1. Little By Little

By BC

The young and brilliant rapper, Logic wrote a song called “Anziety” talking about his struggles coming to terms with an anxiety attack that he had. The physical effects can be harrowing to deal with. Often, people who struggle with the disorder describe the feeling as an impending sense of doom- they feel motionless while at the same time wanting to run.

When these resources aren’t available students may turn to unhealthy habits like drug use or binging on alcohol. They may push away their friends and isolate themselves, or lash out at them and draw them away. Many young adults are mourning the recently extinguished rapper, Mac Miller, who talked about stress and anxiety in his interviews right before his overdose. As youths we are more stressed than ever, we don’t have enough resources at our disposal and we aren’t coping in a healthy way.

Unfortunately, I do not have the power to create more of these resources. I do, however, have the opportunity to share coping tips for anxiety and depression in hopes that they help some students out there who are struggling. I can also promote resources that I do know you can reach out to. What I can’t do is claim to cure you, to completely resolve your problem, or even promise that what I say will help. We are all individuals and are coping mechanisms might be very different. I just know that it can be difficult to step out of your own head and find a solution, so here are the ones that, in my experience, has helped to alleviate my symptoms.

The first thing that I want to note is that you are not an isolated case.

When I was in middle and high school I had an overpowering amount of social anxiety. It was hard to enter into any social situation for me without feeling completely shut inside of myself and incredibly nervous. I wanted to be around others and make friends but there was a conflict between what I wanted and what my body would allow me to accomplish. I never wanted to tell anyone about this struggle, although it was fairly obvious, I felt that telling someone made me a burden on them. As I grew older, I realized I needed to start finding ways to deal with my anxiety on my own because, although I had learned to allow others to help me, there are times where you don’t have those people around you to lean on. Especially during this time of your life, when you move away from your family and you are also leaving your net of people to fall back on.

I made note of the situations that routinely made me anxious. Back then it was a lot of social situations, now, it is studying for tests in incredibly difficult classes. I knew that the tests would come and that I’d be in these anxiety-causing situations often. So instead of accidently ending up in those situations and being overwhelmed with anxiety, I decided to seek these situations out. When I was young and scared to talk, I gave myself little goals: raise your hand in class and contribute; talk to someone in the lunch line; challenge yourself to do the things that scare you. The fact that I had intentionally put myself into these situations made me feel more in control and because I wasn’t avoiding them, I felt less scared. I used the same method to get over my fear of public speaking, roller coasters, and in a lot of other areas of my life as well.

When I started to get anxiety and even severe anxiety attacks when studying for notoriously hard exams, (I’m looking at you business finance) I tried studying in small sections. Learn one concept, then work on homework problems that deal with that one concept; move onto the next concept after successfully completing a couple problems. When lectures are jam packed with information it can feel almost impossible to learn the wall of information built up in front of you. I find that dividing and conquering the information can make it way less intimidating.

The important thing to remember with this method is to set small goals, reflect on progress, and to not get discouraged if you fail or feel anxious. It’s about repeated exposure not about immediate results. Be patient with yourself.

When you let your environment fall into chaos is easy to feel like your life is also chaotic. One of the first things I check to see when I have a lot of anxiety or spouts of depression is if my room/house is clean. Cleaning can be therapeutic because you feel productive; you are physically removing clutter so it also feels like there is less to be stressed about around you.

It’s easy to disassociate while cleaning and clear out your mind of intrusive thoughts. At the end your space is clean, you’ve told yourself that you are worth more than living in a messy space, and you have accomplished something.

It is a very simple thing to do and can be a powerful help to alleviating anxiety. I have used it as a tool to help calm me down multiple times and have given it as advice to my friends who have told me that the effects are surprisingly helpful.

This one is about going to back to the roots of your interests. I draw as a hobby, there are no expectations to it and I am free to draw whatever I like. Sitting down and doodling nonsense gets me out of my funk. Think about what you like to do, does closing your eyes and listening to music make your anxiety less intense? What about calling an old friend or a family member? The most important thing on this is while you are engaging in these activities try to actively calm yourself down. Slow down your breathing, try to stop fidgeting, don’t pace around.

Minimize sugars, introduce more fruits and vegetables. You need to reel back on caffeine if you are getting frequent attacks.

There are other ways to wake yourself up if you still need that caffeine-like boost.

Casual drinking with friends is okay- binge drinking (even with friends) is not.

It helps to run out of jitters. People who don’t exercise are more prone to anxiety.

I am a very self-reflecting person, which is part of the reason I get anxiety) so I know which habits are unhealthy.I know what actions I am prone to doing when I feel stressed or down. There are a handful of friends that I trust to look out for these signs and call me out when I am exhibiting unhealthy behavior. Frankly, getting called out can really get my ass in gear to correct what I am doing.

Geez, this is hard to do when you are in the middle of a lot of anxiety. However, this tip is more about preventative behavior. Schedule time for yourself not to work. Giving yourself this breathing room between a lot of work can lesson the feeling of being overwhelmed down the road.

I know that these aren’t life-changing methods. This article is all about the little things. If I know something can help my anxiety, I should share it in case it can be useful for someone else. If you have any tips that you follow please share them!

And if you need help, here are some resources for you to reach out to:

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