The COVID-19 Pandemic has been highly stressful for most people and it can be particularly difficult to see a loved one struggle with feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.
It can be a helpless feeling when you don’t know what to say or what to do when a loved one is highly anxious and maybe even experiencing a panic attack.
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How the Comforting Process Fails: academic.oup.com/joc/article-...
Reappraisal and suppression mediate the contribution of regulatory focus to anxiety in healthy adults: psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?do...
Adult Attachment and the Perception of Emotional Expressions: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...
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Anxiety is the most common mental health issue for children, adolescents and adults.
In Canada, roughly 1 in 4 people will experience an anxiety disorder over the course of their lifetime.
Anxiety is a very common problem, and we are going to take a look at a few actionable tips that you can use, to help support a loved one who is struggling with these feelings.
For our first tip, it’s important to simply ask someone how they are feeling.
It could be as simple as asking “Are you feeling okay?”, “Have you been feeling anxious lately?”
So, besides asking someone how they are feeling, it’s important to validate how they feel.
Validate is psychological jargon for acknowledging how someone feels.
For example, saying to someone, “I can understand why this would make you feel anxious”, or “I’m sorry you are feeling so anxious”, would be examples of validating someone’s feelings.
The key to doing this effectively is to agree with and accept how someone feels.
In a 2020 study by Dr. Xi Tian and colleagues, they found that validating someone’s feelings is the best way to provide support when someone feels anxious.
They also found that attempting to support someone by using the wrong words can make people more anxious.
So, simply put, understanding and acknowledging how someone feels is very important.
The second thing I’d suggest doing, to help a loved one who is struggling with anxiety, is to encourage them to calm their body.
And the best place to begin is by encouraging them to use deep breathing.
For our third step, you want to help your loved one to calm their mind.
One great way to do this is by using relaxing self-talk, which essentially means using a relaxing phrase or two that will help your loved one to settle their feelings of anxiety.
And you have the advantage of knowing your loved one well, so it will give you some insight into what to say to help them calm down.
If you are interested in a few examples, I’d suggest using simple calming phrases such as, “Everything will be okay”, “We’ll get through this together”, “This feeling will go away shortly”.
So, once your loved one is calm, the next thing you could do would be to help someone to think differently about their anxiety if they are open to doing so.
One way to do this is by using a strategy called reframing. What reframing means is to look at situations in a different way that helps to change the meaning of what just happened.
In a 2013 study by Dr. Nicole Flewellyn and colleagues, they found that people who naturally reframe anxiety-provoking situations as opposed to just trying to bury anxious feelings feel less stressed.
Another way you can help a loved one to feel less anxious by thinking differently is to help them recognize when they are jumping to conclusions.
In case you are wondering what that means, jumping to conclusions happens when we decide something before we have all the facts.
In a 2006 study by Dr. Chris Fraley and colleagues, they found that one way anxious people can cause problems in relationships is by jumping to conclusions based on facial expressions.
For my last tip, I want to talk about the reassurance-seeking trap. So, what does reassurance-seeking mean?
It means that when you help someone with anxiety by telling them it’s going to be okay, there is a possibility they will continue to come back to you and ask to be reassured over and over again, instead of using skills and strategies they have learned to calm themselves.
Instead, what I would encourage you to do after telling them they are okay once, is to encourage them to use the skills and strategies they have learned to help manage their anxiety.
If you need help implementing these strategies, please contact us @ www.drsullivan.ca/
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