5 Simple Steps To Control Anxiety When You're About To Have A Meltdown

It’s Saturday night.

You’ve been spending the weekend relaxing with your friends and family, and have been telling yourself that you already know what you’re going to write for the essay due at the end of Sunday.

But it’s 10pm, and you’re struggling to come up with enough arguments to fill the word limit and to hopefully get a good mark in the end.

This is just one place where stress can ‘attack’ you. But once you get over one stressful period, another one will arise and after that, another, another and… another.

New essays, new deadlines, even every new day can create stress in one form or another. And this is why, you need to redefine stress.

It is essential to use stress to your advantage and find ways to channel it into doing something productive.

So here are 5 steps to make stress less daunting and use it to your advantage to be more productive.

1. Remove yourself/ your feelings as much as you can from the situation.

Let’s use the example of a student struggling to start an essay which is due the next day.

Rather than stressing out and becoming frustrated and worried about the situation, take yourself out of the situation.

Remove your emotions as much as you can, and try to think about it with a clear mind.

Already you’ll start to feel calmer, and your mind will be able to function easier as you assess the situation.

The 5 minute productivity hack might be a good thing for you to look into if you’re the type of person that stresses out easily.

While this hack focusses primarily on increasing your productivity levels, it can easily be used as a strategy to eliminate procrastination and stress and get started with work.

2. Look at the problem from an objective point of view

Evaluate the situation and break it down into a set of problems. For example, if I were the student I’d break it down to:

a)I still have to finish the plan

b) I haven’t started the essay yet

c) It’s due tomorrow

d) It’s 2000 words long

I know that’s stating the obvious (and it sounds really scary) but rather than thinking of all of these things at once, you now have a step-by-step list of things to tackle.

You are facing the problem rather than procrastinating and freaking out, and that will get you in the mindset to be decisive and take action.

3. Create strategies to use this stress to your advantage and figure out the next steps

Looking at your tasks, create some solutions for each of them:

a) I’ll break up the plan into things I definitely need to cover and find three to four points for each sub-section – solution to ‘I still have to finish the plan’

b) As soon as I create the plan, I will take a short break and then start writing the essay – solution to ‘I haven’t started the essay yet’

c) I will create a timed schedule for the different parts of the essay I will write (e.g. it will take me one hour to write the introduction, two hours to write the first argument etc. OR you can break it down into word count – the introduction is 300 words; the first argument will be about 700 words etc.) – solution to ‘it’s due tomorrow’

d) When I work on my plan I will make sure that I have enough arguments that will reach the word count. I will also have a target word count for each argument. – solution to ‘it’s 2000 words long’

So as you can see, we have created some action steps in order to combat the problems.

Already, you’ll start feeling less stressed and even a little confident as you have some achievable things to do that will lead you to your final goal.

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4. Realise that stressing out will not help you

Now that you have stopped and thought about this stressful situation from an objective point of view, figured out the issues that are causing you to feel stress and also created accompanying solutions, you will start to feel more confident.

You have created an effective solution for your stress, and you have an action plan ready to successfully complete the daunting problem that was troubling you earlier.

This moment is an empowering feeling and the first time you experience it will transform the way you feel about stress.

Remember this feeling, and the next time you encounter a stressful period, remind yourself of this confidence.

You are now ready to tackle the stress head on and get stuck into the work (good luck with the essay…)

You obviously wouldn’t want to be putting yourself in stressful situations if you can help it. But, internalise the idea that you can leave a stressful situation whenever YOU choose to, and then channel it in a way that helps you be confident, decisive and focussed.

5. Do this again, and hone in your process

The final step is to do this all over again!

The truth is, stress will never leave us. It will come back with its soul-crushing, heart-plummeting, palm-sweating grip and there’s nothing we can do about stopping it.

The best thing to do would be to learn how to use it well.

And in order to hone in your learning, you need to continuously carry out these 5 steps and strengthen your resolve against stress.

Practice makes perfect, and over time you may find that rather than stress creating a daunting situation it instead creates a space that motivates you and pushes you to reach your full potential.

The next time you feel stressed out, take a minute to take yourself out of the situation.

Remember that only you are in control of how you’re feeling right now.

Understand the stress for a moment; why are you feeling this way right now? What is the best thing for you to do?

Hopefully, with a more focussed and calm mind you can organise your next steps which will either alleviate the stress slightly, or allow you to control what you are going to do with this adrenaline rush.

Feel the stress, the panic, but understand that you are in control and that everything will be okay.

This 5-step process can be used in other situations as well.

For example, if you’re feeling anxious about a situation, or your just feeling anxious and down for no apparent reason. Take yourself out from the situation and find the things that are causing you worry and then create solutions for them.

5 Simple Steps To Control Anxiety When You’re About To Have A Meltdown