Dan’s Blog

Anxiety: 3 ways to ease anxiety and stress:

One moment you feel fine and then, almost out of nowhere, the anxiety and stress strikes and you find yourself feeling tense, on edge and your heart is pounding. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about that upcoming event and the thoughts of what might happen have started to set your anxiety and stress levels rising. 

I can remember being on a specific training course in Nottingham, over a decade ago in the days when anxiety seemed to be my constant companion. Even before I arrived at the course I’d started feeling a bit tense and on edge, after all, what if the other trainees thought I was an idiot, what if I made a fool of myself, what if I accidentally did something stupid? I’d have been mortified! The closer the course got the more it seemed to fill my mind. So on the day I was sitting in a room of maybe ten or twelve trainees and the trainer. The words I dreaded came out of the trainer’s mouth, ‘let’s go round the room and all introduce ourselves, say what we do and why we are here.’

Now if you have, or have had, social anxiety then these words (along with ‘let’s do an ice-breaker’ or ‘how about we role play this in groups’) will fill you with dread. I was about five or six down the line. Even as the others were speaking I was rehearsing my name (‘arghhh what if I mess up my name!’). I was tense, I was sweating, I felt sick. Yet still in my head I was rehearsing over and over what to say and how to say it. The trainer got to the person next to me – which was always THE worst – you know it’s coming your way and it’s coming your way any moment now. It was all I could do to breathe (and of course that anxiety was reminding me that they’d probably all notice I looked nervous and so they’d all hate me). If you have anxiety / social anxiety then this is about as cruel as it can get. You’re trapped in the room and there is no escape and you can see that wrecking ball heading right towards you.

To this day I have no idea what I said next. I can, however, remember the feeling of relief and exhaustion that followed. I’d avoided danger, at least for now. Ten minutes into the training course and I’m exhausted.  

And of course back in those days it wasn’t just training courses. It was any meeting involving people, any social occasion, any time I had to deal with someone more senior than me (I used to hide in the toilet rather than speak to senior staff), in fact, almost any time I walked down the street. It was hell.

Of course, back then I didn’t have the 3 techniques below to save me and to calm my overwired anxiety and stress system.