Morning Routine to Help Prevent Anxiety

Mornings are a really important part of my day, because I get to set the tone. I didn’t used to cherish them the way I do now until I started dating my current partner, Joe. I’m the kind of person who will jump out of bed immediately and get the day going, while he is the type of person to linger in bed and slowly wake up. We complement each other well, because we have been finding a balance between the two that allows us to have a calm but productive morning.

Once I started integrating waking up slowly into my routine, I was much calmer throughout the entire day. It is easy to maintain a slow and steady approach to your day if you make intentional steps to do so in your first moments. But don’t worry, if your morning routine ever gets disrupted, you can “restart” your day at any time. Regardless, I want to share my little morning ritual with you so you can try it yourself, no matter what time of day suits you best.

~Renee's Morning Anxiety Prevention Routine~

1. Wake up early.

If possible, I wake up early, so that I have enough time to do a routine without rushing. In general, waking up early and giving yourself the space to slowly start your day will allow you to carry that calmness with you later. Honor and cherish this time; remember that going slow can be very meaningful to your mind and body.

2. Have a glass (or two) of water.

When I first wake up, I feel dehydrated. I mean, I did just sleep for 8 hours. My advice is to try to drink at least one full glass of water before eating or drinking anything else, like coffee or breakfast. By the time I am done with this, I am usually ready to get out of bed.

3. Set an intention.

Next, I head into my living room with my journal, and brew coffee while I set up to do some mindful thinking and writing. Setting an intention is the most important part of my morning, and something that has entirely changed my life in the last 6 months. This time will look different for each of us, but I choose to use it to connect with my spirituality. This isn’t necessary for everyone, it is just what works for me and my personal life. I start off by setting an intention that I am as loving, kind, tolerant, and patient as I can be that day. I try to get specific with it. “Help me to be patient today– with myself, with my job, with whatever life throws at me, with my partner, and my family…” and so on, with each term. After this, I end my intention with wishes of wellness for people that I care about. I try not to ask for too much for myself, but instead focus my energies on others.

This really works. The simple action of setting an intention each morning has the ability to guide and remind me of the person I want to be while I navigate through the day.

4. Make a gratitude list.

Every morning I try to write a gratitude list. It don’t need to be crazy specific or fulfill any type of criteria, but I try to write at least 3 things down on the page. It helps me recognize that there is always so much to be thankful for, even on my bad days, and this small practice has single-handedly changed how I look at life for the better. It brings a smile to my face on the hard days.

And that’s it– then I get to drink my coffee and start my day!

I hope that this was helpful. Developing a routine gets you one step closer to the best version of yourself, and is something stable to hold onto when life throws you for a loop. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it’s ok to miss days. Your mental health should always remain your top priority.

Let me know what your morning routine is, and if there are any things you do that help you remain calm throughout the day. I would love to hear them!

Xx,

Renee

How did I figure out that I had anxiety?

Why is it I never hear people talk about this? I didn’t know that I had anxiety when I was a kid, and it was a pretty wild experience figuring it out.

Despite extreme irrational fears, meltdowns during separations of any kind, and general feelings of intense unease during childhood, I did not put two-and-two together, and more importantly, neither did my parents (check out my post about childhood anxiety here).

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and started taking medication for it at 5 years old. I tell you this because for most of my life, anytime I described nervousness or what I would later grow up to realize were anxiety symptoms, my doctors and parents would more often than not tell me they were side effects of my meds.

I spent most of my childhood either hopped up on a drug that felt like the equivalent of 5 cups of coffee, or on break from my medication, causing me to become completely aloof and lethargic. If you are on the ADHD grind, perhaps you can relate.

When I was 16 I was adamant about going to an out-of-state private college. I grew up quite poor and I thought going to an expensive school reflected who I wanted to be, and could be a status symbol. I sent in all my college applications and eventually decided on Film studies at Ithaca College.

Leaving was filled with its typical heartfelt goodbyes– I waved farewell to a close group of friends and my first legitimate boyfriend. I had somehow snagged a college roommate from an Ithaca College Facebook group, and we got along well enough. And I made a few friends, but I still could not shake the feeling that there was something very wrong.

Everyone I met at parties kept telling me that they were excited to recreate themselves in college. I had no idea what they meant, because I didn’t know who I currently was, let alone who I wanted to become. I couldn’t make up my mind as to which personality I wanted to have, and I was second-guessing myself at every turn.

Instead of getting better, I got worse over time. For the first time in my life, I was completely silent out of fear. And I hated every moment of feeling crippled under my nervousness.

I’m sure you can relate. We all get lonely. Suddenly your support system is ripped out from underneath you, and at least for me, it felt like I needed to pretend that it was still there. Like everything was fine; like I was doing just great. But after a while, all of that pretending caught up with me, so I receded inward until I literally felt like a shell.

I remember the day I hit my breaking point. I had been walking around my school and a boy in my class said hello to me. I couldn’t even respond because I was so nervous. I pretty much just ran back to my dorm. It’s a bit funny recalling this but I was so ANGRY with myself at the time!

Once I got home, I discovered my roommate wasn’t there, so I leapt at the opportunity to cry alone. I never had any time to myself, so I sobbed for probably 20 minutes straight. It was frustrating to lose your voice the way mine had seemed to disappear. I had no charisma, no gusto, and I felt too tiny for the world. I realized that I had felt absolutely miserable and out of place for at least a month now, and that realization was enough to break my already bending back.

At the time I was still convinced that I felt these things because of my ADHD medication, so I wiped my tears away as best as I could and went to the health center on campus.

When I explained what was happening to the on-campus doctor and how I wanted to change my ADHD meds so I would have less side effects, she asked me a lot of questions. She was very fixated on how I felt lost and like I couldn’t talk to people. I really didn’t get why it was such a big deal. She made me take a test to rank my anxiety, and it came back a 9/10 – “Severe Anxiety.”

At first, I was spiteful. A part of me that liked to be the victim was throwing her hands in the air and going, “Yup, of course! Add it onto the pile!” But once my miniature pity party was over, years of feeling tense and paranoid came crashing down on my shoulders. I remember wondering “Wait, you mean no one else feels like this? This isn’t normal? I’m not normal?” And that thought made me feel the saddest and most lonely that I had all semester.

My doctor gingerly smiled at me, and put her hand on my shoulder. She immediately tried to prescribe me medication for anxiety, to which I firmly declined. But we did change my ADHD medication that day, and after a bit of tweaking, it helped a lot.

I realize that everyone has a different process with diagnosis, and what I haven't written about are all the therapy appointments and doctor's meetings following this that helped really solidify that I had an anxiety disorder. That day was just the tipping point. I hadn’t planned on getting diagnosed with something that day… it was scary.

Now I am 24, and my life looks a lot different. I don’t take medication for my ADHD anymore, and my life has improved significantly because of it. I have tried a few medications for my anxiety and settled on one that really helps level my emotions. And I am completely sober. Although it took me a while to understand the ins and outs of my anxiety disorder, I am 100% better because of it. What was a scary process at first has bloomed into a loving relationship with myself, filled with understanding, patience, and care. But don’t get it twisted– like anything worthwhile in life, the journey was anything but easy.

And I can’t wait to share more about it with you.

I’m curious to hear other people’s stories of how and when they first realized they had anxiety – did you know when you were young, or find out much later? Please share it with me, I’d love to know your story.

Xx,

Renee

How Did My Anxiety Manifest as a Child?

What a great topic, because for most of my life I didn’t know that I had anxiety. Reflecting now, it’s obvious.

When I think of childhood anxiety, I am always reminded of a running joke that my father and I share. Every time I go home to visit him, he’ll say goodnight to me several times in a row before we go to bed. That’s because when I was a child, I would do that to him, sometimes saying “goodnight” like, 20 times before I actually settled down. My father found this cute at first and eventually annoying, but what I’ve never told him is that I was saying goodnight a thousand times because I was scared.

I spent a majority of my childhood afraid of a myriad of different things, but one fear that overshadowed the rest was the idea of my parents dying. This was especially poignant because my parents got divorced when I was 3 years old. So I would change houses each week and not know what was happening with my other parent until I saw them again 7 days later. While there were some benefits (double Christmas and birthday gifts), there were undoubtedly some cons for me, which manifested as an anxiety of something terrible happening to my parents while I was with the other, away at school, or even asleep. I hated that I had no control over what happened to me or my parents. I even remember telling my mom that it was important to me that we say “I love you” every day before school in case she died during the day. As an 11 year old, I thought this was endearing. Remembering this as a 24 year old, it is bone-chilling.

Another vivid memory I have surrounds our DVR (how we recorded television before there was streaming services) being filled with the Ripley’s Believe it or Not show. I think I was about 8 years old at the time. My sister and brother loved to watch that show, so naturally, I wanted to join in. But one day we watched an episode that sent me into a month-long panic. It contained a story about a woman who had a wound and contracted a rare flesh eating bacteria while in the woods. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that this traumatized me. It felt like the carpet of security had been ripped out from beneath my feet -- How could such a terrible thing happen to someone? Things like that weren’t supposed to happen. That was all it took for me to spiral into a panic that my parents could barely calm me down from. I couldn’t sleep, I cried constantly, and I wouldn’t go outside.

A similar occurrence happened when I was in middle school and I saw an episode of 1,000 Ways to Die in which a woman choked on food while alone in her house. It had never occurred to me that I could choke and die alone. The thought genuinely terrified me, because I felt as if again, a security blanket had been ripped out from underneath me. From then and there my anxiety dictated that I was not going to eat. It felt like a switch had gone off in my mind – no more eating, we’re done doing that! I wish I was exaggerating. Any doctor would have told me this was an eating disorder, but my parents just wanted me to "suck it up."

I couldn’t get my throat to open up and swallow, and if I could, it would take me hours of meticulous chewing to get down a single slice of pizza. I remember crying from being so hungry, but so anxious of choking that I didn’t want to risk it. Eventually, with years of practice, I recovered and now eat normally. I would basically tell my body, which genuinely believed I was going to choke, that we were going to swallow and risk it. And I repeated this over and over and over again until I grew to trust my ability to not choke on every piece of food I put in my mouth. But no one helped me through that; no therapist, parent or teacher. It felt as though no one took me seriously at the time, so I just stopped asking for help.

When I recount these stories to my parents nowadays, they are shocked. They claim they had no idea the severity of my feelings, and I don’t blame them. I am not telling you these stories to villainize them.

Children are brilliant, but unfortunately they don’t always have the tools to communicate their feelings, or even a way of measuring how they are feeling. What feels obvious to me in self-reflection as a cry for help may have come off as a silly fear or bump in the road to my parents. So none of us knew that I was anxious or that there were tools to cope with the ways that I was feeling. I couldn’t have stood up to my parents as an 8 year old and told them how out of control I felt, because I had nothing to compare it to. To me, I was living a normal experience.

All this goes to say that if you are currently going through a journey with anxiety, try to find signs and evidence of how this has manifested throughout your life. It can help you realize patterns, which can be really helpful. If you are raising kids, pay attention to them, ask them how they are doing and really listen. If they seem afraid, distracted, or confused, believe them, and go deep with them. We can be their best teachers, and oddly enough, they can be ours.

Make sure you check out this helpful resource from the CDC about identifying childhood

anxiety and depression in children.

Xx,

Renee