Anxiety is so idiosyncratic that it’s difficult to pinpoint a “type” that’s most common. For some, it might feel like vines of dread roping themselves around you the night before a big work deadline, or maybe like a creeping cloud of unease that settles in during your morning commute. Maybe you cope by taking prescribed medication or going for a run; maybe you’ve gotten suspiciously into baking bread.
No matter what your specific brand of anxiety looks like, it’s probably safe to say that the novel coronavirus pandemic isn’t helping it. At the urging of public health officials, large public gatherings have been canceled, obsessive hand-washing is all but mandatory, and much of the world is in an uneasy state of lockdown. There is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of physical isolation, and being alone with your thoughts may be more distressing than ever.
And while there’s no cure for the heightened anxiety that’s all but inevitable in these stressful, unprecedented times, there are ways to smarten your approach to dealing with it that can meaningfully reduce your overall sense of helplessness. Because if we have to sit at home feeling waves of anxiety, we at least can learn how to be experts at managing them. Read more.