Top tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy women
Anxiety in the year of Covid-19
It’s not like I have not felt anxiety before Covid-19. I have felt anxious many time and I have handled it many times. I have not used medications to handle anxiety before because I was able to handle it in different ways. If your anxiety is severe, speak to your doctor. In this post I will be talking about my spiritual tools to help you handle anxiety that comes up even stronger because of the fears around contracting the novel coronavirus or Covid-19.
Its not the first time that the world has seen a pandemic… but for many of us between the ages of 24 and 44, this is the first real pandemic experience touching our homes, our kids, our communities and societies at large. The Covid-19 health crisis has caused some major stress and anxiety to parents from all walks of life.
I am a busy mom and I am dealing with the same anxiety right now. And it helps me deal if I write about it. This, right here, is me ‘releasing my fears’ and being vulnerable about what is going through my head. I become anxious when questions, like the ones I listed below, pop up in my head… and I have no answers. Not yet anyway.
What if I can’t make any money to support my family? Who will take care of my kids if I get sick? What if my kids get sick? Will they be seen by a doctor right away or will I have to leave my other child with someone else? Am I already carrying the Corornavirus and don’t know any better?
What if my husband loses his job? And we can’t pay our bills anymore? What will happen to the thousands of people that have been laid off and don’t have any savings? What will happen to my kids education? Will my parents be okay? Will my in-laws be okay? What am I supposed to do?
I am literally losing my mind thinking about the What-ifs!!
Why does this anxiety present itself stronger than before?
We all go through life, struggling to keep our relationships strong, keep our bodies in good shape and keep our minds balanced. Daily life with kids, families and work is busy enough for most of us. Strained relationships, over-worked bodies, health and mental issues already pose difficult challenges during regular ‘pandemic free’ lives. With the added strain of a global health crisis, we have a lot of uncertainty around us. The uncertainty causes us to feel even more out of control and makes the already existing anxiety even stronger.
With aggraveted uncertainty, we must now “prepare” ourselves for something worse. It would be easier if we knew what we are preparing ourselves for but we don’t. We must prepare for the worst and the worst could be no school or work for months on end.
The government in Alberta, Canada, has already announced that schools will now re-open (tentatively) on Sept 5, 2020. (Source) That’s alot of time, that parents have, to prepare for. If the same happens in Ontario, I will be preparing a home-schooling curriculum on top of all the house work created from the whole family at home for an extended period.
I can’t even imagine what all the single parents, without any support, must be going through right now.
So in light of all the chaos happening around us, our already existing anxiety is bound to get worse by the day. And many a times we might be taking on the anxiety from the collective consciousness … it might not be ours. Either way we have to figure out how to release it.
And that is why we need tools to release the anxiety as it happens. We need to feel more stable and capable of handling the unknown.
Spiritual tips to handle anxiety and stress
Here, I will list simple tools that I use to deal with my anxiety and levels of stress on the daily. I find myself turning to these spiritual tools even more as the world around me crumbles before my eyes.
Unless we can find our centre, humanity is going to dis-integrate. I am not going to pretend that I am strong but I am going to try to be stronger than I was yesterday.
#1: Tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy moms
I cannot say this enough. Feel your anxiety. Don’t supress it. I find that when I feel any anxiety, my instinct is to eat. For you it might be to watch TV or workout or talk to someone on the phone or look for someone to blame. If you get anxious, you know what I am talking about.
So feel. your. anxiety. So you can release it.
Get real. Write down how you feel. CRY. YELL into a pillow. If there’s no-one around you, SCREAM on top of your lungs. But release that feeling. The more we can feel into the discomfort, the more comfort we can feel.
Your anxiety is coming up NOW because it wants you to move it… shift it into something beautiful. And you can. Here is what I do to shift my anxiety into love.
I sit in silence.
With my eyes closed.
I imagine the anxiety and soon start feeling all of it within my core.
Then, I usually feel my anxiety into my lower belly area. Find out where your anxiety lives.
After I have felt enough of it, I imagine collecting it all and pushing it out of my body and out of my energetic field.
I intend to push the anxiety out into the universe and ask that the anxiety return to my body in the form of love.
Can you give this process a go and let me know what your experience was?
#2: Tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy moms
Meditate. Every. Single. Day.
I have said this in many of my blog posts – meditate everyday. For radiant health, radiant success and radiant relationships. Meditate for world peace. If there is peace in your body and mind, you will find many situations, around you, peaceful.
I meditate at least twice a day. For me, meditation involves sitting in silence and focusing on breath. There are times I will go so deep that I might touch the subconscious. And there are times I hardly can focus because of various distractions. The important thing is you need to show up for the meditation. Showing up for yourself sends a message to everyone around you. And that message is that “I are worthy of a better life”.
Read my post on why families need to meditate everyday and another one I wrote about the benefits of meditation.
Meditate to clear your mind and become self aware so you can take those thoughts causing you anxiety and apply Step # 1 to those thoughts so as to transmute them.
#3: Tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy moms
Make time for self-care. If you have older kids, chances are you do not have to hold them all the time and you can still do activities to take care of yourself even for 10 minutes a day.
My goal this Spring break is to practice yoga or exercise every day. With or without my kids. I am lucky because I can find a few quiet moments when my kids are busy playing or watching TV or taking showers 🙂
During my free time, I like to write, read, meditate or do something active like workout. I recently bought a skipping rope from Amazon and I like to use it for my daily cardio. You do not have to have a complicated gym set-up to work out. Its possible to do wall sits in your bedroom, squats in the kitchen and planks anywhere in the house. You can meditate with your eyes closed (so you don’t get distracted by the unfolded laundry!
Even if you have 20 minutes to yourself, do something to help heal your body, mind and soul. You will thank yourself at the end of the day.
And just the way we plan our days, it becomes very important to plan our daily self-care routine. So make sure to subscribe to my e-mail list to receive your copy of the FREE Self-Care Daily Planner.
#4: Tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy moms
This is obvious and often ignored. Because we are so damn busy.
Drink. More. Water.
I drink tea to feel calm. I drink coffee in the morning when I wake up. But I forget to drink water to release toxins from my body.
Our bodies are 70% water. And they need to stay at that number. That can only happen if we drink more water throug-out the day.
Fruit is mostly water as well so if you like to eat fruit, load up on natural sugars. I do not eat that much fruit, tbh. I would rather drink water. But I find regular water boring. So I mix it up with sparkling water. This way I make sure to at least get the minimum requirement of water every day.
Drinking water will also wash down impurities in your digestive tract and help you digest food better. But make sure to drink water sometime after eating. Not right away.
I mention some other ways busy moms can start to feel radiant from within in this blog post.
#5: Tips, to deal with anxiety, for busy moms
Pause. And Reflect.
Covid-19 is a reminder for us to pause and just be. Human ‘beings’ are so busy doing everything. All the time. We have forgotten to just be present in the moment. And this is a great reminder for us to just BE.
In-action is not bad. In-action is just that. No action. That is the only way to really relax your mind. Do nothing. Just be.
When you have spent some time in pause mode (some call it the stuckness, I call it pause), everything will become a little more clear for you. When we are doing, we are unable to observe. But pausing gives us the opportunity to observe what’s working and what’s broken. And there is a lot broken. Our values, the way we live and the way we expect others to be.
So let’s take this time to pause and reflect on what’s not working and what we have the capacity to change.
Some simple ideas you can implement now to change your story are:
1. The way you communicate your ideas. Are we trying to change people? Let’s not. Accept others the way they are and see their point of view. This will help you grow as a person.
2. The way we work. Is your life balanced. Are you doing something that gives you joy? If yes, great! If no, what can you do about it?
3. The way we expect others to behave. Our ego’s are out of control. We want others to think and know what we want all the time. That’s not possible. Focus on getting to know yourself and other’ behaviours will not bother you anymore.
So pause. And reflect. And do something to make a change WITHIN yourself.
In consclusion...
Anxiety is a symptom of an underlying pattern or set of patterns. Anxiety is buried so deep within us that even if you clear out a pattern, more might come up later on. You should know that this process of self improvement is never really over, but does get easier.
Keep calm (or stay anxious) but make sure you carry on. The key is to carry on. Know where you are and do your best. You are doing all you can, in this moment, to feel better. As long as you aren’t trying to cover up a situation or supress an emotion, you will be fine.
If you would like to get in touch with me and work with me you can join my private facebook group or contact me through the contact page on this website. I would love to hear from you.
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