How I Learned to Manage My Anxiety

One moment I was making a sandwich, the next I struggled to catch my breath. Heart pounding, I gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles white against the cream laminate, vision blurred by fat tears that streaked my fresh eye make-up. It was a random morning and I was getting ready for work. Preparing my lunch, anxiety struck. Thankfully, I’ve since learned how to mange my anxiety.

Anxiety wasn’t an unusual thing. Anxiety attacks have brought me to my knees, seemingly out of nowhere. All I could manage was to wrap my arms around myself, rock gently and cry until it passed, whispering to myself, “sshhh, it’s okay.”

Understanding Why I Was So Anxious

The thing is though, my anxiety attacks didn’t come out of nowhere. I know now that they were invited by my stress and imagination; created by my overactive mind that worried incessantly about the future.

That morning in my kitchen, a thought burst through the chaos in my brain, loud and clear.

All you have to do right now is make a sandwich. Just make the sandwich, sweetie.

I took a deep breath, looked down at my partially made sandwich and continued its assembly, letting my tears do the seasoning as I grew calmer. I made my way back to the present.

Managing My Anxiety

I haven’t had an anxiety attack since I made that sandwich. Not because my problems have gone away – far from it. But because I know that no life decisions need to be made at 7 am on a weekday; that the conversations I have in my head never turn out in real life the way I imagine them; because I cannot tell the future; because I am learning to trust that things happen when they are meant to; that they have a way of working out in the end, for better or for worse and no amount of mental agony on my part is going to change that.

Life happens one thing at a time.

My dear friend, Kathy shared with me that one morning she was helping her three year-old go potty when he got very upset and sobbed that he didn’t want to go to school. “Right now,” she said, “we’re just going potty. That’s all.” He immediately calmed down.

I still worry and feel anxious sometimes. But now I have the tools to not let it get out of hand to the point that I am not in control of my body. I catch myself getting worked up and I say to myself, “Just make the sandwich.”

One thing at a time. Whether you’re making a sandwich, or just going potty, that is all that requires your attention at that moment.