the short run are also healthier alternatives for regular tea in the longer run.

While Chamomile tea is a popular choice to cope with anxiety, other calming brew options include Hibiscus, Kava, Peppermint, Lavender, and Valerian root. However, it should be noted that Herbal teas complement and are not an alternative to a healthy lifestyle.

Note that Valerian root tea should not be consumed if you are going to drive soon after. 

3. Move your body

Exercise is often linked to the secretion of feel-good hormones and neurochemicals that make your brain feel happy. But anxiety is often not just a state of the mind. A tense body can significantly contribute to the feeling of anxiety. Exercise helps increase blood flow to the muscles, thus helping us release the pent up tension that our body is carrying around.

Exercise doesn’t necessarily mean the long strenuous hours at the gym. A relaxing short session of Yoga or stretching, or even a simple long walk outside will help you feel calm and serene.

In the very least, exercise distracts you from the trigger of your anxiety and enables you to deal more effectively with the problem with a fresh and calm mind.

4. Art and Music

Artistic expression of emotions, also known as ‘catharsis’ is a great way to overcome anxiety in a productive manner. You don’t have to be an excellent painter, an accomplished writer, or a trained musician to be able to deal with anxiety. Indulge in art and music simply to de-stress and without bothering about the end product that you create.

Vibrant colours, soulful tunes and free-writing and other art forms not only help calm your mind calm down but also help you gain a better clarity of your own self. Binaural beats is also a form of music therapy which has shown quantifiable calming effects by altering brain waves.

5. Just Breath

If you observe closely, you would realise that every time you feel anxious, you are taking quick, short and shallow breaths. Learning to breathe properly is one of the best ways to overcome anxiety in a short span.

Chest or thoracic breathing leads to a hiked heart rate and a drop in blood oxygen level. Chest breathing is when you take short and shallow breaths. This kind of breathing leads to tightness of muscles and an increased anxiety. However, abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing not only calms the brain down but also helps the both function more effectively.

Simply taking slow, long and deep breaths using the natural breathing muscle (diaphragm) helps lessen the effects of anxiety in a matter of minutes.

6. Celebrate the Small Stuff

We are often so caught up in the big picture stuff that we forget that life is made of small moments. Granted that looking forward to the next big project is an attitude of success. But learning to celebrate the small achievements is also of crucial importance. Such small celebrations let you relax between projects, thereby eliminating the need to carry the anxiety of one big life event into another.

Celebration of the small achievements also helps you appreciate yourself for the hard work you put in to attain a certain victory. Such appreciation and relaxation will eliminate stress and pump you with the fuel of excitement for the next big thing in your life. Such frequent small celebrations will also infuse you with a positive attitude, thereby helping you cope with signs of depression.

7. ‘Self’ Time

Loneliness sucks, but solitude heals. Spare at least half an hour every day to simply be alone. Spend this time not binge watching series but by taking care of the ‘self’. Let your thoughts flow freely or write them down at random. Or simply look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge the brilliant being that you are. Or better yet, treat yourself with a face or a head massage. Oftentimes the triggers of our stress are not on the outside but are within. Spending some time in solitude helps you recognise these triggers and deal with them effectively. This enables you to overcome anxiety from the inside.

8. Attitude of Empathy

For many of us, relationships of all kinds can be a cause of anxiety. One should not at all bear with the stress generated from harmful and toxic relationships. But even healthy relationships may lead to some amount of stress every once in a while. One needs to learn to cope with the stress and anxiety to maintain healthy relationships, and an attitude of empathy is the most effective tool to do this.

Empathy simply means to walk into the shoes of the other person and look at an issue from their perspective. An empathetic attitude enables us to perceive the world through the lenses of a broader and more inclusive perspective.  Being able to understand and feel what others go through helps us understand that we are not alone in our journey of life. We realise that others might be equally or even more stressed than us. This perspective helps us not not cope with our anxiety and depression but also enables us to be a better person.

9. Living in the Moment

One doesn’t have to be a spiritual person to develop a practice of mindfulness. Training your brain to live in the moment is no different than toning your muscles through exercise.

Our brain is constantly processing thoughts, and information received via our senses throughout the day. However, just like too many vehicles on a highway lead to traffic congestion, too many simultaneous thoughts clogs our brain and leads to stress and anxiety. Hence it is important to decongest your mental highway every once in a while.

Mindfulness and meditation enable you to live in the moment and enjoy it to the fullest. This helps you better cope with the anxiety caused by the worry of the past or of the future.

10. Therapy

Lifestyle changes are a fantastic way to overcome anxiety and depression while also developing great habits for the longer run. However, at times, the causes of anxiety could be rooted deep within one’s mind. If unresolved, such issues could develop into serious psychological unease.

In such situations, one should not feel inferior to take the advice of the professional. Therapists can arm you with the tools necessary to cope with severe anxiety. Such therapies include muscle relaxation techniques, emotional and psychological healing, and emotive and behavioural therapy.

Know that you can live a fulfilling life even with severe anxiety if you get the necessary help at the correct time.

Just like the body needs medical attention at times, the mind may also need professional guidance. The mere awareness of this necessity and the willingness to consult an expert itself enables you to take the first step towards overcoming anxiety and leading a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Neeraj SK

I hurriedly rushed out of the smelly, sweaty and congested newsroom to receive the call of one of my sources who was impatiently and incessantly continued calling me after I had rejected his call three times in a row.

“Sir, I found the drug peddler”, I hear my source’s breathless voice.

This call had led to the publication of my first exclusive crime report as a journalist. But more interestingly, this article inspired a second layer of plot in my novel and helped me complete 50K words in my first NaNoWriMo attempt. That is when I realised that my short-term endeavour (of about three years) in journalism had made me into a much better writer.

I neither had planned on becoming a journalist, nor was I trained to be one. However, fate got me a job as a journalist at a highly reputed newspaper and so I began learning the principles of writing good newspaper articles. Little did I know that this newfound knowledge would seep into my fiction writing, making me a much better teller of tales.

I share some of these lessons with you, hoping it would help you just as much as it helped me.

1. The inverted pyramid of journalism

People always skim through newspaper articles and dive deep only into those articles that truly intrigue them. That is why, journalists always write their articles in the structure of an inverted pyramid, wherein the most important and intriguing information goes in the first paragraph, which is followed by paragraphs with descending importance of information and increasing fluff.

The inverted pyramid starts with a paragraph that answers the five ‘W’ questions – Who, What, When, Where and Why – followed by a few crisp paragraphs detailing the incident being reported. It is only after the crucial information is given in these paragraphs, does a journalist add some additional details, which is followed by a final concluding paragraph.

As we live in a world where artists compete for the audience’s attention span, the inverted pyramid becomes a really handy tool for creating natural hooks for your stories and ensuring that the stories are crisp and to the point with minimum fluff that will always slide down to the very end.

2. Writing on cue

As a newbie journalist, I considered deadlines and word counts as my worst enemies. As a journalist, most days I was expected to find a newsworthy story, conduct interviews, do field research and write an article ready to be sent to the editor in less two to three hours.

However, this experience helped me get out of the comfort zone of waiting for the muse (which is just a fancy phrase for procrastination) and start writing on cue. While I still fall prey to procrastination every now and then, I now am at least confident that I can literally start writing a story on cue without having to wait for my muse to strike.

3. Creating intriguing characters

As a part of my job, I have interviewed a considerable number of people across age groups, cultures and classes. These were the ‌kind of interviews that were never planned ahead and I had to ask just the right ‌questions based entirely on what the other person was saying. Goof interviews were those where the questions and answers felt like actions and reactions between me and the interviewee.

This habit of forming conversational sentences based not on what I have planned but on what the other person is saying, helped me understand how to write good dialogues because it turns out that natural sounding dialogues are also supposed to sound like a series of actions and reactions between the characters in a story.

5. Finding my voice

As a writer, finding my author’s voice was one of the most difficult things for me. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what ‘author voice’ even means.

However, when I became a journalist, I realised ‌it is only on rare occasions that I will get to write my name (byline) below an article that I have written. Most articles that do not have any exclusive content are published without a byline in almost all newspapers. This meant that if I wanted newspaper readers to know that a certain article is written by me, I had to style my writing uniquely with the consistent use of tools like word choices, sentence structures, figures of speech and signature phrases or terms.

Little did I know that simply by applying these same tools in my fiction writing, I had already formed my unique author voice.

My journalism has had such a great impact on my writing that I am certain I would never have become a published author if I had not been a journalist first.

Always remember that writing comes from within and ‘the within’ is made up entirely of your conscious and subconscious experiences. So, make sure you live a full life and value and learn from every moment of it, for that will turn into a story one day.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!