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Managing stress and anxiety
“The opposite of anxiety isn’t calm, it’s self-trust.”
- Tory Eletto
We all have different relationships with anxiety. While anxiety is prevalent in the most common mental health disorders in the US, affecting nearly one out of five adults, most people experience some type of anxiety or stress, if even on a mild and infrequent basis. It’s a more common occurrence in the fast-paced information age world we live in today. Throw a global pandemic and current culture wars in the mix to the plenty of reasons people experience stress and anxiety. With some self-awareness, we can learn to address and manage our stress on our own, or know when it might be time to turn to a professional.
I work for an employee assistance program (EAP) where I speak with dozens of people every week from clients all across the US. I would say about a third of the calls I receive are about stress and anxiety. What I truly value about the people who call into the EAP line is they are reaching out for help. They may have had a little encouragement by their employer or a loved one, but they are non mandated to talk to me. Some of them already have their own set of coping skills they use. Some of them end up learning a bunch of helpful stress-relief techniques to help manage their anxiety.
