😩If you have anxiety because your “go to” mental health tools stop working….do this instead.💡

No one talks about what happens when things stop working…

But that’s exactly where you are at now…

You worked hard to create some stability with your mental health and for the most part it was hard, but it was at least working. But things are slowly slipping and what worked then is more and more not feeling right.

You don’t know why but that anxiousness is creeping in, the worry that you might fall off into the abyss again…

And on top of that, you have a big project due at work so you can’t afford for this to happen now. But it’s happening….and that’s ok…because that is your body’s que that change is in the air.

Sticking and staying is not always a sign that you are on the right path.

But if you have spent months or even years doing what has gotten you results and has contributed to your mental, emotional, physical well-being then,

I know you might want to hold on with every fiber of your being before you make changes.

The common challenges I often hear (including the ones I tell myself) include:

- This took me months/years to put in place!!! I will have lost all that if I change.

- I don’t know what I would do differently. Putting this in place was already hard enough.

- Do I just stop mid-routine and then do what…(as a lawyer who is structured this unknown is nauseating)

- I’m going to go backward with all the results I made and I have clients, deadlines etc that just won’t wait for me to figure it out.

Very recently, I had that “pit in my stomach” feeling that certain things were just “off”. I had to move my workouts due to a new job change and my employer doesn’t have a gym. My schedule changed which freed up time in some spaces and removed it in others (the time that I would do certain things for my mental health). I felt like I was going through the “mental health tool motions” and couldn’t wait to get done (this was my major awareness que). Ohhh and I forgot about the major life events in my marriage and also self development (should have led with that first). I began to get this anxiety that “something” was wrong and that pushing through it was going to lead to a path with my bi-polar depression that I know so well…and now was not the time to go there. But I felt trapped because I didn’t know where to start or what to do. So I did some deep work and began to make change.

No it’s not a quick fix, but what you can do instead of building anxiety that will increase as your tools become less effective is this:

1. Get more clarity on what is not working.

2. Look at the current obstacles and challenges at this point in your life that may get in the way of the changes that you need to make and then mitigate or eliminate them.

3. Write down options, however out of the box, for items that need tweaking.

4. When in doubt, seek guidance.

Get more clarity on what is not working:

Seems intuitive, right? Wrong. For us action takers, we have been known to dive right in and just start moving. Before you do that, I’d encourage you to write, type, scribe, etc., what is actually not working and why. Get it out of your brain and onto something else. This gives you a better vantage point to work.

Look at the current obstacles and challenges at this point in your life that may get in the way of the changes that you need to make and then mitigate or eliminate them:

This is something that has supported my pivots. Where you were when you made your first routines is not where you are now. So with that in mind, what are the challenges (time, dislike, money, etc.) that may get in the way of change? Keep those in mind because we will come back to those later.

Write down options, however out of the box, for items that need tweaking or elimination and replacement:

We have a world of information at our fingertips (the internet) that we may not leverage appropriately (creation vs. consumption). For one of my changes, I googled a prompt to find articles and YouTube videos on something different. Based on what wasn’t working, I looked at what other tools I wasn’t using and if those would help. I also reached out to some friends to bounce ideas and suggestions. Again, this step was about options that would align with a pivot for what wasn’t working. I also used this time to look at the potential obstacles and then how I could take small actions or make adjustments to mitigate them. I focused on how to experiment with change through imperfect action rather than creating a perfect solution.