As the world battles the outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19, there’s no denying we are living in difficult times. This article is about anxiety and has a downloadable audio which guides you through a process to reduce anxiety and restore emotional equilibrium.
It’s perfectly understandable to be feeling anxious at present:
- You may be worried about your own health, the health of your family and loved ones, and what the future holds. Will things ever get back to normal?
- Governments have issued instructions to restrict our normal activities to protect the health of our nations and ourselves. Often these are restrictions that could be seen as extreme in any other circumstances. There may be many reasons these might impact on you and cause anxiety or stress.
Feeling anxious or continually stressed is not good for you and feeds back on itself, making matters worse. What can you do about this?
If ever you’ve tried to tell yourself to stop feeling anxious, you’ll probably have found that it either it doesn’t work at all or it might work in the short term but it doesn’t last – and quite soon you go back to feeling anxious. Being anxious in this way can feel quite overwhelming and affect us physically as well as emotionally. . This is because our brain is wired so that it HAS to think about something, Just telling it NOT to think about something, in this case anxious thoughts, isn’t going to work. Therefore, to stop experiencing anxious thoughts we need to give our brain something different to do and think about, something more positive to replace these anxious thoughts and quieten our emotional and physical responses so we can function better.
One way we can do this is by bringing into our mind’s eye a positive image of a peaceful, calm, relaxing place and focus on the detail within it – the sights, sounds, smells and feelings it evokes within us that enhance its positive associations for us. Attached to this post is an audio file which guides you through a process to help you find your own peaceful place, and how to use your time there to ease any anxiety you might be experiencing.
To use this audio, start by downloading the file so you can play it from your preferred device. Before you play the audio, find a calm, peaceful place for you to be in; a space that can remain undisturbed for as long as you need it to be to complete your reflection. Then play the audio and follow along through the process.
I want to let the audio literally speak for itself. So let me finish by expressing my wish that this is helpful for you.
Viv
Right click on this link & choose “Save Link as…” to download the audio.
(Left click will open a new tab and play the audio immediately.)
If you’re unsure about downloading, this may help.
Right-click on the icon or link to see a context menu. Choose “Save link as…”.
This will display a dialog for you to choose where the file is saved on your device and what to call it. when you click on OK it will be downloaded.
You can then find the file on your device and play it. In many browsers, the names of the recent downloads will show at the bottom of the window. If you right-click on one of these, you’ll see some options, one of which should be “Open”. For an audio file, this means “play it with my default player.”
[Hmm. Those instructions should work. Your device may be set up slightly differently and there are too many options to cover them all. If the file didn’t download or you can’t find it, try playing directly in the browser by left-clicking the link instead.]
